I have been thinking a lot this summer about labels. Labels have been frequently in the news, often surrounding very serious events. Two labels that occasionally (although not often) come up here are “feminine” and “masculine,” used to describe decor. These days I am not liking these labels. I am thinking: Never again will I use these words on this blog, unless used to examine history. Dear readers, what do you think? Above: In 1954, Kohler did not shy from putting a boy in a pink bathroom. Would any company do this today?
Did you see this recent story about Target’s decision to no longer use gender descriptions to differentiate toys, home and entertainment? I’m liking this.
Here are a few of my thoughts on why the time has come to sideline the terms “feminine” and “masculine” to describe decor and decorating styles:
- It seems that these labels are virtually all driven by cultural norms that change over time and are in no way absolute. For example, we’ve written before about Jo Paolettis’s book, Pink and Blue: Telling the Boys from the Girls in America (affiliate link), which studied how the modern associations of pink for girls and blue for boys rose to prominence relatively recently in the history of child rearing. And wood paneling — probably widely viewed as a man-cave material today — well, that was such a common wall covering for so many decades in the 20th Century that I can’t imagine it was viewed as masculine or feminine. Is there any aspect of a decorating preference that is truly hard-wired into our biology based on our sex? Okay, I did track this story in 2008, but now the source link is dead, so I don’t know how to investigate further.
- These decorating labels promote and reinforce hard-to-change cultural norms that run deep and which limit the behaviors and opportunities of people of both genders. As in: If so-called feminine decor is soft and ornamental –> then so must be girls and women. Ergo, hard-edged, no-nonsense “masculine” decor underscores the notion that men must be these things, too.
- They are stereotypes. Nix these labels and instead, work a little harder to find and use more specific descriptive language about the decorating choices made by each unique individual.
Why do you think about using the terms “feminine” and “masculine” to describe decor, dear readers?
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LisaB says
Hi Pam,
Perhaps others would be hesitant like I am to disagree with you. May I suggest an anonymous poll/vote? It will give you more honest results.
Thanks!
pam kueber says
Hi Lisa, Bring it on! I like what lexavline also just said:
Let me think about how I’d phrase a poll. I think I’m concerned about that because I would have to come up with a variety of responses (not just two) to get at some of the subtleties.
LisaB says
LOL! Thanks Pam – I like what P.G. said, though I wouldn’t be as tempered in my language. I love your blog waaay to much to be barred. 🙂
pam kueber says
Note, I could not come up with polling language. Everyone’s comments are way more interesting than I could sum up in a poll…
lexavline says
Being that this is such a hot topic at the moment, I want to add that I am very happy to read here that retro renovators can have different opinions and manage to keep a conversation civil without becoming insulting, degrading or downright mean as is so common elsewhere on the web. Way to go, retro renovators! Better taste = better manners!!!:- )
pam kueber says
Yes: I watch an hour of news almost every night and read a newspaper front to back daily: “This is such a hot topic in the news at the moment.” Which got me to thinking about how I might use these words on the blog.
Rickie says
I’m sorry, but this is not an issue for me. I’m probably the only one that thinks this, but this seems like a first world problem.
cellen says
I completely agree! I think Pam is way over thinking this. Pam, please don’t overthink this. Boys and girls are different and that’s just fine. Please stick to groovy decorating and leave the political stuff to Apartment Therapy! Please!
pam kueber says
Thanks, Cellen, I hear ya. But it came up not too long ago. Which made me think about it.
I don’t know that I’ve ever had an open thread that spoke directly to a political issue before.
While from my write up it’s clear that I don’t like the terms [I’ve been thinking a lot about adjectives and adverbs lately — I am a writer!], I really truly am reading everyone’s comments and thinking about everyone has to say with an eye to expanding/refining how I think about this issue.
Sam R says
People are different. That’s all. Any division between “boys” and “girls,” outside of the obvious anatomical differences, are societal inventions.
I’m most definitely male, and I fell in love with my house because of the mostly original light blue and pink bathroom.
Tracy Perez says
I went back and look at both the del Brown and Cowan sketches. It was interesting that while it was easy to adding feminine or masculine to the del Brown rooms, Cowan’s seem gender neutral to me.
Tracy says
Very interesting topic. Its so easy to use these terms as short hand to convey a style. Feminine is sees as soft, flowery, frilly. Masculine as harder, bold, clean lined.
The question is what terms to replace these?
Tikimama says
You just answered your own question! It doesn’t take much longer to write, type or say “soft and flowery” instead of “feminine” or “bold and clean-lined” instead of “masculine”.
