Iron John in the Tuff Shed out back

I once read a collection of humorous essays by a woman whose name escapes me now; one of the pieces focused on decorating the home in her particular style. She said that she placed a portrait of her husband in one of the rooms so that he would remember that he lived there too. Such is the supposed lot of the man whose wife is in charge of home design and decor, a response to which prompted a home and garden piece by Finn-Olaf Jones in today's New York Times (registration required). Apparently, men are carving out hidey-holes of their own, private retreats from the world at large and their homes' feminine leitmotif in particular. My wife, M, forwarded me the article this morning with this note: "I know you want one too." Actually, no, not really.

Continue reading "Iron John in the Tuff Shed out back"...

According to the Jones piece, men are buying Tuff Sheds from home stores in growing numbers and making of them workshops, pool rooms, poker dens, personal bars, workout spaces...real manly-men clubhouses, sanctums sanctorum, no girls allowed. The article is just a tad overwritten in spots; it moves onto shaky ground when it tries to spin the trend off into larger cultural implications such as the decline of social organizations (ala Robert Bly's drumming circles and Robert Putnam's Bowling Alone) and it engages in definite overreach when it conjures up such extremes of seclusion as Ted Kaczynski. Sorry, but you just can't leap from a workshop out back to the Unibomber in a single bound, and it's foolish to try.

Once you set aside those remote conclusions, however, you're left with a more interesting aspect of the phenomenon left unexplored by the author: the willingness of men to invest much time and treasure to create these private spaces. Tuff Sheds don't come cheap - try pricing an outbuilding or garage structure sometime - and that doesn't include the additional effort and expense of customizing the space with heating, air conditioning, drywall, electricity, and the portrait of Elvis emblazoned on a field of black velvet. What does it say that households have thousands of surplus dollars for such purchases, or that men seem to feel it important to spend it in this way? You won't really find out from reading the Jones article, which is too bad, because that's where the real interest lies in this story.

As for me...a little more room for working out would be nice, but the situation isn't so urgent that I'm about to drive to the Home Depot for an outbuilding. If we were to create a new room for the house, I'd rather it be a mudroom between the great outdoors and the kitchen. My wife does worry a bit about making me, the hapless husband, feel esthetically abandoned. Nice of her, but she needn't fret. I find it's best to leave decor to the team member with both the eye and the interest for it, and I'm certainly capable of thinking sufficiently masculine thoughts in just about any room in the house. But then, I'm a man.

(Cross-posted like a man, baby!)