June 15, 2015 • 46 mins
Do men need domestic sanctuaries to escape the pressures of modern manhood? Welcome to man caves -- also known as mantuaries and manspaces -- for guys in search of a room of one's own.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff Mom Never told you From House top
works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Kristen and I'm Caroline. Caroline. Have you ever been to
a man cave? I mean, I guess that's what you
could call the dark, dank healthscape that is the basement
(00:27):
at my parents house where my father hoards all of
his personal belongings and things. But no, not like the
stereotypical like I've got race metals and Dale Earnhardt posters
on the wall type of place, you know, Now that
I think about it, Caroline, I don't think I have
been to an official man cave either, but maybe it's
just because we aren't allowed in man caves. Yeah, we
(00:50):
don't have the password. There's a secret knock well for
those listeners who might be confused and also a little
bit horrified. Might you might not have heard this term
man cave before. We do have a handy definition from
the esteemed website epic man cave dot net. Yes, there's
(01:11):
a whole there's a whole dot net dedicated to it. Uh. Yeah.
They define it as a space for men to kick
back and relax away from the annoyances of everyday life.
They can be decorated entirely by men without fear of
upsetting their partners, and are often used to show off
sports memorabilia. Man caves are also a great place to
have a quote unquote boys night, perhaps to play a
(01:33):
game of poker or watch a big sports event. I
love sports events without worrying about creating a mess in
the house. They are becoming a necessity. They are becoming
a necessity. This is like critical language that apparently they
haven't been one to every man's life and have been
widely dubbed as the last bastion of masculinity. So, Christen,
(01:53):
what does that tell you about a man cave? It
tells me that we have to talk about man caves
because anythinging that is dubbed the last bath the end
of masculinity, is essentially just a siren song for you
and I to to do what we do here on
stuff Mom never told you. And it tells me too
that there is some real intense gendering of domestic spaces
(02:19):
going on, which, not surprisingly, we've talked about this before
in our podcast not so Long Ago on interior Design.
We've talked about it before in the context of say,
kitchens and women's place being in the home um and
the fact that, especially in the twenty one century, we
now have this term man cave, also known as a
(02:40):
mantuary or a man space or just a manly retreat,
is notable that we are, rather than moving away from
gendering these spaces, it seems like, at least for some households,
it's becoming even more segregated in a way. If it's
funny because you mentioned the gendering of spaces in the house,
like kitchens, but it's not as if the kitchen really
(03:03):
equates to a man cave. I mean, yes, you might
like cooking whoever you are, man or woman or whatever,
but that's still a place of work where work has
to be done with a purpose to feed yourself and others.
Whereas this man cave concept is purely sort of an escape.
It's it's a retreat. It's it's a place where a
lot of men in the study that will refer to
(03:24):
you later, a lot of these guys were interviewed and
said that it's a place they go to sort of
reflect on life and get away from the stresses of
both work and family. And I wouldn't say that any
female gendered space in the house is quite equivalent. And Caroline,
you also mentioned your dad having his basement quote unquote
man cave, even though I have a feeling your dad
(03:45):
did not call it a man cave. And my dad
had slash has a similar kind of thing. His office
is in the basement, and growing up, that's where he
would be if you couldn't find bad he was downstairs,
like that was his space. I think it was very
convenient for him for it to be in the basement,
(04:07):
so completely removed from the family. Not to say that
my dad doesn't love me and my family. Um so,
especially since this is Father's Day Week, we wanted to
dig more into the man cave thing because this term
is new. But the idea of men in particular having
(04:30):
these particular spaces in the home really isn't They just
gone by more generic names like office library is the
correct pronunciation of library library? Yeah, And I mean I
think I think what is new. What I would argue
is new is all of the stuff around, like shows
that you have on d I Y or hd TV,
(04:52):
specifically about man Case and having everything be like super
themed and like, oh my god, it's an indoor golf course.
With a cagarade with fifteen kegs in it, you know,
and other like you know, quote unquote manly things like
I think that's a new concept. But yeah, the whole
idea of like having a masculine space to which you
can retreat to write your great American novel like that
(05:13):
is that's nothing new. Yeah. So Art of Manliness, for instance,
rounded up historical man caves in quotes that included things
like Hemingway's riding room and Key West Teddy Roosevelt's trophy
room in his house in or Oyster Bay in New York,
Mark Twain's writing hut, which, by the way, I want
(05:35):
a riding hut so bad now, Carolina. It's this beautiful
little like is it a hexagon shaped? But it's this
beautiful little hut with these huge windows that sits on
a hilltop and he's just got the countryside spread out
around him and I would right there. Yeah. He had
it built on his sister's property because he was like,
(05:55):
you know what, I'm Mark Twain, and I've got important
things to write, but I need to be by myself
to do it. Hut of one zone, that's all I want. Yeah.
They also featured Thorow's cabin. All he had was a
bed and a desk with a chair and I think
a table with a chair and a big screen TV
with Netflix and HBO go on it. And even Winston
(06:18):
Churchill's art studio where he would go to when he
felt the black dog of depression clothing and he would
go paint. Yeah. So again, these are not necessarily man caves.
These are simply offices, library studios, huts, billiard rooms, trophy rooms,
places where these very famous and successful men would go
(06:38):
to do their work or maybe take some time just
like out of the day hang out relaxed, as in
the case of like a billiards room. Um, but at
the time when these guys were hanging out there, I
doubt they were, you know, having to tell their friends, Uh, yeah, bro,
I couldn't hang out this weekend. I'm gonna man cave
it up. Although I don't know that anyone has ever
(07:00):
had that phone call before. It would be more like
a man caving it up. You should come over exactly
and and we'll we'll we'll foster some homo sociality. Yes, well,
and speaking Caroline of homo sociality. This is something that
professor at the University of Florida named James B. Twitchell
(07:21):
wrote an entire book about He teamed up with a
photographer to create this book called Where Men Hide, and
it focuses on not so much on the man cave idea,
but on the more men only, homo social places, these
gathering spaces for men. In Twitchell in the book argues
(07:41):
that men have been hiding away, as he puts it,
for forever, whether it is kind of in the more
isolated setting of a workshop, garage, home office, or in
more fraternal spaces like Masonic lodges, pool halls, barbershops, or
strip clubs, and in the sort of nostalgic look at
(08:01):
these all male spaces. He Twitchell does more in the
loss of the more traditional spaces, you know, not so
much the garage dude still have their garage or you know,
like our dad's with their basements, But he does more
in the loss of those communal man spaces. And I
do think though, that it's important to put Twitchell's book
(08:22):
and this idea of mourning the loss of these spaces
in the context of it coming out around the same
time as this book called Bowling Alone by Robert d. Putnam,
which I had to read in journalism school. Caroline, I
don't know if you had to read it, I didn't.
I have had it on my shelf since two thousand seven. Well,
it's so dated now because it really focuses in on
(08:43):
this time of I guess in the late nineties really
where you see this erosion of more communal life, and
we're now, rather than being on bowling teams, were just
bowling alone. So it's sort of rides a similar kind of,
uh so more kind of theory about how like men
used to have these spaces to be together and hang
(09:05):
out and foster their home a sociality, but now they
they're alone, and they're just alone alone, they're not even
in like necessarily their own spaces. But I also do
think it's worth noting that Twitchell isn't really framing these spaces,
whether it is a home office or whether it is
a barbershop or whatever. It's not that it's so exclusionary.
(09:29):
It's more the result of what he says is social anxiety.
In a review of Twitchell's book, the reviewer rights, when
women want to get together, they just do it. When
men get together, it's a production and that that would
be like the Hey, I'm I'm man caving it up tonight.
Why don't you come over, Like we're gonna watch sports
and we're gonna play video games and new other stereotypical
male things because we're getting away from the wife. Yeah.
(09:51):
So in that sense as well dig into later in
the podcast, it's that is seen as a point in
favor of man caves of well, we used to have
these spaces outside the home. Those are gone because everybody's
quote unquote bowling alone. So yeah, I am gonna build
my mini golf course with my cagurator to be so large. Um.
(10:18):
And there was an academic paper that we found about this,
God bless you Academia called man Caves and Masculinity, And
in it the author charts a little bit of history
in terms of the development of these kinds of fraternal spaces,
and she notes that ProtoMan caves for just the everyday dude,
(10:41):
not necessarily the Winston Churchill or Teddy Roosevelt, who would
have like their own private estates that they could run
off to. This really started in the post World War
two era, when you have middle class American men coming
home from these violent brotherhood oriented battlefields to what some
considered very emasculating suburban homes, because of course we have
(11:05):
you know, with that Rosie the riveters all going home,
you have advertisers really pushing you know, the domesticity women.
