The politics of nannies and blogging

From Bitch Ph.D., Helaine Olen wrote a self-serving article in the NY Times on firing her nanny because she didn't like what she read about the nanny's non-work on her blog. Here's the nanny's reply. What did the nanny do that Olen didn't like? Well, she occassionally talked about her sex life online and going out for drinks with friends. Also, she is open about her bisexuality. I doubt Olen intended to come across as such a judgemental, controlling prude, but before I even the nanny Tessy's reply, that was exactly how I perceived her and Tessy's reply only reinforced that notion as she creates links to test blog posts that Olen mentions in the article, stuff like saying she thinks the actress in Pride and Prejudice is hot. Tessy also is very angry at the description of her as "promiscious", especially since she's in a monogamous relationship with her boyfriend.

Olen makes claims throughout this essay that's she's really not a huge prude, that she remembers that it was fun being young, but her choice of this word "promiscious" tells me all I need to know about how empty those protests are. You only call a single woman with a boyfriend "promiscious" because you have issues with women who have sex, particularly such women being put in charge of children. (I never cease to be amazed that people can be so perturbed at the idea of a woman who has sex looking after children, considering the way that children come into being.) The notion that people who filter a little alcohol through their liver once in awhile shouldn't be exposed to children is one I've only recently become acquainted with, though ancedotal evidence suggests this bit of prudery is a yuppie affectation.

The defensiveness of this NY Times article is astounding, because I don't even get the impression that Olen is being defensive about her choice to deprive a woman of her job in part because that woman's sexuality made her uncomfortable. God forbid she be defensive about being sexist and unfair to her employee. No, Olen is defensive because her younger employee's youthful fun made her a little bit jealous and she wants everyone to know that even though she's a big enough fuddy-duddy that a woman expressing admiration for another woman's beauty makes her clutch her pearls, it's not her fault and she'd really be fun if it weren't for her great sacrifice of having children. I'm not buying it, because of passages like this:

I told my friends about the blog, and even my childless acquaintances were riveted. They called, begging for more details. "Did she wear the rose negligee, the pink see-through slip or the purple Empire-waisted gown?" demanded one after perusing a post on the proper outfit for first-time sex. "She didn't say."

I'm not a worldly person, and I like to gossip about sex as much as anyone, but I can't ever imagine talking with my friends about the delicious, over-the-top naughtiness of underwear choices. You expect next that she's going to go faint thinking about how her nanny might actually kiss a boy with an open mouth.

Man, the more I think about this, the angrier it makes me, because not only is it wrong form Olen to pass a sexist judgement on her employee, just because she's such a prude, she's also a big, fat hypocrite. Like this in this passage.

MY husband let her go the following Monday while my younger son and I were attending a Music for Aardvarks class. Even though she had posted entries about how discontented she was with our house and children and must have known there was a pretty good chance I'd read them, she appeared shocked. My husband didn't bring up the blog with her and instead cited other factors for her dismissal. He did not, he told me, care to find himself a character online.

But of course he is a character in this story. And while Olen can get self-righteous about her family being characters in a blog, she apparently doesn't have a single fucking problem with using her ex-employee's sex life to drum up a little hysteria about female sexuality and get paid to do it.

UPDATE: Blogging stories are all the rage today. Congrats to Barbara O'Brien of Mahablog for her profile in Washington Post alongside conservative blogger Besty Newmark. Looking these articles over, I just have one question--where are all the male bloggers, anyway?

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