Ladies, how many times has this happened to you? You’ve got a frame to hang, so you get out your toolkit; you start to hammer a nail into the wall when, suddenly, out of nowhere, who should appear but the cute guy with whom you went on a date last week and really hit it off. He takes one look at your ugly, greasy hammer, sprints out the door and never calls again — and, that night, all alone in bed, you cry yourself to sleep.
Well, dry your tears, because a woman named Barbara Kavovit has a solution for you: an entire line of tools created just for females. The eponymous “Barbara K” home improvement line has become immensely popular since it hit the market nearly two years ago, offering petite power tools with aquamarine accents, tool kits packed in translucent aquamarine plastic cases and aquamarine-covered how-to books. With Barbara K, even your six-in-one putty knife can be stylish, and you’ll never again fumble with a pass� pair of spring-assisted slip-joint pliers.
It’s enough to make one wonder. Certainly it’s sensible to create smaller, lighter tools for comparatively small-handed women, but isn’t it crossing some kind of line to put so much work into making something aesthetically pleasing when it will be used to apply torque to greasy bolts?
Ah, but you see, these tools are not simply for screwing and hammering, drilling and stapling. No, these are spiritual tools, tools that show you how to be a better person. The focus is less on home improvement and more on self improvement. “A hammer is not only used to construct something tangible,” Barbara K proclaims in one advertisement, “it can also help build confidence. It teaches you self-reliance, and teaches you how good that feels.” In a New York Times piece, she reiterates that tools are “things that give you confidence. That puts [sic] you back into your soul, your spirit, because you have enhanced your surroundings.”
Someone alert the medical community — there’s a new breakthrough cure for depression! Not to mention the potential impact this could have on gender equality; apparently all we need to shatter the glass ceiling is a 16-ounce fiberglass hammer with a comfort grip and ergonomic design. Who knew empowerment was so easy? It’s like that old Chinese proverb: “Give a woman 10 bucks, and she’ll eat for a day. Give her a nine-piece hex key set, and she’ll be able to put together Ikea furniture for a lifetime.”
Barbara K isn’t the only one marketing empowerment as something women can buy in a store. Another semi-recent trend has been the right-hand diamond ring, popular among the growing niche market of unmarried women with expendable income. The right-hand diamond ring is supposed to symbolize independence; rather than waiting for a man to propose, the logic goes, why not buy your own ring? One advertisement, hawking the wares of A Diamond is Forever, implores: “Your left hand says ‘We.’ Your right hand says ‘Me.’ Your left hand rocks the cradle. Your right hand rules the world. Women of the world, raise your right hand.”
I see a few things wrong with this picture. First, it’s more than slightly ironic that, under pretense of “independence,” women are spending thousands of dollars to follow a trend.
Second, although reclamation might work for insulting epithets (see: the evolution of “queer”), when you buy a right-hand diamond ring from A Diamond is Forever, you’re still delivering funds into the account of the company that advertises to men with phrases like, “God created woman. Then, after several million years of practice, he created yours.” Of course, the goal is not to picket diamond companies for promoting an ages-old, highly-gendered tradition wherein a man accompanies his modest proposal with an immodestly-sized gem in symbolic (and sometimes not-so-symbolic) exchange for his bride-to-be — the goal, presumably, is to get a diamond ring, because diamond rings are pretty.
Although I’ve never seen the appeal of diamonds myself, procuring a diamond ring is not an intrinsically dishonorable goal, or at least no more dishonorable than buying any other piece of expensive jewelry. But it isn’t the goal of women who buy right-hand diamond rings; if all they wanted was a ring with diamonds, they could wear it on whichever finger they wanted. The right-hand diamond ring seems to be less about its being a ring or having diamonds and more about its not being an engagement ring.
This leads into the third problem, which is that buying a right-hand diamond ring seems more like reaction formation than genuine empowerment; instead of conveying the message “my sense of self-worth does not depend on whether I have a romantic partner,” it seems to say, “I don’t care that I’m not married! Seriously! In fact, I’m glad I’m not married! Who needs men?! I certainly don’t! Pass the vodka!”
And this is the most troubling aspect of both the right-hand diamond ring and Barbara K’s tool boutique: both attempt to “subvert the dominant paradigm” by leaving it unquestioned. “Working in the construction business taught me how hard it can be for a woman to use tools,” Barbara K laments in an advertisement — so she created a line of hardware that women would be able to use more efficiently (empowering!) and then, because it was for women, she made it pretty and blue (condescending!). Women who purchase right-hand rings as a statement of “independence” are not changing the marital significance of a diamond ring; instead, they proclaim to the world that they harbor such desire for a proposal that they’re willing to propose to themselves.
It reeks of playground politics, of avenging an unreceptive secret club by forming your own even more secret club. By the end of recess the courtyard is filled with a hundred kindergarteners, each in her own “club,” putting more effort into pretending to ignore everyone around her than she puts into having fun. No boys allowed!