You know, even with the fashions, it becomes more hyper feminized,
and then the guys come home and it's it's a
ladies palace. Well. Yeah. In this study, the authors also
point out that when you're a homeowner, part of your
(11:25):
identity is tied up in that house, and then you
sort of reflect your own identity, uh in the way
you decorate it. And so that's a theme that runs
throughout this whole paper and ties in a lot with
the idea of men having their own spaces, because if
the home, the internal workings of the home are all feminized,
(11:46):
and so then the house has this feminine identity that
men are returning to. It seems natural in that line
of thinking that they are carving out their own space
that is more masculine, but in the process doing some decoration, eating,
doing some space planning, things that are traditionally feminine, but
they are sort of validating their own space in the
(12:07):
house by putting their stamp on it. Yeah, and you
see that first happen in with the rise of post
World War two suburbia with things like garages and barbecuing. Uh.
The study author writes about barbecuing specifically that it quote
reasserted the post war males position outside the public sphere
(12:30):
as a hunter, as well as offering men a refuge
in a traditional and stable identity. So you get this
balance of what I really am grappling with my masculinity.
I need to, you know, figure out how to kind
of exercise that and assert it. But at the same time,
I am still invested in this domesticity. How do I
make domesticity my own? So I'm going to go out
(12:52):
into the garage because also keeping in mind our podcast
on men and Cars and how that was marketed and
marketed in such amount askualing kind of way, it makes
sense that the garage would become, you know, the the
first man cave. Yeah. Well, I mean my dad when
I was growing up, my dad grilled a ton and
it was kind of that he was straddling that line
(13:14):
because when he went outside to grill, he was just
it was just him and the meat and the fire.
But he was making it for his to his two
gals inside the house. The exact same thing happened Caroline
when I went home to see my parents for Mother's Day.
Funnily enough, since this is a Father's Day podcast, when
my dad was grilling some chickens, and while I was
(13:38):
inside helping my mom, you know, prepare sides and all
that and hang out and catch up, he was outside
the whole time. And he had a book and he
had his chair, and he you know, he did not
need to be out there. Those chickens were fined on
their own. And at one point I asked her, what,
what's what's that up to? Where is he? She said, Oh,
he's just outside. He's washing the chickens, got his book. Look,
(14:00):
he's happiest can be. It was kind of like a
let him, let him be, Let him be alone if
he wants to be. Yeah, well he's Maybe he's given
you in your mom's space too from Mother's Day. Yes,
but I think he really take pride in that act
of grilling, of watching over the meats, you know, in
such a concerted, if slightly unnecessary kind of way. Yeah.
(14:23):
Well so, I mean moving from the garage and the
grill pit as sort of traditional male spaces. We've also
got plenty of pop cultural references. Um, like Tim Allen's
garage on Home Improvement, there's another garage, Al Bundy's and
Archie Bunker's chairs, uh, Fred Flintstone's elk Lodge. But also
(14:45):
I was thinking that the dude's apartment on Friends could
count as a man cave because everybody was always over
at Monica and Rachel's apartment that was like the main hangout.
But then the guys had their own apartment across the
hall that was kind of like a man cave. Yeah,
because they had their matching leather. Lazy Boy said they
would recline at the same time and it wasn't that funny,
and they had completely different decor. I mean, Caroline, you
(15:07):
and I could do an entire podcast just on lazy
boys and recliners and the idea of it, as was
pointed out in this paper, as a different kind of
throne for the man of the house. Yeah. Well, I
mean one other one that I thought of was the
bat cave, which is literally a cave for for a man.
(15:30):
Mr Batt, Yeah, for the We're Mr Batt and is
that Batman Friends hang out? Bill Bettman His Cave. If
you guys haven't seen Bill Batman, it's a great show.
So it is interesting though, to see how pop culture
in the decades since World War Two has really fostered
(15:51):
this idea, which leads us into this twenty century resurgence
of the man cave with all this new man cave lingo.
Because that's the thing about all of this, it's not
new ideologically, it's just new linguistically. We just now have
this this twenty very two thousand's era language for it.
(16:15):
And in two thousand six, for instance, there was a
publication of Sam Martin's book called man Space, A Primal
Guide to Marking Your Territory, and the Chicago Tribune did
an interview with Sam Martin about his book, and a
quote really jumped out to me. So he says, keep
(16:36):
in mind when this is happening, because I think the
interview was taking place maybe in two thousand seven, and
he says, quote, men have had an identity problems since
the Women's movement. They've tried to figure out who they're
supposed to be. For a while, women wanted them to
be more sensitive, so they were more sensitive. Then women
wanted them to be more manly. One of the things
I discovered is when men have their own man space,
(16:58):
what they put inside of it is really expression of
who they are. Man space is about establishing an identity
for a man. And that's exactly what we read about
in that paper, man Caves and masculinity. It goes all
the way back to when people were first moving to
the suburbs and droves around and after World War Two.
But Martin would argue that it was really women's fault.
(17:20):
It was women wanting, making too many demands, and you know,
you know how women are flighty and can't take up
their mind all the time. That finally, you know, men
are pushed to create these so called man spaces. So
not surprisingly, in two thousand seven you have the premiere
of the show Man Caves, where you have it's the
(17:41):
home renovation thing where dude gets a man cave. Yeah,
and I love I love just how I mean baldly
like out there stereotypical chest not thing male it is.
And I'm I'm being sarcastic when I say that I
love it. And I remember my boyfriend and I saw
(18:01):
commercial for this show and we both just sort of
rolled our eyes at each other because I mean, he
definitely is the type of person who he needs his
own space at the house, but that's because he works
there like he works at home, and so he needs
his own space, just like I need my own space.
And they don't have to be gendered though necessarily, they
just have to be spaces that allow us to actually
(18:23):
be productive. Yeah, I mean, and I watched a brief
clip of man caves, and Caroline, I was doing just
as much I rolling as you were when I watched
some man caves clips, because you know, I gotta I
gotta do more research. And the description of one segment
was his office became a nursery, so Mike gets a
basement speakeasy man cave. And Mike, by the way, like
(18:47):
in the voiceover for the beginning of this segment, they're like, well,
Mike was even able to sneak away from the hospital
where his wife was to come plan out the man cave.
It's cool. No, that's that's where That's where I think
there's a problem, when when the space is actually keeping
you from being with your family. Well, later they brought
(19:09):
the wife in show her to show her what she
will never be able to use well with this man cave.
It can double as a family room, but with the
speakeasy theme. They're hidden bars. They're hidden bars, They're hidden
like photos of scantily glad ladies. There's a really unfortunate
(19:33):
portrait of Mike smoking a cigar wearing a fedora on
the wall. What is it? What is it about suddenly
having a family, whether it's you've just gotten married or
you've just had kids, that suddenly entitles you the man
person to a cave? Why why does the lady not
get a space? Why would you want one? Well, yeah,
(19:54):
well because he got kicked out of the office because
the office became the nursery, Caroline. So this is happening
though in two thousand seven, and one of the things
I was most tickled about with this research was how
much the Wall Street Journal latched on and has not
(20:15):
let go of the man cave trend. They have an
entire man cave beat, I kid you not people, and
they reported on it so feverishly, and and perhaps because
really in the late two thousands, a man cave industry
was born. I mean you have uh something called man
cave LLC that one article reported on which is quote
(20:38):
modeled after Mary Kay cos medics where guys hold barbecue
parties dubbed meetings. That's m E A T I n G.
To sell steak in cave a coutrement such as bacon
scented candles and beer pagers to locate lost brew. Caroline
is just bowing her head in disbelief. But I love
(21:01):
it's modeled after Mary Kay, because do you think they
could like a bacon print Cadillac if they sell enough accouterment. Listen,
if they do, I might shine up to become a sale. Well,
I guess I don't think you're allowed. Yeah, I don't
know that I'm allowed. And they're also online retailers like
man Cave market dot com and the man Cave Outlet
(21:21):
Store because apparently it's so big now that they're outlets
for it. Um So I mean, considering how this has
ballooned into revenue streams, I mean I think it says something, well, yeah,
and so like once we see we've seen it on TV,
we've seen it written about in books, But once we
(21:44):
see it on the big screen and movies like I
Love You Man and once, paint companies start making money
off of man Cave paint with names like beer, Time,
bro Code and zombie Apocalypse. We're not making this up. Listeners.
There is a Canadian paint company called c I L
that did just that in two thousand eleven. Yeah, so once, once,
(22:04):
this is happening, and in the Wall Street Journal circles
back around this year in and starts reporting on how
man caves are getting lucks. Like this is not just
like I'm going to carve out a space in the basement.
I'm gonna put my old recliner that the old lady
won't let me keep in the living room anymore, and
I'm going to have a big screen TV. This is
(22:25):
like I'm going to spend thousands upon thousands upon thousands
of dollars to have a room of my own. Yeah.
I mean this clearly profiled incredibly wealthy men, one of
whom is just a single guy who built himself what
they called a tech layer that cost over a hundred
thousand dollars. It's like, oh, you know, he can have
(22:45):
movie night. He has all these bells and whistles, um,
there are TVs in the bathroom and then things like that.
