Agriculture Reference
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to-day decisions and managing a small team of employees outsteps the traditional
remit of domestically bound, passive femininity. Once this side of the opposition
is established however, her character soon takes on a set of corresponding colours
and design materials: 'there's a cold steely blue edge to her,' remarks Laurence.
In stark contrast, the programme's exploration of Sharon's home life focuses on
relationships and emotions. Single and childless, the viewer is shown snippets from
Sharon's video diary. She confesses that she hates living alone and that her cats
(her 'babies') provide her with the love she lacks. They are also, the programme
implies, child substitutes. Anxious to tone down the hard edges established by
Sharon's steely work persona, the viewer witnesses several moments where Sharon
is shown 'caring' for her cats. The cats therefore must be taken into account when
it comes to the makeover, as Dairmuid asserts, 'they reveal a softer side to her - a
strong contrast to her hard-edged work persona.' But there are yet further strategies
to feminise the 'bossy' aspect of Sharon's character. Building on the testimony of
Sharon's best friend - 'Sharon doesn't suffer fools gladly…at home she's pink and
fluffy …if she were colours she'd be pink and icy blue' - the presenters fasten onto
the notion that she is 'pink and fluffy' to such an extent that it becomes the leit-motif
of Sharon's essential nature. 'This is you on the inside' remarks Diarmuid as he
points to a piece of fuschia pink fluff on the presentation pin board. When Sharon is
asked to discuss her likes she mentions a dislike of straight lines, 'I like round' she
comments, 'curvaceous,' adds Dairmuid, thereby re-positioning her statement using
a term so often used to encode the female body. Finally Laurence suggests that a
steel pink pen that has been attached to the pin board really encapsulates Sharon; a
'curvy, pink and cunning' pen becomes the central image for the garden and interior
makeover.
While Sharon is afforded the opportunity to project herself onto her home
and garden her femininity is produced, framed and ultimately constrained within
Homefront: Inside Out
. In this way the programme demonstrates the fears and
assumptions that career women, who are seen as transgressing the boundaries of
femininity, often provoke. The team do acknowledge the career woman in their
design - the stainless steel kitchen accessories offer a nod at Sharon's work persona
- but ultimately there is a drive to locate Sharon within the private, the emotional
and the domestic, in short to realise Sharon 'on the inside.' She is offered a particular
gendered subject position within the programme, one that offers her the ameliorative
potential to recognise and experience the softer, caring side of her essential nature. In
the end Dairmuid's garden design becomes in part a reflection of the process of being
circumscribed and bound by a particular version of femininity. The garden becomes
soft, pink and curvaceous: hard landscaping is softened by the planting scheme of
mauve foliage grasses, magenta roses and pink flowering shrubs; decking is used to
replace 'hard' concrete areas and structures like the decking base for the dining area
are circular rather than square. Thus, historical and cultural ideas about femininity
are written into the process of realising the individual through the makeover of the
garden and the garden literally becomes a feminised space. The garden experts
provide a particular framework whereby a softer, caring subject position is offered
and taken up in the process of Sharon's own subjective construction.
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