marketing of masculinity

How about "room for athletic assholes"?

How about a room for shutin gamers?

That doesn't really fit in with the kind of party me and Matt P are having, sorry.

Frankly if there were a room that my family members/partner were reluctant to enter and where I was allowed to spend hours of recreation time basically unaccounted for except for occasional hobbyist projects that resulted, I'd spend every waking and non-working moment there.

Which would basically defeat the purpose of having a family/partner but you know, what can you do.

room with stuff in it for me to do

And I would really like it to be as boring as possible to everyone but me.

Frankly if there were a room that my family members/partner were reluctant to enter and where I was allowed to spend hours of recreation time basically unaccounted for except for occasional hobbyist projects that resulted, I'd spend every waking and non-working moment there.

Which would basically defeat the purpose of having a family/partner but you know, what can you do.

^^ This. Laurel, I feel like we agree on this topic whole-heartedly.

you can do it even if you have a partner, don't need to designate a room either

I need a bigger apartment. With a den.

:(

In Britain, this space is called 'the shed' and it's a place for men who like kamikaze home repair to isolate themselves from their houses. It is accepted by the type of man who celebrates Top Gear viewing as a 'blokey' pursuit.

Further to what Plaxico was saying about the doc above, this is just another take on projecting 'realness' or basically it's Paris is Burning in a lumberjack shirt. I also give a lot of traction to the idea that the gay fashion designer's first-collection 'muse' for menswear is the guy they were bullied by, or the guy they fancied at a time when they had less acceptance/control over how they, themselves, were seen.

found the trailer for that doc. btw. iirc the guy who says the line i was talking about is pretty much the only interesting guy in it, and not just bc of his awesome moustache.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6oTB_NkZjLM

I'm not sure how comfortable I am w/ describing gay displays of masculinity in a kind of PIB realness context either bc it kind of implicitly suggests that straight displays of "masculinity" are in some way more real or authentic than gay.

Your comfort is not the issue, as the voguers were the ones who invented 'realness' categories and predicated it on the whole phenomenon of 'passing', but I would argue that all 'masculine' displays have that aspect.

you are being p. hasty w/ prescribing an element of a very specific subultural phenomenon existing in a very specific context as somehow paradigmatic of the vastly larger cultural spectrum of male gender performativity. But beyond that,I mean, a large part of the performance of "realness" in PIB is explained by the ballers as an expression of their desire to overcome marginality, that line about the appearance of success being an equivalent for success itself (framed against the backdrop of racism, homo/transphobia and the aspirational climate of american popular culture in the 70s, 80s in partic.)

PIB?

paris is burning

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydA7-qCv570

dorian corey is such a hero

I loathe the fact that advertisers have successfully made this kind of personal space in the home be about CONSUMPTION more than contemplation, or anything else the space could be used for. Maybe that's snobbish/elitist of me.

Well yeah, me too - and maybe this is a bit off-topic - but one thing I've been noticing among my friends who are also urbanites, is a desire to return to the carpentry/construction/productive projects that we associate from the middle America of our youth. It's like everyone I know who lives somewhere with anything resembling a backyard wants to have a garden and grow produce and raise chickens.

that looks fantastic. thread has me thinking about all sorts of things but i don't how how to put it into a coherent statement. like, this stuff really affects me sometimes. x-post

it is fucking fantastic. would totally recommend.

PIB is life-changingly good!

maybe it's a desire to have a direct hand in SOMETHING that's a part of your life. that's what you tell yourself before you start. then you start and it just plain sucks, but you keep going cuz you started it. we just planted a garden, cut down a bunch of weed trees, grew a lawn and landscaped some flower beds. and it looks nice! it's a great thing to do but it doesn't really mean anything beyond itself imo x-post

yeah, Matt, I kinda feel like it's a reaction to the alienation of consumerism and work that involves sitting in front of a computer all day. It's like they want to produce something in a way that requires physical labor.

Manliest Cities in America

After all, COMBOS® has been the 'Official Cheese-Filled Snack of NASCAR' since 2002."

is the study in decline? seems like the ultimate male room to me.

Well, yeah. Who else should be the arbiter of a city's manliness than those who have been designated the OFFICIAL purveyor of cheese-filled snacks to NASCAR?

Paris is Burning is also very 'fake it 'til you make it' and yeah, it's probably one of the best films about anything, ever. However, I think most people are putting on a performance of themselves in public, whether they realize or not.

The idea sarahel mentions is not exactly a new thing. Last week I was sent off to interview that irrepressible gender warrior J3anette W1nt3rs0n, who owns an organic grocery in east London and totally endorses the idea that people who spend all day in a headspace *do* need physical labour, or at last the grasp and release of working hard on something with yr hands, because otherwise we are all just battery hens who happen to wear jeans.

New Display Name. Awesome. And it has upped my masculinity 10x.

did NASCAR have a different official cheese-filled snack before 2002?

one thing I've been noticing among my friends who are also urbanites, is a desire to return to the carpentry/construction/productive projects that we associate from the middle America of our youth.

This "phenomenon" makes my mother laugh; it was the same thing that got her and her entire generation through the 70s. I mentioned that my hipster (former ILXor!) friend was really into spinning wool and my mom was like, Yeah, no biggie, I did that.

Also to sarahel: there've been news stories (Oh hello NYT Style section!) for at least several years about aged hipsters giving up city/corporate life and moving upstate to raise goats organically or whatever. Wasn't news then, isn't new now.

so sorry I don't live in NYC or London - but it does seem like this isn't something that was a "trend" 8-10 years ago.

Hipster knitting was part of the same movement (actually it's the earliest example I can think of, but maybe I just didn't know any yuppies-turned-farmers then), and there were books about guerilla fiber arts and "stitch'n'bitch" groups 8-10 years ago. And I always thought etsy.com came out of that movement too: people wanted a way to showcase/sell the stuff they were making.

Actually, I kind of support that. Whatever forms we need communal folk crafts to take to pass to the next generation, go for it. Stitch-n-bitch / urban farming / carpentry / whatever.

I think this comes from reading all those Foxfire books when I was working a boring summer job at a historical village.

Hipster knitting was part of the same movement (actually it's the earliest example I can think of, but maybe I just didn't know any yuppies-turned-farmers then), and there were books about guerilla fiber arts and "stitch'n'bitch" groups 8-10 years ago. And I always thought etsy.com came out of that movement too: people wanted a way to showcase/sell the stuff they were making.

If this is a movement, my moms would be an OG. She's been weaving, and winning state fair blue ribbons for it, for nigh on 30 years now.

Semi-relevant, although I may wind up making a separate thread:

http://assets.theatlantic.com/static/front/images/magazine/covers/210x280/201007.jpg

It's the 20th annual End of Men! issue.

I can't tell whether this sort of thing is more a result of misandry (men are useless and dumb) or misogyny (women are power-hungry bitches who want to eliminate us), but either way it gets under my skin.

Like if we've been operating on the premise all these years that people should be judged by ability and not gender, and all these years men have been the overwhelming majority in every field, then why are we sounding alarms the moment women overtake men in something?

well sure, knitting, arts & crafts, the readymade magazine thing are the predecessors for the gardening/farming trend. And maybe it's not that recent, but I feel like this type of thing became more prevalent among members of and aspirants to "the creative class" post-dot com crash.

because it will sell THE IDEAS ISSUE of the Atlantic Monthly

x-post

I found out recently that pulling weeds and planting stuff in your yard is kind of fun if you're not forced to do it. Is that manly or not or non of the above?

i think it depends on whether you have lower back problems as well as your class background and where you grew up

e

i no

My back's okay. I was middle class, but it's more complicated than that.

& I grew up in eff ell aye.

i grew up in a town where agriculture/agribusiness was the largest industry - i'm having trouble imagining planting things/pulling weeds as something fun, because i equate it so intensely with low-wage labor.

and as an educated middle-class white person i could avoid it and sit in an air-conditioned office - or something like that.

I never thought I would like it. It's only kind of fun because I don't have to. And starting a compost heap with my roommates at previous house was my gateway drug. Digging in dirt and trash I knew would be fun without even thinking.