But it was so funny when like by the end
of it, they were like and he lives alone. So
it's like, does that still constitute a man cave if
our man cave is just now becoming a catch all
term for well, it's like a Russian nesting doll. It's
like his whole apartment is like the huge man cave,
(23:08):
the bachelor path. Yeah, it's a bachelor pad, and then
you get within it, you get the man cave, and
then and then the bathroom, the man the mathroom, the
mathroom where you don't have to do any math fellas,
thank goodness, unless you really want to. Well, so what
what is going on? Like, what is this cultural push?
(23:28):
Why are man caves exploding? Why? Well, I guess they
have been exploding since the forties and fifties, But what
is this cultural focus on it now? Well, Caroline, we're
going to talk about that when we come right back
from a quick break. So the basic explanations for this
(23:50):
so called man spacing are pretty much what we have
touched on already. The idea that the domestic space is
hyperfemineis and men need these specific places they can go
and really not have to see all of the fru
fruit decor and also signs of children. These are the
two main things that come up a lot what you
(24:11):
talked about earlier in terms of the decoration conflict of
feeling like your aesthetic is not being reflected anywhere around
the house. You walk in and it's just a foreign environment.
And then also walking in and seeing the you know,
the evidence of little people, little little toys and play
pens and such. Yeah, and then also revisiting the idea
(24:35):
about that darnal women's movement that made men also feel
like they needed to carve out a space where they
could sort of reaffirm their masculine identities. Yeah, it was
really interesting to see how often feminism was referenced in
these pieces that the ones that we're asking like, well,
why was this going on? Um, because it does seem
(24:59):
to bear a lot of the quote unquote blame for it,
because it's not only with the feminism argument. It's not
so much about I hate your design aesthetic, please let
me put up my packers framed jersey on the wall,
but rather I need a space where I can go
and not have to worry about offending you with not
(25:22):
only my my comments about about ladies bodies, but also
my cursing and also too farting. Farting comes up a
space to fart, and I'm not joking. Space took fart
also comes up a lot as like, do people not
know that women fart all the time? What, Caroline, I
(25:44):
just did? No, I didn't. I try not to do
it and try not to hot. But it's weird. It's
weird that glitter has a smell. Well, but this is
the same stuff that you here ticked off when people
are worried about women getting certain jobs in certain industries.
Absolutely well, And it like reminds me too of our
(26:05):
pin Ups episode where you see the decline of those
Nudi girl calendars that used to be up in you know,
more all male workspaces because all of a sudden, the
seventies came around and women don't want to see sexy
women on the walls. It's not okay anymore, Lyan, And
I'm sure, I'm sure all of this is related because
as you have more women entering the workforce, suddenly the
(26:28):
workforce is no longer a purely male space, and so
it's like, how am I ever going to get away
from women? Yeah? I mean like, well, thankfully, Caroline, we do,
as we mentioned earlier, have an entire study to discuss
and it was. It was honestly fascinating reading. So it's
called man Caves and Masculinity, as we mentioned earlier, by
(26:51):
Risto Moisio and Miriam baruchus Villi published in the Journal
of Consumer Culture, and essentially they did was interview a
lot of guys, all white, middle class, midwestern married guys,
about man caves and the idea of man caves. Not
(27:11):
all of them had man caves, but most of them did,
and and all had thoughts on man caves. And they
pointed out in the beginning of the paper that previous
research on these kinds of masculine gendered spaces really focused
outside of the home, places like golf courses and barbershops,
as we mentioned earlier and more recently ESPN Zone and Caroline,
(27:33):
I really want to now read that study about men
and ESPN Zone, um, but they really wanted to look
inside the home, right because, like we said earlier, the
house is part of the homeowners identity, and your identity
is shaped in part by its decoration. And so, like
Christoper was saying, if you walk into a space and
(27:54):
it doesn't reflect who you feel you are what it
should look like, there's a sort of discomfort there and
so inside the home, man caves join garages, den's, game rooms,
and even barbecue pits as these masculine defined domestic spaces
that are employed to affirm these ideals of masculinity. It's
(28:17):
where you can go and fart to your heart's content. Yeah,
and the study focuses more on what they call the
therapeutic uses of man caves in relationship to men's jobs, families,
and marital relationships. And what they really conclude is that
these spaces are helpful for managing what they call identity pressure,
(28:41):
essentially of being a dude living in today's world. And yeah,
where what does domesticity mean today? What does masculine gender
role mean? What does marriage mean? What is being a
father mean? There are a lot of like valid questions
that we ask about ourselves, you know, reverse everything and
(29:02):
insert feminine pronouns, like we think about these same kinds
of theme things too, And a couple of predominant themes emerged, right,
and so it keep part of these man caves that
was found throughout the research was that they're dominated by
super dudedly possession sports memorabilia, the old lazy boy cagurators,
(29:25):
which I kind of want a cagurator. Um. Also video
game consoles. That's a big thing too, for sure. Well,
my boyfriend and I are planning our future people cave
together and we totally want ski ball. Okay, we want
this to happen. You're invited over. Oh yeah, well I'm
a person. Yeah, you are a person, so you're welcome
to come over with the bill also for real. Um,
(29:48):
but this is sort of like it's a it's a
dude form of nesting. You know, they're picking their own decor,
they're picking their special comfy chair. Um. And it really
serves to legitimize and validate that space. Well, no, like
I need the space because I have this chair and
I need to watch this this sporting event. Yeah. And
it's where you feel the most comfortable and you're surrounded
(30:10):
by all of your things and uh and I totally
I can get that, for sure. I feel that way
when I am in my office at home. I love
it because it's all of my things and it's I
can close the door. Yeah, exactly, a room of one's Yeah,
well but these are these spaces. Also, the theme also
involved productive consumption, so you know, whereas you might validate
(30:34):
your space by saying well, no, like I need a
place to put all this this, you know, ugly man
stuff that you don't want in the living room. They
also justify the space as well, this is where I
come to fix my broken motorcycle, fix the kids broken bikes.
It's it's productive leisure time. Yeah. And I gotta say though,
pro tip getting that motorcycle through the living room. That's tough.
(30:57):
That's a tough move. Yeah, you've really got a shampoo.
Those rugs pretty often put down some tarps before yeah. Um.
And In these interviews, though, the researchers highlighted a number
of primary man cave functions, the first of which was
preventing work stress from tainting family life. Okay, so it's
(31:18):
your place to decompress. You had a rough day. You
don't want to take it out on the wife and
if their kids around too, you don't want to do that.
You're just gonna go hang out. You're gonna play a
little call of duty and then pick back up when
dinner time. It's like it's like the airlock, the decompression
chamber in the in the old spaceship. Yeah, if you're
an astronaut, you'll know exactly what I mean by that,
(31:40):
we've got a lot of astronauts in the audience, Caroline,
I wonder if they have space lazy boys. But then
in the same token, it's also used as a space
to help prevent that family stress and pressure that you're
feeling from then cycling back out and affecting your family exactly.
And the researchers note at the guys who cited this
(32:03):
function for their personal man caves of having the space
kind of away from families when they're driving them up
the wall. They see isolation rather than communication as a
productive tool to whether those kinds of familial challenges doesn't
work like that, relationships don't work like that? Right, Well,
(32:25):
I would argue it's important. I don't. I don't want to,
you know, like get too far ahead, But I will,
I will say for now, it is important to at
least to be able to call time out over a minute. Sure.
But on a brighter note though, it can also provide
a space to interact with kids in and this is
interesting in a less emotionally forward way. So this is
where the video game console comes in. There are a
(32:48):
number of guys talking about how you know, I'm not
really you know, a lovey dovey, touchy feely kind of dad.
But I want to bond with my son, and so
we hang out and my man cave together and we
play video games and that's how we end up catching
up on the day and just being together. Yeah. And
(33:08):
one one guy they interviewed, like over and over again
was repeating the fact that like, this is how I'm
going to get my son into sports. This is gonna
be how I teach my son about sports. This is
how I teach my son to be a sports fan.
It's like, all right, dude, jeez, we get it. You
want your son to like sports. I get it. But
it kind of goes back to what's the saying that, like,
when women do things together, they're facing one another, when
(33:31):
men do things together, they're facing out or side by side. Right,
it's kind of the same thing, the same idea with
how they want to bond with their kids. Yeah, yeah,
I mean, and and also bond with their friends, because
that's another that the last big function of these spaces
is to preserve male friendships that homer sociality after marriage
(33:52):
and kids happen. And that's you know, again understandable once
you get involved in your LTR long term relationship. Sometimes
casual friendships and the regularity of interacting face to face
with your friends can definitely follow the wayside. Yeah, but
(34:13):
not all men, Not all men are are interested in
this traditional idea of a man cave, of escaping the family,
of getting away from conflict, or just communication period. There
were some guys that the researchers talked to who were like,
I actually think that's kind of regressive, and would actually
(34:34):
like to share a space with my family, or my
wife and I have an office together and we're not
necessarily in there at the same time all the time,
but it's a shared space. Um So I think my
boyfriend would fall into this category of I don't want
to deliberately isolate myself if it might negatively affect my relationship.
