A Fred’s University study of Invisible Labor was able to identify 78 individual tasks related to the management of family clothes that usually fall to women, none of which have been subject to double-blind controlled research.
Some of the invisible labor tasks included:
Sorting clothes kids have outgrown into piles for The Nice Neighbor, The Mean Neighbor, The Cousin You Never See, The Suspect Charity Dumping Unwanted Clothes in Africa, The School Charity Run By The Woman Who Hates You, The Rag Bin For Cleaning Up Cat Poop, and Younger Siblings Think They Are Too Good For These Hand Me Downs.
Accidentally on purpose misplacing your son’s t-shirt with the upsetting graphic that you cannot confront him about.
Replacing all slim fit with baggy, then baggy with slim, then slim with baggy, then baggy with slim. Removing childhood photos that show baggy or slim as each fashion becomes, in retrospect, symbolic of everything you hate about the world, yourself and everyone you know.
Identifying which item on the list of shoes that privileged middle-class children have is the one that they will forever remember not having: rain boots, snow boots, gym shoes, soccer shoes, basketball shoes, baseball shoes, cleats, highly specific status name brand sneakers for school, vintage status sneakers bought on Craigslist from a man who turned out to be a sex offender, horrible uncool shoes for weddings and funerals, water shoes, skate shoes, sandals, flip flops, Crocs to be left in the car and get wedged under the driver’s seat so you can never adjust it again. These shoes can only be bought in the season before they are needed and therefore will be too small by the time they are necessary, but it is impossible to replace them. Defining necessary.
Sorting kids’ clothes into My Mother Would Have Thought It Was Slutty, My Mother Would Have Thought It Was Too Girly For a Boy, My Mother Would Have Thought It Was Too Boyish For A Girl, My Mother Would Have Thought It Was Tacky (Of A Lower Social Class Than The One She Wanted To Join), My Mother Would Have Thought It Was Quality (From The Same Factory In China as The Tacky Ones), Product of Child And/Or Forced Labor.
When the complete list of new Invisible Labor research targets was posted to the Fred’s University blog, many readers objected that the items on the list were all suggested by privileged white women and that not a single woman of color or working-class woman had been consulted.
A new questionnaire was distributed and over 100 new invisible labor research targets were added including:
Sorting kids’ clothes into For Their White School and For Their Black Neighborhood, Clothes Handed Down To Us I Can’t Bear To Make My Child Wear, Clothes Handed Down to Us That No One Would Ever Wear, Clothes Handed Down To Us With Something Gross In The Pocket, Uniforms From Work Contaminated With Hazmats, Clothes That Will Make My Child A Target of The Police, Clothes I Will Not Allow My Child To Wear For Her Own Protection.
Identifying which child will get the budget for the travel team uniforms we cannot afford, figuring out which credit card to use for clothes we cannot afford, figuring out how much hot water and soap we can afford each week to wash travel uniforms, figuring out how many loads of washing we can afford at the laundromat, figuring out how to get my kids to all play one sport so they can hand down sports clothes to their siblings, figuring out how to get all the kids’ clothes to the laundromat on my one day off and still have them have fresh uniforms for each game, selling the unwanted sports equipment from the team my kid did not want to be on to a man on Craigslist who turns out to be a pedophile.
Sorting laundry for rich white employers, folding and storing laundry for rich white employers, repairing clothing for rich white employers, sorting hand-me-downs for rich white employers, refusing unwanted golf pant hand-me-downs from rich white employers.
Sorting hand-me-downs for the church drive, sorting hand-me-downs for the homeless shelter drive, sorting hand-me-downs for my cousin who is in the hospital.
Confronting my son about the upsetting t-shirt he left in the drier.
The unflattering attention to the initial study questions also led to the revelation that the Primary Investigator on the study had accepted an industry contract from a soap manufacturer that was not properly disclosed. As it turned out, the soap company was looking to market a gender empowerment message to its target market of upper-middle-class white women, so the company pulled out of the study once the parameters were changed.
Given the role that home detergent companies have historically had in marketing racist suspicion against laundry services outside the home offered by Chinese immigrants and black women, the study was deemed too compromised to be continued in its current form and has been suspended.
The suspension of the study meant the loss of Fred’s University matching funds, which has resulted in a budget crisis in the Sociology Department. The PI attempted to argue to the Sociology Oversight Committee that industry contracts were part of the Invisible Labor of academia, but he was, as he later complained on Twitter, “silenced and dismissed.”
Also Read: Gamification of Invisible Labor