Mad Housewife Key Lime Cheesecake

Dessert for Dinner

When the Mad Housewife is blessed with the night to herself, what does she make for dinner? She might simply pour herself a glass of Mad Housewife Merlot, cut up some lovely cheeses, a piece of fruit, and watch reruns of Mad Men. If she has energy, she might spend the evening experimenting with a new recipe, cooking up something that takes hours and hours. Or she might make herself dessert for dinner.

Honestly the only reason I see to bother with lunch (particularly one of those healthful salad or steamed vegetable lunches) is so you can skip dinner guilt-free and have dessert instead. Of course you can only do this if you are alone. (Hubbies don’t understand dessert for dinner, and children should not know that such a thing is even possible.)

As Bill Cosby famously professed in a bit about serving chocolate cake to his kids for breakfast, dessert is good for you—protein from eggs, milk and cheese; vitamins and fiber from fruit; carbohydrates from flour and sugar. Isn’t all food metabolized into glucose, amino acids, or fats? So why the guilt?

A large part of our economy is based on businesses that encourage women to indulge themselves—chocolate, yogurt, diet desserts, cosmetics, spas, vacations, fashion. Advertisers recognize a truth—that most women don’t pamper themselves enough, and they are stressed, overworked, and over disciplined. Their souls yearn for a brief indulgence.

In a recent essay in the New York Times, Maureen Dowd quotes the General Social Survey, which has tracked Americans’ mood since 1972, and concludes that “women are getting gloomier and men are getting happier.” Dowd offers up reasons for this decline in women’s happiness—stress from juggling career and motherhood, stress from our society’s obsession with youth, stress from not having any time to herself. “The more women have achieved, the more they seem aggrieved,” she writes.

Is it true? Are women less happy now that they have so many choices and opportunities? Has feminism made us unhappy? Are you less happy than your mother?

I was skeptical of the survey results—the question of happiness was self-reported, and men are probably less likely to admit to emotional dissatisfaction. Then I read one of the comments, written by someone who knew the study well, that said what the General Social Survey actually reported was that in the early seventies 5.1% more women than men reported themselves "Very Happy" whereas now only 1.4% more of the women reported themselves “Very Happy” than men.

We’re talking a decline in happiness of about 3.6%! In a study based on self reporting!

And we’re still happier than men!

So all this hullabaloo, all these books and essays and blogging about women’s unhappiness is totally meaningless.

Or is it?

If it is just hype, then why did the 400 plus people who commented on Dowd’s blog accept the statistic so readily? The general consensus was that, yes, women were trying to do too much, and of course that would make them unhappy. Were the social scientists hunting for statistical evidence to back up what they intuitively felt?

In any case, women undoubtedly need to take time for themselves, and the best way to do that is…pour yourself a glass of Mad Housewife wine, take the evening off, and indulge yourself. Have dessert for dinner!

And next time a sociology student knocks at your door with a survey in hand, invite her in for pie.