And perhaps we should have said this earlier, but by
(34:54):
focusing this episode on man caves, we are not, then,
by extension, assuming that all guys are really into man cave.
Because I gotta tell you, Caroline, in every conversation I've
had with a fella, some of my best friends are guys.
Every conversation I've had with a guy, and I've tried
(35:15):
to talk to some married dudes with kids about the
man cave idea too. Before we came into do this podcast,
we're a little like, oh god, really man caves. Oh no,
because I think pop culturally right now, maybe it was
different before decades and decades before, but right now man
cave is having a moment as like the crazy out there,
(35:38):
like to the extreme. It's basically the the house equivalent
of pent my ride. It's like, do you really need
a popcorn maker in your car? Pent my basement? Pent
my Basements the same thing. Yeah, And then we could
get into some gender e stuff about pimp being used
in such casual way. Well no, but I mean I
(35:58):
think that for some people that that that out there
man cave that we're talking about, the whole stereotypically like
super male space. I mean it has it does have
its female equivalence, and and there are women who want
an equally super uber feminine space to sort of get
(36:18):
away from any and all masculine things. Yeah, like a
kitchen with a door, right exactly. Yes, although, in all seriousness,
referencing my parents again, my mom does have a sewing
room and that growing up was her woman cave of sorts. Well,
if you remember on the Cosby Show, Cliff built Claire
(36:42):
her own mom cave and he literally like, I I'm
not kidding, I I am not kidding. I still think
about this as an adult person that I wish I
had it, because he insulated it so well that he's like,
once you close that door, you won't hear any thing.
You won't hear the kids yelling. There was like fresh
(37:02):
new carpet. She had her own balcony, Like I would
just go in there and lie on the floor and nap.
It sounds wonderful. I remember that now that you mentioned it. Yeah,
maybe Clara Huxtable had the original she shed, because yes, Caroline,
that is a term. Yeah. When we posted this to Tumblr,
(37:23):
I was so entertained by the responses because it was
it was split. Fifty half of the responses were like, Oh,
this is so cool. I want one of my own,
Like I would put my music stuff in there, or
my art stuff, or I would sew in there, or
just nap away from the children. The other half of
the responses were like seriously, basically the response that we
(37:44):
hear a lot to man caves. It was like, seriously,
you need your own hyper gendered space away from your family.
Here's a thing, Caroline. So speaking of hyper gendered spaces,
I do want to mention that in there was an
incredible trend a piece yet again in the Wall Street Journal.
I'm not kidding. They have the man cave beat covered up,
(38:05):
down and sideways, and this piece was about how man
caves are getting so nice, so we're about to reach
like peak man cave that their wives, these guys wives
wanted to use them too, but only for things like quilting.
And the reporter quotes a woman in the story named
Maria Butterfield who talks about hanging out in her husband's
(38:26):
NASCAR themed man cave, and she said, I enjoy being
in there because it's kind of like a little getaway
from the rest of the house. When I'm in there,
I'm not reminded about dishes or laundry that I mean
plug to our episode on the Division of household labor episode.
(38:46):
Yeah yeah, um but that's really though not as bad
as what A guy named Dan Cunningham, also interviewed for
that Wall Street Journal piece, said he's the owner of
the Michigan based man cave market dot com. He said,
quote a chick cave, that's what the rest of the
house is Oh, Dan, Dan, if you're Dan, if you're listening, No,
(39:10):
you're not listening. Well, there's there is no equivalent. You
can't draw a parallel between the whole house and the
man cave because in the whole house, like, that's still
real life, where chores have to happen and bills have
to be paid and things have to be vacuumed, unfolded
and whatever. It's communal spaces. Yeah, the man cave is
(39:31):
it's well, it's for the man and that's where things
are escaped from. That's where you can go and you
can play video games or or if you're marked Twain right,
you know, it sounds wonderful to be able to escape.
There was one guy quoted in that study of man
caves and masculinity, and he's a stay at home dad
(39:52):
and he said, yeah, you know, I just I really
needed a space to escape. You know, my kids have
of the house and I just have like ent And
I was like, wait, okay, sixty, so that means your
wife has ten. Did you save the kitchen, like, because
that's not really a lady space. I mean traditionally it
has been gendered as such, but to claim that you
(40:15):
get to escape in the house as your own and
the and the wife or your partner doesn't have the
same Uh, it doesn't get to enjoy a space in
the same way. You can't. You can't equate a communal
space with a man cave. Yeah, I mean, granted, my
kitchen is a relaxing space for me because I enjoy
(40:35):
cooking while drinking wine and listening to fresh air because
I am apparently a thirty year old in the body
of fifty year old. Um, but yeah, it's not. I
don't consider it though my my Kristen cave in my apartment,
and even the idea though of of the she shed
of this follow up question of like, well what about
(40:57):
women caves? Like to me, it's it's almost beside the point,
because why are we so focused now on these hyper
gendered spaces. Why can't we just say that regardless of
what kind of relationship you might be in, whether you're
living with another woman, whether you're living with another man,
whether they are kids there or not, at some point
(41:18):
pretty much everybody needs some space of their own, if
if it is at all possible. And this is also too,
by the way, highly socio economic privileged conversation to be
having because it's like, oh really, oh you've got extra
space and extra money to turn it into something. Well,
(41:38):
bully for you. Um, but I I just I don't
understand why it's so controversial for someone to just say
I'm going to go in the other room. Yeah you know,
well that's why. I mean. You mentioned whether you're living
with another woman or you're a man living with another man.
(41:59):
I'm like, I'm super and I know we will, and
I'm super interested to hear from our listeners who are
living in the same sex living situation, romantic or or not. Um,
it might just be a roommate situation. I'm interested to
hear if our listeners do have these spaces, because it
doesn't like I said about my boyfriend needing his space
(42:19):
in the house to work and me needing my space
in the house to work. It doesn't always have to
be this hyper gendered like like you're the man and
so you get the race car room. Sometimes it's literally
just like, well, no, I work from home, or I
craft or I would work, and so I need a space.
So I'm interested to hear from all all different types
of people basically what those spaces look like, and honestly,
(42:41):
I think it's healthier to enjoy having those spaces. Well,
with that, let us hear from you, what do you
think about all this man cave? She shed rooms of
one's own ideas. Mom's house, stuffworks dot com is our
email address, you know, so to us at Mom's podcast
or messages on Facebook, and we've got a couple of
(43:03):
messages to share with you right now. Well, I've got
to let her hear from Kathleen with a question, what
the heck our dad bods? She writes, thank you so
much for the last two podcasts on yet another way
women's bodies are objectified. I've not yet had children, but
(43:24):
having the information at the back of my mind will
really come in handy if people ever inquire about when
I will get my pre pregnancy body. Back on that note,
I was taken it back this morning when my fiance
started discussing the new trend of dad bods and how
it's okay for men to be letting themselves go so
that women will feel better next to them. I was
(43:45):
honestly shocked about the articles I read and their justifications.
I thought that this would be a great additional piece
to the Mother's Day series about what I guess could
now be called the mom bod. If this is a
new trend now, then maybe you're too great and a
little of cool driven minds might be able to explain it.
I would also like to put in a request for
the Politics of Maternity lead. Why is the US so
(44:07):
far behind other developed countries? Well, Katie, yours and so
many other listeners wishes are coming true because the next
episode this week is on dad Bods, and believe me,
we've got lots to say, so stay tuned for that. Well,
(44:30):
I have a letter here from Christina about well mom bods. Honestly,
she says, I just listen to your Babyweight episode and
I wanted to offer a thought on the get your
body back concept. I haven't had a baby as of yet,
that several of my friends who have had babies have
expressed the idea of wanting their body back during the
end of their terms rather than the idea of looking beautiful.
(44:53):
It's more of a I've had this house guest inside
of me, kicking me, eating my food, et cetera, and
I am ready to be done and just be me again.
So with that in mind, I could see the idea
of getting your body back being a reclamation of freedom
to make choices for your body that aren't constrained by
having a baby inside of it, rather than just an
oppressive enforcement of beauty norms. And speaking of oppressive enforcement
(45:16):
of beauty norms or lack thereof Dad Bod, I think
there's a lot to be said about the virality of
it and the myriad opinions on it, and I would
love to hear you guys tackle it. She says personally,
I'm kind of horrified by the phenomenon, but I can't
really put my finger on why. Well, so there you go, Christina,
(45:36):
Uh like christ and said one will be coming up
an episode becoming about dad bods next. Yeah, And I
have a feeling that there are listeners who waited aren't
listening to this podcast right when it came out, and
you've already got dad Bods in your queue, so binge
listen to that. And in the meantime, we want to
hear from you. Mom. Stuff at how stuff works dot
(45:59):
com is our email address, although I am thinking of
changing it to dad Bod's podcast at household works dot
com and re link to all of our social media
as well as all of our blogs, videos, and podcasts,
including this one with all of our man cave sources,
so you can and really should check out that man
cave and masculinity study I don't know. Over to Stuff
(46:20):
Mom Never Told You dot com for more on this
and thousands of other topics. Is it How staff Works
dot com
Welcome to Stuff Mom Never told you From House top
works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Kristen and I'm Caroline. Caroline. Have you ever been to
a man cave? I mean, I guess that's what you
could call the dark, dank healthscape that is the basement
(00:27):
at my parents house where my father hoards all of
his personal belongings and things. But no, not like the
stereotypical like I've got race metals and Dale Earnhardt posters
on the wall type of place, you know, Now that
I think about it, Caroline, I don't think I have
been to an official man cave either, but maybe it's
just because we aren't allowed in man caves. Yeah, we
(00:50):
don't have the password. There's a secret knock well for
those listeners who might be confused and also a little
bit horrified. Might you might not have heard this term
man cave before. We do have a handy definition from
the esteemed website epic man cave dot net. Yes, there's
(01:11):
a whole there's a whole dot net dedicated to it. Uh. Yeah.
