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Fox News Thinks Women Should Be Making More Sandwiches for Their Husbands

Fox News hosts Rachel Campos-Duffy and Andrea Tantaros think your marriage would be a whole lot better if you would just shut up and make a sandwich, please.
Hilary Pollack
Los Angeles, US
Photo via Flickr user Daniel Go

When it comes to women's rights, we've made some measurable progress in the last century. Women can vote, for instance. Female mannequins have pubic hair. Beyoncé, the biggest pop star in the world, sometimes performs under giant projections that say "FEMINIST."

But in other ways, things have not moved forward with quite such thrust. Take, for example, the plethora of T-shirts that dismiss women as nothing more than sandwich-making house servants. (You know your Tinder date's going to be a true gentleman when he shows up in one of those!)

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Though the whole women-making-sandwiches thing can sometimes feel like a truly archaic stereotype, the whoopie cushion of sexism, it apparently isn't dead yet. Just ask Fox News host and former Real World cast member Rachel Campos-Duffy and co-host Andrea Tantaros, who think that offering your husband grilled cheeses on the reg is the key to preserving your marriage.

A few weeks ago, Tantaros received flak for recommending that women make sandwiches for their men after sex. "After you engage in a little horizontal hula, make him a sandwich," she argued. "That's not called the 1950s! That's called kindness!"

A few feathers were ruffled, but now the incidence of sandwich-making commands coming from the women of Fox News seem more like a trend than a one-off. Appearing on the talk show Outnumbered on Tuesday, Campos-Duffy—who is married to Republican Representative Sean Duffy and has seven children—dropped the old sandwich cue in a segment discussing the interplay between politics and marital happiness.

The basis: a recent study from sociologist W. Bradford Wilcox at the University of Virginia in cooperation with researchers at the University of Utah, which found that Republicans are less likely to get divorced and more likely to report being "very happy" with their marriages than Democrats. The difference was not gigantic—about 7 percent in terms of the happiness factor—and was even smaller when demographics were taken into consideration and factored in. But that didn't stop Campos-Duffy from sharing some advice about why she thinks Republicans have the edge in this case.

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Campos-Duffy cites Republicans' higher adherence to religious practice as being incentive for them to avoid divorce, which makes sense. "I know in the Greek Orthodox Church it's the same idea of sanctification, that marriage is a sacrament, it's a holy thing," Campos-Duffy explained. "And my job being married is to get my husband and my kids to heaven with me. And I think that changes the whole perspective." Right.

When Tantaros chimed in to revisit her sandwich comment, for which she was "crucified by feminists, mostly we know coming from liberal blogs," Campos-Duffy was quick to defend her.

"It shows they are more likely to get divorced because they won't make that sandwich … Make the sandwich, darn it."

Wow, ladies. Guess it really is that simple! Hurry up with our damn croissantwich!

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Do the hosts of Outnumbered believe in the sandwich as an icon of good wifery? Apparently. Maybe they don't realize that the phrase could be used in an attempt to mock or discredit them as much as any other woman. Take, for instance, the Facebook group that popped up during Hillary Clinton's 2008 presidential bid called "Hillary Clinton: Stop Running for President and Make Me a Sandwich." Interestingly, no such group was made for Sarah Palin by the Democratic social media contingent.

No word yet, either, on whether the millions of men who were cruising around Ashley Madison were just looking for a great peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich.