I received a brochure from FranklinPlanner (apparently FranklinPlanner makes the products under license to FranklinCovey, who put out the courses and books).
Over the last few years FranklinPlanner has tried to appeal more to humans gendered female by offering planner pages with illustrations of the brightly colored reproductive organs of multicellular eukaryotes, aka chicks dig flowers, right? There’s one on the cover of the brochure, next to a handbag.
You might not be able to read that, so here’s what FranklinPlanner tells us humans gendered as female should fill their days with:
Spring Cleaning Plan
- Clear out closets
- Wash windows
- Organize books
- Donate unwanted clothes/toys
- Deep clean carpets
- Clean garage
This human’s specific tasks for today:
- B1 Organize linen closet
- A1 Wash windows (completed)
- B2 Go through clothes
- A2 Clean carpets (completed)
It’s not all work. Later on it’s Pizza and Movie Night.
Seriously, WTF FranklinPlanner? *smh*
It’s not that cleaning isn’t important. It is. It’s not that the lives of women who spend their entire time cleaning – in their own homes, or workplaces, or other people’s homes – aren’t meaningful. They are. It’s that Franklin Planner would never market a planner aimed at men this way. The idea of the home as being women’s sphere is insidious. Domestic housework is still gendered, and women are judged by their homes. Pinterest and Etsy and YouTube only add to the pressure to not only do homework perfectly – and, arguably, excessively – but to find ultimate personal fulfilment in it, and do it while presenting yourself as a glossy, attractive brand.
Cleaning has to be done, but it does not comprise the totality of a life. You might have to scrub the toilet, but it is not your mission, and you do not have to find fulfilment in it.
Franklin Planner, was there no room at all in this woman’s day to block out even an hour for reading? Learning? Employment, or a home business? Playing with her kids? Lying on her back under a tree, watching the clouds and plotting fanfic?
Road to a happier life: less spring cleaning, more fanfic. Try that for your brochure next time, FranklinPlanner.
With a Squid Ink Pen 
WTF is right. FranklinPlanner, you need to get a little more in touch with humans younger than 80, too, because you’re seriously out of touch on so many levels with that brochure.
that handbag? Comes in magenta and grey. Of all the colors in the world, *magenta*? And the planners and pens come in red. There is no other magenta. I feel like someone needs to shake them and slap them around the head a few times.