They define it as a space for men to kick
back and relax away from the annoyances of everyday life.
They can be decorated entirely by men without fear of
upsetting their partners, and are often used to show off
sports memorabilia. Man caves are also a great place to
have a quote unquote boys night, perhaps to play a
(01:33):
game of poker or watch a big sports event. I
love sports events without worrying about creating a mess in
the house. They are becoming a necessity. They are becoming
a necessity. This is like critical language that apparently they
haven't been one to every man's life and have been
widely dubbed as the last bastion of masculinity. So, Christen,
(01:53):
what does that tell you about a man cave? It
tells me that we have to talk about man caves
because anythinging that is dubbed the last bath the end
of masculinity, is essentially just a siren song for you
and I to to do what we do here on
stuff Mom never told you. And it tells me too
that there is some real intense gendering of domestic spaces
(02:19):
going on, which, not surprisingly, we've talked about this before
in our podcast not so Long Ago on interior Design.
We've talked about it before in the context of say,
kitchens and women's place being in the home um and
the fact that, especially in the twenty one century, we
now have this term man cave, also known as a
(02:40):
mantuary or a man space or just a manly retreat,
is notable that we are, rather than moving away from
gendering these spaces, it seems like, at least for some households,
it's becoming even more segregated in a way. If it's
funny because you mentioned the gendering of spaces in the house,
like kitchens, but it's not as if the kitchen really
(03:03):
equates to a man cave. I mean, yes, you might
like cooking whoever you are, man or woman or whatever,
but that's still a place of work where work has
to be done with a purpose to feed yourself and others.
Whereas this man cave concept is purely sort of an escape.
It's it's a retreat. It's it's a place where a
lot of men in the study that will refer to
(03:24):
you later, a lot of these guys were interviewed and
said that it's a place they go to sort of
reflect on life and get away from the stresses of
both work and family. And I wouldn't say that any
female gendered space in the house is quite equivalent. And Caroline,
you also mentioned your dad having his basement quote unquote
man cave, even though I have a feeling your dad
(03:45):
did not call it a man cave. And my dad
had slash has a similar kind of thing. His office
is in the basement, and growing up, that's where he
would be if you couldn't find bad he was downstairs,
like that was his space. I think it was very
convenient for him for it to be in the basement,
(04:07):
so completely removed from the family. Not to say that
my dad doesn't love me and my family. Um so,
especially since this is Father's Day Week, we wanted to
dig more into the man cave thing because this term
is new. But the idea of men in particular having
(04:30):
these particular spaces in the home really isn't They just
gone by more generic names like office library is the
correct pronunciation of library library? Yeah, And I mean I
think I think what is new. What I would argue
is new is all of the stuff around, like shows
that you have on d I Y or hd TV,
(04:52):
specifically about man Case and having everything be like super
themed and like, oh my god, it's an indoor golf course.
With a cagarade with fifteen kegs in it, you know,
and other like you know, quote unquote manly things like
I think that's a new concept. But yeah, the whole
idea of like having a masculine space to which you
can retreat to write your great American novel like that
(05:13):
is that's nothing new. Yeah. So Art of Manliness, for instance,
rounded up historical man caves in quotes that included things
like Hemingway's riding room and Key West Teddy Roosevelt's trophy
room in his house in or Oyster Bay in New York,
Mark Twain's writing hut, which, by the way, I want
(05:35):
a riding hut so bad now, Carolina. It's this beautiful
little like is it a hexagon shaped? But it's this
beautiful little hut with these huge windows that sits on
a hilltop and he's just got the countryside spread out
around him and I would right there. Yeah. He had
it built on his sister's property because he was like,
(05:55):
you know what, I'm Mark Twain, and I've got important
things to write, but I need to be by myself
to do it. Hut of one zone, that's all I want. Yeah.
They also featured Thorow's cabin. All he had was a
bed and a desk with a chair and I think
a table with a chair and a big screen TV
with Netflix and HBO go on it. And even Winston
(06:18):
Churchill's art studio where he would go to when he
felt the black dog of depression clothing and he would
go paint. Yeah. So again, these are not necessarily man caves.
These are simply offices, library studios, huts, billiard rooms, trophy rooms,
places where these very famous and successful men would go
(06:38):
to do their work or maybe take some time just
like out of the day hang out relaxed, as in
the case of like a billiards room. Um, but at
the time when these guys were hanging out there, I
doubt they were, you know, having to tell their friends, Uh, yeah, bro,
I couldn't hang out this weekend. I'm gonna man cave
it up. Although I don't know that anyone has ever
(07:00):
had that phone call before. It would be more like
a man caving it up. You should come over exactly
and and we'll we'll we'll foster some homo sociality. Yes, well,
and speaking Caroline of homo sociality. This is something that
professor at the University of Florida named James B. Twitchell
(07:21):
wrote an entire book about He teamed up with a
photographer to create this book called Where Men Hide, and
it focuses on not so much on the man cave idea,
but on the more men only, homo social places, these
gathering spaces for men. In Twitchell in the book argues
(07:41):
that men have been hiding away, as he puts it,
for forever, whether it is kind of in the more
isolated setting of a workshop, garage, home office, or in
more fraternal spaces like Masonic lodges, pool halls, barbershops, or
strip clubs, and in the sort of nostalgic look at
(08:01):
these all male spaces. He Twitchell does more in the
loss of the more traditional spaces, you know, not so
much the garage dude still have their garage or you know,
like our dad's with their basements, But he does more
in the loss of those communal man spaces. And I
do think though, that it's important to put Twitchell's book
(08:22):
and this idea of mourning the loss of these spaces
in the context of it coming out around the same
time as this book called Bowling Alone by Robert d. Putnam,
which I had to read in journalism school. Caroline, I
don't know if you had to read it, I didn't.
I have had it on my shelf since two thousand seven. Well,
it's so dated now because it really focuses in on
(08:43):
this time of I guess in the late nineties really
where you see this erosion of more communal life, and
we're now, rather than being on bowling teams, were just
bowling alone. So it's sort of rides a similar kind of,
uh so more kind of theory about how like men
used to have these spaces to be together and hang
(09:05):
out and foster their home a sociality, but now they
they're alone, and they're just alone alone, they're not even
in like necessarily their own spaces. But I also do
think it's worth noting that Twitchell isn't really framing these spaces,
whether it is a home office or whether it is
a barbershop or whatever. It's not that it's so exclusionary.
(09:29):
It's more the result of what he says is social anxiety.
In a review of Twitchell's book, the reviewer rights, when
women want to get together, they just do it. When
men get together, it's a production and that that would
be like the Hey, I'm I'm man caving it up tonight.
Why don't you come over, Like we're gonna watch sports
and we're gonna play video games and new other stereotypical
male things because we're getting away from the wife. Yeah.
(09:51):
So in that sense as well dig into later in
the podcast, it's that is seen as a point in
favor of man caves of well, we used to have
these spaces outside the home. Those are gone because everybody's
quote unquote bowling alone. So yeah, I am gonna build
my mini golf course with my cagurator to be so large. Um.
(10:18):
And there was an academic paper that we found about this,
God bless you Academia called man Caves and Masculinity, And
in it the author charts a little bit of history
in terms of the development of these kinds of fraternal spaces,
and she notes that ProtoMan caves for just the everyday dude,
(10:41):
not necessarily the Winston Churchill or Teddy Roosevelt, who would
have like their own private estates that they could run
off to. This really started in the post World War
two era, when you have middle class American men coming
home from these violent brotherhood oriented battlefields to what some
considered very emasculating suburban homes, because of course we have
(11:05):
you know, with that Rosie the riveters all going home,
you have advertisers really pushing you know, the domesticity women.