Sam R says
How about the ones you just used?
P.G. says
I think the differences between masculine and feminine are to be celebrated! Why do we think our culture has to be one ugly vanilla homogeneous blob of sameness? The contrast and differences are what makes decor and lots of other things exciting and fun. I am tired of all this uber p.c. talk- who cares if you are drawn to the different decorating “gender”- there’s nothing wrong with liking the foil, but it doesn’t mean we must change the label. Try to keep up with the changing names and it will all be confusion. As a strong woman, I love to be able to be soft and feminine. What in the world could be better?
Bette Jean says
Ditto
Robin, NV says
I agree that masculine and feminine differences should be celebrated. But I think Pam’s point is that it’s maybe not OK to label a floral couch “feminine” or a wood paneled room “masculine.” Does that mean a man that purchases a floral couch is less masculine? Why can’t we just drop the labels and let men and women like what they like?
As a historical archaeologist, I’m well versed in the theories of material culture – that objects “say” something about their owner. As a society we do this constantly and with little thought. “Sue owns a 10 year old Corolla, she must be ___.” “Joe owns a floral couch, he must be ___.” Labels allow us to quickly come to conclusions about people that are often incorrect, unfair, and bigoted. I don’t think this issue is ever going to go away completely but, as I said in my comment below, people like Pam, who are considered “experts in their field,” perhaps do have a responsibility to eliminate gender labels if we, as a society, are ever going to mature.
pam kueber says
Wow, Robin NV, if I knew you were a historical archaeologist, I forgot. Intereresting! I often feel like what we do here is historical archeology, but I alas, I don’t have a degree in that field! I have been thinking about getting one – not in archeology, but some form of the decorative arts or history related to it.
Robin, NV says
Pam, you are a natural born historian, not just for the fact that you catalog, research, and write about the past but that you understand how we see and use the past from a modern, often flawed, perspective.
This ties in with many of today’s comments, which I find fascinating – that historically, gender roles and gender preferences seemed very cut-and-dry. The problem is that our understanding of the decorative arts from the past relies heavily on information gleaned from marketing sources – most notably magazines and magazine ads. Neither of these really get to the heart of gender roles because they play to stereotypes (as marketing mostly does). Magazines and advertisements show the “ideal.” But think about it, how many people had perfectly manicured lawns, perfectly decorated homes, perfectly put-together wardrobes? Do any of us have those things today? Geez, just look at the room layouts for Pottery Barn. Who really lives in homes like that? Probably very few of us and I think the same could be said for the past. While magazines and ads offer glimpses into some of the things that people value, they hardly tell the whole picture, perhaps especially in regard to gender. We all assume that every woman of the 1950s was Suzy Homemaker because that’s what the ads from the time promoted. Nuanced advertising is difficult, therefore it’s easiest to fall back on stereotypes. Furthermore, advertisers want to promote gender roles because once you identify a group, it’s easy to manipulate it into thinking “this is what I need because I’m a woman.” So I tend to disagree with people who say “it’s OK to use masculine and feminine in a historical sense because that’s how it was back then.” Was it? Do we really know that?
LREKing says
“Sue owns a 10 year old Corolla, she must be IN LOVE WITH THAT CAR.”
“Joe owns a floral couch, he must be REMINDED OF A COUCH HIS FAMILY HAS WHEN HE WAS A KID.”
The point being, you can never really know why another person does what he or she does. In fact, most of us have no idea why we do what we do.
Robin, NV says
Yep. But most people will resort to snap judgements and apply single word descriptors because that’s quicker and easier than actually getting to know someone.
LREKing says
I think you may be missing the point. No one is suggesting getting rid of the design elements themselves, only questioning the way in which we refer to them.
If you say, for example, that pink and frilly is feminine, then what are you implying about a man who also likes pink and frilly? Or about a woman who happens to prefer dark woods and leather?
Retroski says
Quite interesting! If you want to leave it out for decorating, okay, fine.
Yet it’s great to still be able to describe men as “masculine” and women as “feminine”. Society likes to define m/f in narrow little boxes but masculinity and femininity are more diverse than we give them credit for! It’s beautiful to see how these qualities are interpreted in different men and women.
For ex, women have a bent to nurture and give life. Men have a bent to provide and protect.
But this can be shown broadly. (Not that men don’t nurture or women don’t provide!)
Let’s learn from the retro days and celebrate. Be men. Be women. If there’s “more than one way to retro,” there’s more than one way to be a guy or a lady!
