Monday, April 4, 2011

This Way to the Egress

More women are becoming funeral directors. Hallelujah; it's about time we put a little more caring into the "death care industry." Americans are legendarily averse to dying, but fear of dying is really about fear of living - of prizing life so much that, like a spoiled child, it suffers in quality by being kept from risk. The laying out of the dead was traditionally always women's work, and has only suffered its present pseudo-scientific objectification since the U.S. Civil War, when embalming became the rage to preserve the corpses going home north and south via road and rail. Like it or not, being born means having, at some point, to die. Women bring us onto the planet; it's only right that we have the opportunity to be seen off by them too.

Read more here: Funeral Divas via Slate.com

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