You know, even with the fashions, it becomes more hyper feminized,
and then the guys come home and it's it's a
ladies palace. Well. Yeah. In this study, the authors also
point out that when you're a homeowner, part of your
(11:25):
identity is tied up in that house, and then you
sort of reflect your own identity, uh in the way
you decorate it. And so that's a theme that runs
throughout this whole paper and ties in a lot with
the idea of men having their own spaces, because if
the home, the internal workings of the home are all feminized,
(11:46):
and so then the house has this feminine identity that
men are returning to. It seems natural in that line
of thinking that they are carving out their own space
that is more masculine, but in the process doing some decoration, eating,
doing some space planning, things that are traditionally feminine, but
they are sort of validating their own space in the
(12:07):
house by putting their stamp on it. Yeah, and you
see that first happen in with the rise of post
World War two suburbia with things like garages and barbecuing. Uh.
The study author writes about barbecuing specifically that it quote
reasserted the post war males position outside the public sphere
(12:30):
as a hunter, as well as offering men a refuge
in a traditional and stable identity. So you get this
balance of what I really am grappling with my masculinity.
I need to, you know, figure out how to kind
of exercise that and assert it. But at the same time,
I am still invested in this domesticity. How do I
make domesticity my own? So I'm going to go out
(12:52):
into the garage because also keeping in mind our podcast
on men and Cars and how that was marketed and
marketed in such amount askualing kind of way, it makes
sense that the garage would become, you know, the the
first man cave. Yeah. Well, I mean my dad when
I was growing up, my dad grilled a ton and
it was kind of that he was straddling that line
(13:14):
because when he went outside to grill, he was just
it was just him and the meat and the fire.
But he was making it for his to his two
gals inside the house. The exact same thing happened Caroline
when I went home to see my parents for Mother's Day.
Funnily enough, since this is a Father's Day podcast, when
my dad was grilling some chickens, and while I was
(13:38):
inside helping my mom, you know, prepare sides and all
that and hang out and catch up, he was outside
the whole time. And he had a book and he
had his chair, and he you know, he did not
need to be out there. Those chickens were fined on
their own. And at one point I asked her, what,
what's what's that up to? Where is he? She said, Oh,
he's just outside. He's washing the chickens, got his book. Look,
(14:00):
he's happiest can be. It was kind of like a
let him, let him be, Let him be alone if
he wants to be. Yeah, well he's Maybe he's given
you in your mom's space too from Mother's Day. Yes,
but I think he really take pride in that act
of grilling, of watching over the meats, you know, in
such a concerted, if slightly unnecessary kind of way. Yeah.
(14:23):
Well so, I mean moving from the garage and the
grill pit as sort of traditional male spaces. We've also
got plenty of pop cultural references. Um, like Tim Allen's
garage on Home Improvement, there's another garage, Al Bundy's and
Archie Bunker's chairs, uh, Fred Flintstone's elk Lodge. But also
(14:45):
I was thinking that the dude's apartment on Friends could
count as a man cave because everybody was always over
at Monica and Rachel's apartment that was like the main hangout.
But then the guys had their own apartment across the
hall that was kind of like a man cave. Yeah,
because they had their matching leather. Lazy Boy said they
would recline at the same time and it wasn't that funny,
and they had completely different decor. I mean, Caroline, you
(15:07):
and I could do an entire podcast just on lazy
boys and recliners and the idea of it, as was
pointed out in this paper, as a different kind of
throne for the man of the house. Yeah. Well, I
mean one other one that I thought of was the
bat cave, which is literally a cave for for a man.
(15:30):
Mr Batt, Yeah, for the We're Mr Batt and is
that Batman Friends hang out? Bill Bettman His Cave. If
you guys haven't seen Bill Batman, it's a great show.
So it is interesting though, to see how pop culture
in the decades since World War Two has really fostered
(15:51):
this idea, which leads us into this twenty century resurgence
of the man cave with all this new man cave lingo.
Because that's the thing about all of this, it's not
new ideologically, it's just new linguistically. We just now have
this this twenty very two thousand's era language for it.
(16:15):
And in two thousand six, for instance, there was a
publication of Sam Martin's book called man Space, A Primal
Guide to Marking Your Territory, and the Chicago Tribune did
an interview with Sam Martin about his book, and a
quote really jumped out to me. So he says, keep
(16:36):
in mind when this is happening, because I think the
interview was taking place maybe in two thousand seven, and
he says, quote, men have had an identity problems since
the Women's movement. They've tried to figure out who they're
supposed to be. For a while, women wanted them to
be more sensitive, so they were more sensitive. Then women
wanted them to be more manly. One of the things
I discovered is when men have their own man space,
(16:58):
what they put inside of it is really expression of
who they are. Man space is about establishing an identity
for a man. And that's exactly what we read about
in that paper, man Caves and masculinity. It goes all
the way back to when people were first moving to
the suburbs and droves around and after World War Two.
But Martin would argue that it was really women's fault.
(17:20):
It was women wanting, making too many demands, and you know,
you know how women are flighty and can't take up
their mind all the time. That finally, you know, men
are pushed to create these so called man spaces. So
not surprisingly, in two thousand seven you have the premiere
of the show Man Caves, where you have it's the
(17:41):
home renovation thing where dude gets a man cave. Yeah,
and I love I love just how I mean baldly
like out there stereotypical chest not thing male it is.
And I'm I'm being sarcastic when I say that I
love it. And I remember my boyfriend and I saw
(18:01):
commercial for this show and we both just sort of
rolled our eyes at each other because I mean, he
definitely is the type of person who he needs his
own space at the house, but that's because he works
there like he works at home, and so he needs
his own space, just like I need my own space.
And they don't have to be gendered though necessarily, they
just have to be spaces that allow us to actually
(18:23):
be productive. Yeah, I mean, and I watched a brief
clip of man caves, and Caroline, I was doing just
as much I rolling as you were when I watched
some man caves clips, because you know, I gotta I
gotta do more research. And the description of one segment
was his office became a nursery, so Mike gets a
basement speakeasy man cave. And Mike, by the way, like
(18:47):
in the voiceover for the beginning of this segment, they're like, well,
Mike was even able to sneak away from the hospital
where his wife was to come plan out the man cave.
It's cool. No, that's that's where That's where I think
there's a problem, when when the space is actually keeping
you from being with your family. Well, later they brought
(19:09):
the wife in show her to show her what she
will never be able to use well with this man cave.
It can double as a family room, but with the
speakeasy theme. They're hidden bars. They're hidden bars, They're hidden
like photos of scantily glad ladies. There's a really unfortunate
(19:33):
portrait of Mike smoking a cigar wearing a fedora on
the wall. What is it? What is it about suddenly
having a family, whether it's you've just gotten married or
you've just had kids, that suddenly entitles you the man
person to a cave? Why why does the lady not
get a space? Why would you want one? Well, yeah,
(19:54):
well because he got kicked out of the office because
the office became the nursery, Caroline. So this is happening
though in two thousand seven, and one of the things
I was most tickled about with this research was how
much the Wall Street Journal latched on and has not
(20:15):
let go of the man cave trend. They have an
entire man cave beat, I kid you not people, and
they reported on it so feverishly, and and perhaps because
really in the late two thousands, a man cave industry
was born. I mean you have uh something called man
cave LLC that one article reported on which is quote
(20:38):
modeled after Mary Kay cos medics where guys hold barbecue
parties dubbed meetings. That's m E A T I n G.
To sell steak in cave a coutrement such as bacon
scented candles and beer pagers to locate lost brew. Caroline
is just bowing her head in disbelief. But I love
(21:01):
it's modeled after Mary Kay, because do you think they
could like a bacon print Cadillac if they sell enough accouterment. Listen,
if they do, I might shine up to become a sale. Well,
I guess I don't think you're allowed. Yeah, I don't
know that I'm allowed. And they're also online retailers like
man Cave market dot com and the man Cave Outlet
(21:21):
Store because apparently it's so big now that they're outlets
for it. Um So I mean, considering how this has
ballooned into revenue streams, I mean I think it says something, well, yeah,
and so like once we see we've seen it on TV,
we've seen it written about in books, But once we
(21:44):
see it on the big screen and movies like I
Love You Man and once, paint companies start making money
off of man Cave paint with names like beer, Time,
bro Code and zombie Apocalypse. We're not making this up. Listeners.
There is a Canadian paint company called c I L
that did just that in two thousand eleven. Yeah, so once, once,
(22:04):
this is happening, and in the Wall Street Journal circles
back around this year in and starts reporting on how
man caves are getting lucks. Like this is not just
like I'm going to carve out a space in the basement.
I'm gonna put my old recliner that the old lady
won't let me keep in the living room anymore, and
I'm going to have a big screen TV. This is
(22:25):
like I'm going to spend thousands upon thousands upon thousands
of dollars to have a room of my own. Yeah.
I mean this clearly profiled incredibly wealthy men, one of
whom is just a single guy who built himself what
they called a tech layer that cost over a hundred
thousand dollars. It's like, oh, you know, he can have
(22:45):
movie night. He has all these bells and whistles, um,
there are TVs in the bathroom and then things like that.