Jennifer says
I would support this decision. There are other ways to describe decorating styles that don’t make them feel exclusive to half the population. “Masculine” tends to be used with dark colors, so why not just call them dark? “Feminine” tends to be used with pink, lace, ruffles, so call it soft and pink. There are lots of perfectly good adjectives out there, that don’t exclude people who like something that isn’t “gender conforming.”
Andi says
An interesting topic, Pam. Flipping through the great interiors of Hazel Del Brown yesterday, I heard my inner voice say, “Of course I like that one, the most masculine room.”
It happened that my favorite overall look was the hunter’s den or study—not because I’m a hunter. I hadn’t even noticed those details. That look, traditionally called masculine, appeals to me. Like a classic British library.
Many years ago, our Victorian-era house was featured in a Victorian decorating magazine (via a friend-of-a-friend who knew the editor). When the writer came to interview us for the story, she made the instant assumption that my husband’s taste in decor had prevailed as she exclaimed how very “masculine” all the rooms looked, except the master bedroom.
She said I must have chosen the bedroom decor, which was decidedly feminine with swirling cabbage rose wallpaper and lace curtains. (By the way, every square inch of that house was wallpapered by yours truly!)
In reality, had my husband’s taste been given free reign, the entire house would have had “feminine” ruffles, lace, shades of pink and flowery wallpaper! He loved that room, and the late 1980s–1990s version of frilly “Victorian,” whereas I preferred more historical motifs, grounded tertiary colors, and had/have a strong preference for anything exotic.
As that writer said, I was indeed the “masculine” one—although until she verbalized it, I had never thought of it in those terms. I knew I was never a ruffles and lace girl—in decor or clothing—but hadn’t thought I had “masculine” taste, either.
So I guess after all these years I’ve internalized her judgement—my inner voice’s comment yesterday proves that. You are so right…there must be another way to describe a look.
pam kueber says
I think this question has actually been nagging me since 2011, when I went to the Shaw Floors event and created a room as part of their media program.
One of the other participants commented that our room was the only one that looked masculine. I really really like this other participant — she is a very kind and hard-working person — I know she was using it as “shorthand” to compare and contrast with the other rooms. Which is what we do.
But. When we were designing the room, it never ever occurred to me that we were making a room for a man or a woman. It was just a living room for a family that used a variety of furniture and accessories that were available to use in a pleasing way. Except for the wall colors, I think it turned out really nicely.
I bristled at having it being pigeonholed. Like I said, I still think about it.
Here’s the story, scroll down to to see the room: https://retrorenovation.com/2011/08/12/hgtv-home-shaw-floors-trip-report-hangin-with-lisa-laporta-obsessing-over-dog-portraits-riding-a-cherry-picker-and-creating-a-design-star-room/
Mr Kim says
Hello everyone,
I like this post because it shows that although you think you deal with decoration, most times you’re, in fact dealing with society and history. Which, is, of course, what makes decoration the way it is. It might be a minor art, or applied art, but it works like the rest of Arts.
Now, I also like that you want labels too keep up with history, not trying to apply modern denominations to past periods, because things change and obviously what is «masculine» here and today, might be «feminine» in another country and another time.
When society changes, it’s time to adapt the language accordingly, not the other way round.
Just to conclude, let me offer you a little story I was told some time ago. Somebody told me the pink/blue stuff is quite recent. As recent as Victorian. Prior to this, blue, in Europe, as a symbol of purity -universally seen dressing Virgin Mary- was for girls. While red, the colour of blood, was for boys, who would become knights and go to battle. But since little boys were not yet fully grown up, pink was for them, like washed out red, red-in-the future kind of. Perhaps the love of Victorians for roses and the language of flowers broke up with the tradition and assigned pink to girls. In any case, I didn’t have the chance to verify it, but I did realise that pink-girls/blue-boys doesn’t seem to appear in historic paintings until the 19th century. It might be a good story for you 🙂
pam kueber says
Yes, Mr. Kim, check out the link in the story to Jo Paoletti’s book — she has tracked how the colors blue and pink have been alternately assigned to males and females over the years.
And even more importantly, I love what you wrote:
In fact, it’s all these years of blogging — and looking back at how styles and trends have changed — that got me to thinking about this question.
Bob says
The boy in the pink bathroom was just advertising – trying to assure you that your son and dog would be doubleplusgood with the color (see, boys like it too)… oops, I said boy – darn oldspeak label.