It seems like a truly archaic idea now, but years ago there was an expectation between heterosexual couples that the man was responsible for working and bringing home the money while the woman’s job was to keep the house clean and the kids fed.
Thankfully, it’s now 2019 and women aren’t being treated as their spouse’s personal live-in maid anymore (or at least, they shouldn’t be.)
But despite the societal change, there are some marriages out there that still somewhat abide by these more traditional male and female roles. So much so that when the man decides to pick up a broom, the woman nearly faints from shock.
One Instagram couple have come under fire after suggesting men should be rewarded for doing housework.
You know, housework? Those chores that women have traditionally been expected and taught to do themselves without any promise or need for a reward? Yeah, this couple believes men should be rewarded for doing just that.
And what should they be rewarded with? Why, sex of course, because what else do us silly women have to offer?
Mom and Instagram influencer Bri Dietz recently posted a photo of her and her husband that caught people’s attention.
In the photo, Bri embraces her husband and plants a kiss on his cheek while he holds a letter board sign reading, “Helping with housework so you can get lucky is called choreplay.”
“Nothing hotter,” Bri captioned the photo. “Any other ‘acts of service’ love languagers out there? Mine 100%.”
As it turns out, Bri and her husband didn’t coin the “choreplay” phrase.
According to Cafe Mom , it actually comes from writer and comedian Sara Buckley of the Instagram account Not The Worst Mom who more or less coined the phrase.
Buckley herself actually commented on Bri’s post and voiced her support for the couple’s arrangement.
“Hell yes,” she wrote. “Get them floors mopped and the panties dropped.”
Unsurprisingly, the people of the internet have a few problems with this so-called “choreplay” arrangement.
First and foremost, why should husbands be rewarded for cleaning their own house?
“WTF,” one user commented on the post, “‘helping with housework’? Stop teaching women that if men do housework it’s HELPING, and they should get rewarded. They aren’t children. It’s 50% their responsibility.”
And, thinking what I’m sure everyone else is thinking, they added, “Is this from the 50s?!”
Others have said there’s nothing “hot” about treating men like children by rewarding them for cleaning.
“‘Helping with housework’ infantilizes men and implies that the home is the woman’s job,” one Instagram user wrote. “Nothing sexy about that.”
Children get allowances for doing chores. Grown men shouldn’t get anything.
A Twitter post about the photo has called for an end to influencers spreading toxic messages like this.
The people in the comments seem to support this user’s opinion and have made clear their feelings towards the couple’s “choreplay” suggestion.
“That’s why it’s called house work, not wife work,” one Twitter user said, while another chimed in with, “Maybe he can babysit his kids too.”
But I think this user summed up our feelings perfectly with a bit of photoshop.
Now this is the type of letter board sign I can get behind. Perhaps the couple should consider trying their photo shoot again, this time with a bit of a different message for Bri’s nearly 75,000 followers.
RELATED STORIES
Although most users are outraged about the suggested imbalance of power at work here, others are supporting the couple’s “choreplay” idea.
“Yes!” one user wrote. “It’s such a turn on for me and also a win/win because it means I’ve got more time to spend on my man instead of doing cleaning and laundry.”
Another said she and her husband definitely participate in “choreplay”, particularly when her beau asks for more tasks after finishing off his to-do list.
So as it turns out, there are a lot of women who think this sort of arrangement is perfectly acceptable. Which is actually incredibly disappointing to learn, but maybe some day they’ll wake up and see how ridiculous “choreplay” really is.
And if their husbands have any problems with that, they definitely know where the front door is, even if they aren’t sure where the brooms are kept.