But it was so funny when like by the end
of it, they were like and he lives alone. So
it's like, does that still constitute a man cave if
our man cave is just now becoming a catch all
term for well, it's like a Russian nesting doll. It's
like his whole apartment is like the huge man cave,
(23:08):
the bachelor path. Yeah, it's a bachelor pad, and then
you get within it, you get the man cave, and
then and then the bathroom, the man the mathroom, the
mathroom where you don't have to do any math fellas,
thank goodness, unless you really want to. Well, so what
what is going on? Like, what is this cultural push?
(23:28):
Why are man caves exploding? Why? Well, I guess they
have been exploding since the forties and fifties, But what
is this cultural focus on it now? Well, Caroline, we're
going to talk about that when we come right back
from a quick break. So the basic explanations for this
(23:50):
so called man spacing are pretty much what we have
touched on already. The idea that the domestic space is
hyperfemineis and men need these specific places they can go
and really not have to see all of the fru
fruit decor and also signs of children. These are the
two main things that come up a lot what you
(24:11):
talked about earlier in terms of the decoration conflict of
feeling like your aesthetic is not being reflected anywhere around
the house. You walk in and it's just a foreign environment.
And then also walking in and seeing the you know,
the evidence of little people, little little toys and play
pens and such. Yeah, and then also revisiting the idea
(24:35):
about that darnal women's movement that made men also feel
like they needed to carve out a space where they
could sort of reaffirm their masculine identities. Yeah, it was
really interesting to see how often feminism was referenced in
these pieces that the ones that we're asking like, well,
why was this going on? Um, because it does seem
(24:59):
to bear a lot of the quote unquote blame for it,
because it's not only with the feminism argument. It's not
so much about I hate your design aesthetic, please let
me put up my packers framed jersey on the wall,
but rather I need a space where I can go
and not have to worry about offending you with not
(25:22):
only my my comments about about ladies bodies, but also
my cursing and also too farting. Farting comes up a
space to fart, and I'm not joking. Space took fart
also comes up a lot as like, do people not
know that women fart all the time? What, Caroline, I
(25:44):
just did? No, I didn't. I try not to do
it and try not to hot. But it's weird. It's
weird that glitter has a smell. Well, but this is
the same stuff that you here ticked off when people
are worried about women getting certain jobs in certain industries.
Absolutely well, And it like reminds me too of our
(26:05):
pin Ups episode where you see the decline of those
Nudi girl calendars that used to be up in you know,
more all male workspaces because all of a sudden, the
seventies came around and women don't want to see sexy
women on the walls. It's not okay anymore, Lyan, And
I'm sure, I'm sure all of this is related because
as you have more women entering the workforce, suddenly the
(26:28):
workforce is no longer a purely male space, and so
it's like, how am I ever going to get away
from women? Yeah? I mean like, well, thankfully, Caroline, we do,
as we mentioned earlier, have an entire study to discuss
and it was. It was honestly fascinating reading. So it's
called man Caves and Masculinity, as we mentioned earlier, by
(26:51):
Risto Moisio and Miriam baruchus Villi published in the Journal
of Consumer Culture, and essentially they did was interview a
lot of guys, all white, middle class, midwestern married guys,
about man caves and the idea of man caves. Not
(27:11):
all of them had man caves, but most of them did,
and and all had thoughts on man caves. And they
pointed out in the beginning of the paper that previous
research on these kinds of masculine gendered spaces really focused
outside of the home, places like golf courses and barbershops,
as we mentioned earlier and more recently ESPN Zone and Caroline,
(27:33):
I really want to now read that study about men
and ESPN Zone, um, but they really wanted to look
inside the home, right because, like we said earlier, the
house is part of the homeowners identity, and your identity
is shaped in part by its decoration. And so, like
Christoper was saying, if you walk into a space and
(27:54):
it doesn't reflect who you feel you are what it
should look like, there's a sort of discomfort there and
so inside the home, man caves join garages, den's, game rooms,
and even barbecue pits as these masculine defined domestic spaces
that are employed to affirm these ideals of masculinity. It's
(28:17):
where you can go and fart to your heart's content. Yeah,
and the study focuses more on what they call the
therapeutic uses of man caves in relationship to men's jobs, families,
and marital relationships. And what they really conclude is that
these spaces are helpful for managing what they call identity pressure,
(28:41):
essentially of being a dude living in today's world. And yeah,
where what does domesticity mean today? What does masculine gender
role mean? What does marriage mean? What is being a
father mean? There are a lot of like valid questions
that we ask about ourselves, you know, reverse everything and
(29:02):
insert feminine pronouns, like we think about these same kinds
of theme things too, And a couple of predominant themes emerged, right,
and so it keep part of these man caves that
was found throughout the research was that they're dominated by
super dudedly possession sports memorabilia, the old lazy boy cagurators,
(29:25):
which I kind of want a cagurator. Um. Also video
game consoles. That's a big thing too, for sure. Well,
my boyfriend and I are planning our future people cave
together and we totally want ski ball. Okay, we want
this to happen. You're invited over. Oh yeah, well I'm
a person. Yeah, you are a person, so you're welcome
to come over with the bill also for real. Um,
(29:48):
but this is sort of like it's a it's a
dude form of nesting. You know, they're picking their own decor,
they're picking their special comfy chair. Um. And it really
serves to legitimize and validate that space. Well, no, like
I need the space because I have this chair and
I need to watch this this sporting event. Yeah. And
it's where you feel the most comfortable and you're surrounded
(30:10):
by all of your things and uh and I totally
I can get that, for sure. I feel that way
when I am in my office at home. I love
it because it's all of my things and it's I
can close the door. Yeah, exactly, a room of one's Yeah,
well but these are these spaces. Also, the theme also
involved productive consumption, so you know, whereas you might validate
(30:34):
your space by saying well, no, like I need a
place to put all this this, you know, ugly man
stuff that you don't want in the living room. They
also justify the space as well, this is where I
come to fix my broken motorcycle, fix the kids broken bikes.
It's it's productive leisure time. Yeah. And I gotta say though,
pro tip getting that motorcycle through the living room. That's tough.
(30:57):
That's a tough move. Yeah, you've really got a shampoo.
Those rugs pretty often put down some tarps before yeah. Um.
And In these interviews, though, the researchers highlighted a number
of primary man cave functions, the first of which was
preventing work stress from tainting family life. Okay, so it's
(31:18):
your place to decompress. You had a rough day. You
don't want to take it out on the wife and
if their kids around too, you don't want to do that.
You're just gonna go hang out. You're gonna play a
little call of duty and then pick back up when
dinner time. It's like it's like the airlock, the decompression
chamber in the in the old spaceship. Yeah, if you're
an astronaut, you'll know exactly what I mean by that,
(31:40):
we've got a lot of astronauts in the audience, Caroline,
I wonder if they have space lazy boys. But then
in the same token, it's also used as a space
to help prevent that family stress and pressure that you're
feeling from then cycling back out and affecting your family exactly.
And the researchers note at the guys who cited this
(32:03):
function for their personal man caves of having the space
kind of away from families when they're driving them up
the wall. They see isolation rather than communication as a
productive tool to whether those kinds of familial challenges doesn't
work like that, relationships don't work like that? Right, Well,
(32:25):
I would argue it's important. I don't. I don't want to,
you know, like get too far ahead, But I will,
I will say for now, it is important to at
least to be able to call time out over a minute. Sure.
But on a brighter note though, it can also provide
a space to interact with kids in and this is
interesting in a less emotionally forward way. So this is
where the video game console comes in. There are a
(32:48):
number of guys talking about how you know, I'm not
really you know, a lovey dovey, touchy feely kind of dad.
But I want to bond with my son, and so
we hang out and my man cave together and we
play video games and that's how we end up catching
up on the day and just being together. Yeah. And
(33:08):
one one guy they interviewed, like over and over again
was repeating the fact that like, this is how I'm
going to get my son into sports. This is gonna
be how I teach my son about sports. This is
how I teach my son to be a sports fan.
It's like, all right, dude, jeez, we get it. You
want your son to like sports. I get it. But
it kind of goes back to what's the saying that, like,
when women do things together, they're facing one another, when
(33:31):
men do things together, they're facing out or side by side. Right,
it's kind of the same thing, the same idea with
how they want to bond with their kids. Yeah, yeah,
I mean, and and also bond with their friends, because
that's another that the last big function of these spaces
is to preserve male friendships that homer sociality after marriage
(33:52):
and kids happen. And that's you know, again understandable once
you get involved in your LTR long term relationship. Sometimes
casual friendships and the regularity of interacting face to face
with your friends can definitely follow the wayside. Yeah, but
(34:13):
not all men, Not all men are are interested in
this traditional idea of a man cave, of escaping the family,
of getting away from conflict, or just communication period. There
were some guys that the researchers talked to who were like,
I actually think that's kind of regressive, and would actually
(34:34):
like to share a space with my family, or my
wife and I have an office together and we're not
necessarily in there at the same time all the time,
but it's a shared space. Um So I think my
boyfriend would fall into this category of I don't want
to deliberately isolate myself if it might negatively affect my relationship.
And perhaps we should have said this earlier, but by
(34:54):
focusing this episode on man caves, we are not, then,
by extension, assuming that all guys are really into man cave.
