“SUBURBAN CABBAGES”

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30531, 28 August 1964, Page 2

“SUBURBAN CABBAGES”

American women were more stimulating to meet and talk with than New Zealand women, said an over-seas-trained cooking demonstrator at the National Food Fair, Miss Sally Melrose, aged 23, of Wellington, yesterday.

In New Zealand, she said, there was a trend for women to “become suburban cabbages after they marry.” The superior place of American women was attributed by Miss Melrose to their striving for higher education there and taking a more active outlook in such things as politics and learning. She sees New Zealand women as being tied to the kitchen sink from the day the ; honeymoon is over.

“In New Zealand the women’s place is with the church, children and kitchen,” she said. “In America these things are an important part of a woman’s life, but the American woman keeps on developing her own personality after marriage. “1 think that New Zealand women should really wake up a bit We say American women hen-peck their men, but we are just covering up. “We are jealous of American women.” Miss Melrose saw the period when children reached schoolage as the “danger period iwhen New Zealand women most.” ! American women, she said, I were all the time widening I their outlook, broadening

their education and making themselves more useful citizens.

“A lot of the women in the home economic course 1 did at the University of New York were over 40 years of age,” said Miss Melrose. “They were interested in learning.” Miss Melrose, who has a Home Science Diploma from Otago University, completed a six months course at the University of New York embracing such subjects as “cultural understanding through foods.” In America she inspected the kitchens of internationally known magazines, such as the “Ladies Home Journal.” She saw the way television commercials were made, visited the New York World Fair and an industrial design exhibition in Switzerland.

Miss Melrose has her own views on men. She likes American men. She defends them. “American husbands play a far more active part in the kitchen than do their New Zealand counterparts. The American does not consider this sissy or feminine. The American husband cooks the meals once or twice a week. “The American is not like the New Zealand husband who comes home and goes behind the newspaper. He not only cooks meals, but helps plan them.”