The Clueless Woman's Guide to Car Maintenance

headlight change

We were looking to see whether a certain travelin' granny had moved some of her freelance rubbish off  a soon-to-be defunct site when we ran across yet another clueless freelancer on a website for mommybloggers. We were so taken aback by the level of cluelessness in a blog post by Natalie Bracco that we just had to feature the WorkingMother.com post she called, "Independent Women: 4 Things Every Woman Should Know About Fixing Her Car." Read on to see why...

Bracco's thesis is that,

"Just because you're a woman doesn't mean you can't fix your car. Be independent! Woman can fix cars!"

We have absolutely no argument with that. What we do have arguments with are what we found in three of Natalie's "4 Things." Thing one:

"Change a Flat Tire... All you have to do is pull the spare out of the back of your car, jack your car up, and change the damaged tire for the spare. There's not much skill to it. All you really need to know is where to place the jack and how to remove the lug nuts..."

But Natalie: shouldn't you at least explain what a jack is and what those lug nut thingies are? And you didn't mention some of the problems with removing lug nuts. We think you failed your readers there. Moving on to thing 2:

"Change Broken Headlights and Tail Lights... Most of the time, all you have to do is pull back the lining of your car to access the headlight panel."

We're quite sure we have no friggin' idea what "the lining of your car" means here, or for that matter, the "headlight panel"; and anyway, no one here thinks changing a headlight is that easy. Maybe changing the bulb in some cars, but not always. And as for the taillight bulbs? We give up... Finally, there's thing 3:

"Change Windshielf [sic] Wipers... All you need to do is find the size of your windshield wiper, which is typically found on your old windshield wipers or in your car's manual. Then, simply snap off the old ones and put on the new ones."

We don't know about you, but we can't remember ever seeing the size printed on a wiper. That, and the notion that you "snap off the old ones" is a bit of an understatement, not to mention misleading. Maybe if Natalie had ever actually done what she's talking about, she'd know that the new blades come with instructions... While we wholeheartedly support our wives, mothers, sisters, daughters, and friends being more savvy about their cars, Natalie did women everywhere a disservice by being just as clueless as the average redneck, snuff-dippin' garage mechanic apparently thinks women are. And for that, our staffers wholeheartedly agree that Bracco deserves to be the Dumbass of the Day.

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DD - CAR REPAIR