If You Unload The Dishwasher, You Get A BJ?

Katy Perry, useless toddler husbands, and how you show love and respect in a relationship.

Here’s a good video to watch, as an aside. Frames this issue well:

Now, also online this past week — the video above is about a year old, so not this past week — Katy Perry went on Call Her Daddy and discussed a bunch of different stuff. Some was actually nuanced, like dating insecure men. But the clip that predictably got the most attention was her saying that, if Orlando Bloom (the father of her kid) unloads the dishwasher, she blows him. Nice. Here’s the clip:

There are no doubt a few things to unpack here, with (1) probably being: “Does Orlando Bloom, a star of the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, actively unload his own dishwasher?” A bunch of people were asking that one, and it’s probably a good place to start.

Where I would then go is this: why is the bar so low for men? It takes about 1 minute to unload a dishwasher, and maybe three minutes for a full dishwasher. (If that.) That is enough “domestic service” that you “deserve” a blowjob? That seems like a relatively low bar. I would say maybe the bar for blowjob could be:

• Dishwasher

• Cleaned other parts of the house

• Set her up for whatever media or recording hits she had the next day

• Talked to / read to the daughter

• Maybe made a meal?

• Helped with bedtime

Again, if nannies/hired help aren’t doing all of this, I would say the blowjob context is a multi-bullet-point thing and not simply a “unload the dishwasher" thing.

Here is where the complexity spirals, too. First you have this idea that sex is the only form of marital appreciation, which is a very-commonly-held notion, and/or people that don’t really hold it will still kinda hold it, because they don’t know how else to “appreciate” a spouse, especially woman to man.

Then you have the concept, of which former Christian good girl Katy Perry might be part of, that some women just like sex a lot.

But then you come to the male side of the coin, and things aren’t always rosy. We have decades of research, extrapolated x-fold by COVID, that men don’t do much in marriages.

Rather than raise the bar, we seem to have almost lowered the bar so that we can create a carrot/stick situation. Do a basic domestic thing, you get physically rewarded. Ironically, the notion that “domesticity” is in some way tied to “sex” is the underpinning of many marriages anyway.

Here’s where I’ll start to be more transparent about my own situation. My wife and I go through infertility. I’ve written about it dozens of times before; I’ll spare you those links. At first, I thought it was solely my issue (maybe 18 months of time, most of which were hell), and then maybe it was both our issues (the last 18–24 months), but still, nothing really happens there. In the course of that time, you see dozens of couples have 1–3 kids, you get all sorts of dinners where people reveal it to you, you see all sorts of Instagram bombs of baby sneakers, etc, etc.

It’s very complicated on the male side for what I am saying above: a lot of men come off like DERPs who cannot successfully unload a dishwasher or support their wife, who may be working a 9-to-5 too, in any way other than “provided the sperm for kids” and “some income.” It can be really depressing as a guy to see all these other guys, some of whom literally cannot string together a sentence or two, get over on you. Ultimately, I don’t really know how to process it. I just know it’s hard and you try your best day-to-day.

Now, do I agree with a potential research study that a guy who is domestic gets laid more than a guy who is just a provider economically? Yes, I’d generally agree with that. Because everyone ultimately feels burnt out, even if that’s a bit performative to feel, and people want help and want to feel like they belong to something, I.e. a domestic relationship that's truly a partnership. So, provided your wife isn’t very depressed or generally not sexual or has an insanely-demanding job + her responsibilities as a mom, I think the “male who aids domestically” would get laid more, yes. I don’t disagree there.

What I think is funny is how we absolutely lowered the bar for men, though: if you do a relatively simple task, you can get a relatively involved physical reward? I just feel like we can hold men to a higher standard: as professionals, as managers, as husbands, as fathers, etc.

Wouldn’t you think that?