Because I gotta tell you, Caroline, in every conversation I've
had with a fella, some of my best friends are guys.
Every conversation I've had with a guy, and I've tried
(35:15):
to talk to some married dudes with kids about the
man cave idea too. Before we came into do this podcast,
we're a little like, oh god, really man caves. Oh no,
because I think pop culturally right now, maybe it was
different before decades and decades before, but right now man
cave is having a moment as like the crazy out there,
(35:38):
like to the extreme. It's basically the the house equivalent
of pent my ride. It's like, do you really need
a popcorn maker in your car? Pent my basement? Pent
my Basements the same thing. Yeah, And then we could
get into some gender e stuff about pimp being used
in such casual way. Well no, but I mean I
(35:58):
think that for some people that that that out there
man cave that we're talking about, the whole stereotypically like
super male space. I mean it has it does have
its female equivalence, and and there are women who want
an equally super uber feminine space to sort of get
(36:18):
away from any and all masculine things. Yeah, like a
kitchen with a door, right exactly. Yes, although, in all seriousness,
referencing my parents again, my mom does have a sewing
room and that growing up was her woman cave of sorts. Well,
if you remember on the Cosby Show, Cliff built Claire
(36:42):
her own mom cave and he literally like, I I'm
not kidding, I I am not kidding. I still think
about this as an adult person that I wish I
had it, because he insulated it so well that he's like,
once you close that door, you won't hear any thing.
You won't hear the kids yelling. There was like fresh
(37:02):
new carpet. She had her own balcony, Like I would
just go in there and lie on the floor and nap.
It sounds wonderful. I remember that now that you mentioned it. Yeah,
maybe Clara Huxtable had the original she shed, because yes, Caroline,
that is a term. Yeah. When we posted this to Tumblr,
(37:23):
I was so entertained by the responses because it was
it was split. Fifty half of the responses were like, Oh,
this is so cool. I want one of my own,
Like I would put my music stuff in there, or
my art stuff, or I would sew in there, or
just nap away from the children. The other half of
the responses were like seriously, basically the response that we
(37:44):
hear a lot to man caves. It was like, seriously,
you need your own hyper gendered space away from your family.
Here's a thing, Caroline. So speaking of hyper gendered spaces,
I do want to mention that in there was an
incredible trend a piece yet again in the Wall Street Journal.
I'm not kidding. They have the man cave beat covered up,
(38:05):
down and sideways, and this piece was about how man
caves are getting so nice, so we're about to reach
like peak man cave that their wives, these guys wives
wanted to use them too, but only for things like quilting.
And the reporter quotes a woman in the story named
Maria Butterfield who talks about hanging out in her husband's
(38:26):
NASCAR themed man cave, and she said, I enjoy being
in there because it's kind of like a little getaway
from the rest of the house. When I'm in there,
I'm not reminded about dishes or laundry that I mean
plug to our episode on the Division of household labor episode.
(38:46):
Yeah yeah, um but that's really though not as bad
as what A guy named Dan Cunningham, also interviewed for
that Wall Street Journal piece, said he's the owner of
the Michigan based man cave market dot com. He said,
quote a chick cave, that's what the rest of the
house is Oh, Dan, Dan, if you're Dan, if you're listening, No,
(39:10):
you're not listening. Well, there's there is no equivalent. You
can't draw a parallel between the whole house and the
man cave because in the whole house, like, that's still
real life, where chores have to happen and bills have
to be paid and things have to be vacuumed, unfolded
and whatever. It's communal spaces. Yeah, the man cave is
(39:31):
it's well, it's for the man and that's where things
are escaped from. That's where you can go and you
can play video games or or if you're marked Twain right,
you know, it sounds wonderful to be able to escape.
There was one guy quoted in that study of man
caves and masculinity, and he's a stay at home dad
(39:52):
and he said, yeah, you know, I just I really
needed a space to escape. You know, my kids have
of the house and I just have like ent And
I was like, wait, okay, sixty, so that means your
wife has ten. Did you save the kitchen, like, because
that's not really a lady space. I mean traditionally it
has been gendered as such, but to claim that you
(40:15):
get to escape in the house as your own and
the and the wife or your partner doesn't have the
same Uh, it doesn't get to enjoy a space in
the same way. You can't. You can't equate a communal
space with a man cave. Yeah, I mean, granted, my
kitchen is a relaxing space for me because I enjoy
(40:35):
cooking while drinking wine and listening to fresh air because
I am apparently a thirty year old in the body
of fifty year old. Um, but yeah, it's not. I
don't consider it though my my Kristen cave in my apartment,
and even the idea though of of the she shed
of this follow up question of like, well what about
(40:57):
women caves? Like to me, it's it's almost beside the point,
because why are we so focused now on these hyper
gendered spaces. Why can't we just say that regardless of
what kind of relationship you might be in, whether you're
living with another woman, whether you're living with another man,
whether they are kids there or not, at some point
(41:18):
pretty much everybody needs some space of their own, if
if it is at all possible. And this is also too,
by the way, highly socio economic privileged conversation to be
having because it's like, oh really, oh you've got extra
space and extra money to turn it into something. Well,
(41:38):
bully for you. Um, but I I just I don't
understand why it's so controversial for someone to just say
I'm going to go in the other room. Yeah you know,
well that's why. I mean. You mentioned whether you're living
with another woman or you're a man living with another man.
(41:59):
I'm like, I'm super and I know we will, and
I'm super interested to hear from our listeners who are
living in the same sex living situation, romantic or or not. Um,
it might just be a roommate situation. I'm interested to
hear if our listeners do have these spaces, because it
doesn't like I said about my boyfriend needing his space
(42:19):
in the house to work and me needing my space
in the house to work. It doesn't always have to
be this hyper gendered like like you're the man and
so you get the race car room. Sometimes it's literally
just like, well, no, I work from home, or I
craft or I would work, and so I need a space.
So I'm interested to hear from all all different types
of people basically what those spaces look like, and honestly,
(42:41):
I think it's healthier to enjoy having those spaces. Well,
with that, let us hear from you, what do you
think about all this man cave? She shed rooms of
one's own ideas. Mom's house, stuffworks dot com is our
email address, you know, so to us at Mom's podcast
or messages on Facebook, and we've got a couple of
(43:03):
messages to share with you right now. Well, I've got
to let her hear from Kathleen with a question, what
the heck our dad bods? She writes, thank you so
much for the last two podcasts on yet another way
women's bodies are objectified. I've not yet had children, but
(43:24):
having the information at the back of my mind will
really come in handy if people ever inquire about when
I will get my pre pregnancy body. Back on that note,
I was taken it back this morning when my fiance
started discussing the new trend of dad bods and how
it's okay for men to be letting themselves go so
that women will feel better next to them. I was
(43:45):
honestly shocked about the articles I read and their justifications.
I thought that this would be a great additional piece
to the Mother's Day series about what I guess could
now be called the mom bod. If this is a
new trend now, then maybe you're too great and a
little of cool driven minds might be able to explain it.
I would also like to put in a request for
the Politics of Maternity lead. Why is the US so
(44:07):
far behind other developed countries? Well, Katie, yours and so
many other listeners wishes are coming true because the next
episode this week is on dad Bods, and believe me,
we've got lots to say, so stay tuned for that. Well,
(44:30):
I have a letter here from Christina about well mom bods. Honestly,
she says, I just listen to your Babyweight episode and
I wanted to offer a thought on the get your
body back concept. I haven't had a baby as of yet,
that several of my friends who have had babies have
expressed the idea of wanting their body back during the
end of their terms rather than the idea of looking beautiful.
(44:53):
It's more of a I've had this house guest inside
of me, kicking me, eating my food, et cetera, and
I am ready to be done and just be me again.
So with that in mind, I could see the idea
of getting your body back being a reclamation of freedom
to make choices for your body that aren't constrained by
having a baby inside of it, rather than just an
oppressive enforcement of beauty norms. And speaking of oppressive enforcement
(45:16):
of beauty norms or lack thereof Dad Bod, I think
there's a lot to be said about the virality of
it and the myriad opinions on it, and I would
love to hear you guys tackle it. She says personally,
I'm kind of horrified by the phenomenon, but I can't
really put my finger on why. Well, so there you go, Christina,
(45:36):
Uh like christ and said one will be coming up
an episode becoming about dad bods next. Yeah, And I
have a feeling that there are listeners who waited aren't
listening to this podcast right when it came out, and
you've already got dad Bods in your queue, so binge
listen to that. And in the meantime, we want to
hear from you. Mom. Stuff at how stuff works dot
(45:59):
com is our email address, although I am thinking of
changing it to dad Bod's podcast at household works dot
com and re link to all of our social media
as well as all of our blogs, videos, and podcasts,
including this one with all of our man cave sources,
so you can and really should check out that man
cave and masculinity study I don't know. Over to Stuff
(46:20):
Mom Never Told You dot com for more on this
and thousands of other topics. Is it How staff Works
dot com
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Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.