If feminism is, at least in part, the radical idea that women are people, then part of letting go of clean culture is the radical idea that women — and not just white, bourgeois women — deserve free time. More specifically: free time unburdened by the feeling that they “should” be cleaning or parenting or meal-prepping or doing laundry instead.

What if I begin to understand that clean culture — like diet culture, like purity culture, like bourgeois parenting culture — persists in part because it conveniently keeps women so busy, fatigued, and distracted that they can’t more effectively combat patriarchy? What if I really internalized how much it’s used to make other people who can’t or... See more