Photo: visitvillegas / TikTok
Since when are women not allowed to choose to do things for their spouse?
By John Sundholm — Written on Mar 23, 2023
You know how the old saying goes, "one person's loving gesture is another person's instrument of egregious patriarchal oppression," or whatever.
Okay, that's not exactly how the adage goes, but that pretty much sums up the response a couple on TikTok got after the wife showed off her preparations for her husband having his friends over.
She really rose to the occasion—and boy, did it make people angry.
A TikTok couple was accused of upholding sexist gender roles because of the way the wife handled her husband's movie night get-together.
Husband and wife influencers Max and Marina Villegas, known as @visitvillegas on TikTok, thought they were just highlighting their relationship when they posted a video of Marina's response to her husband having a get-together at their house.
"Husband called and asked if his friends from work could come over for a movie night," Marina wrote in the text on the video she posted. Her response, as shown in the video, was above and beyond what many people would probably do.
The wife cleaned the house, baked cookies and ordered pizza for her husband and his friends.
There are no two ways about it—Marina really went all out by most people's standards. After she meticulously cleaned in preparation for Max's friends' arrival, scrubbing toilets and emptying garbage and tidying up the living room, she then went to the kitchen to make even more magic.
Not only did she bake chocolate chip cookies for Max and his buddies, but she did so from scratch—no dough in a tube here. She also set up popcorn and beer in the living room and ordered the guys pizzas—after she cleaned the kitchen, of course.
As one TikTok commenter quipped, "I'd need 10 to 15 business days" to pull off what Marina whipped up in an hour according to her video caption. And for a lot of us, this is all well beyond what we'd be willing to do for ourselves, let alone our partner, let alone our partner's friends.
But as Marina shared in her caption, she'd already "deep cleaned the house" the day before, and it's not like she wasn't part of the festivities—she joined the guys in watching "Jurassic Park," which she wrote is "one of my favorites." Plus, some of us genuinely like putting on get-togethers, right?
But boy oh boy, did that not matter to the commenters on TikTok, many of whom found the whole thing downright sexist.
The couple received tons of shaming comments scolding the wife for doing too much and accusing the husband of taking advantage of sexist gender roles.
"No no no these are grown men," one woman wrote, "use the time to go do something for yourself. OMG, I’m going to worry about you for years." Another commenter referred to Marina as a "house slave" for all the work she chose to do for Max and his friends. "Wow, women still do this?" another sniped.
Max came in for quite a bit of criticism too. "And what did he do?" one woman commented, while another went so far as to accuse the husband of not actually loving his wife. "If you truly loved your wife, you would not make her wipe sh-t for you. The men who treat you like this see you as NOTHING."
To be sure, there are plenty of sexist, misogynist husbands out there—especially nowadays, with our rising tide of misogyny and cultish figures with retrograde views of women who seem to be taking over every internet platform.
But all the haters seemed to have missed a key point—Max never asked Marina to do this. In fact, the only thing he asked for was permission to have his friends over in the first place! Like a respectful husband!
The couple responded with a TikTok addressing their haters and the "overwhelming" backlash they received.
In a follow-up video, Max took the criticisms about sexist gender roles head-on, calling out what he called "an insurmountable amount of negative comments."
"Some of y'all have big mouths and I just want to let you know, I do too," Max said over footage of himself buying Marina flowers and some of her favorite Trader Joe's treats, presumably a response to the commenters who demanded to be shown what happens when it's Marina asking for gestures like this instead of Max.
Over his wife's touching reaction to the gifts, Max narrated that he "did not expect Marina… to get the house ready for our guests, nor does she expect me to bring her flowers every day, but I do it because I love her."
Elaborate gestures may not be everybody's so-called "love language"—and Max and Marina's marriage might be full of toxic and sexist gender roles for all we know.
But in a world where everyone seems to want to control everything women do, we should probably just let the Marinas of the world do what they want—even if it's homemaking and baking for her husband's friends. What's the harm in that?
John Sundholm is a news and entertainment writer who covers pop culture, social justice and human interest topics.