David and I are proactively saving our marriage (before it has really begun) and are currently taking the church's 6 week course, Strengthening Marriage, which was organized by LDS Services and is taught by an old married couple in our stake. It really is a great class and if your stake offers it, I highly recommend it. It doesn't offer insights you might not have already made, but it does force you and your spouse to discuss things you might not have contemplated before.
During last week's lesson, entitled "Fostering Equality and Unity," our teachers gave us each a quiz on who should decide certain questions in the marriage like "What hobbies should the wife pursue?" or "How much time should each spouse spend pursuing hobbies or interests?" These two questions in particular raised the following exchange:
Me: "I think we both can decide our own interests, as long as it doesn't interfere with what needs to be done at home."
Lady Teacher: "What if you [meaning me, the woman] decide to take up scrapbooking? It can be a huge drain on finances and take up a lot of time."
David: "...."
Me: [looks at David] "I will never take up scrapbooking."
David: "Thank you."
I know there are people out there--people I call friends even--who enjoy scrapbooking and are quite good at it. But I don't get it. Well, I do get it: it's a creative and artistic outlet that allows you to document your memories with cute paper and random cutouts, stickers, and doodads. I tried it out once but was not very successful. Plus it takes forever. I'm still trying to find the patience to organize all my wedding photos so that I can slip them into the little plastic covers of the photo album I bought. Even that is proving to be too complicated for me. So why do so many women spend so much time and money on this particular hobby?
I read an article once that basically said that the popularity of scrapbooking is greatly attributable to Mormon women. Yay for us I guess. If there's one thing I love to investigate--and to mock--it's Mormon culture. What about our religion breeds the desire to spend hours agonizing over the layout of one page of a scrapbook, attending scrapbooking galas, and buying up papers, crazy cutouts, themed kits, and stamps to enhance a few photographs?
I'd really like to understand the allure of scrapbooking and why, as a Mormon woman, it's almost expected that I should be a scrapbooker. So, for the few who read this blog, and the even fewer who comment, why do you scrapbook? Why do you think it's so popular in the Mormon community besides as a way to "document family history"? And do you think the stereotypes surrounding the scrapbooking community are really fair?
One of my mentors at the Smithsonian, who is very interested in ephemera, wrote a book about scrapbooking. She suggested that scrapbooking is a new evolution of women's domestic work which, until the 20th century, mainly consisted of sewing and embroidery and odd little domestic crafts. (Check out Godey's Lady's Book or Ladies Home Journal from the latter half of the 19th century. I saw one how-to guide to make a hair pin holder using a dead lobster carcass. How's that for crafty? Martha Stewart has nothing on these ladies.) In a way, scrapbooking has replaced quilts has the means through which women tell the stories of their lives and to gather together for social purposes. But quilts always served a more utilitarian function (to keep one warm) but do scrapbooks have any functions beyond words and photographs on a piece of paper?
I feel a research project coming on...
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3 comments:
heheehee...why do I have a feeling I may have encouraged this post? :) I have to come clean that I scrapbook, but I don't do anything fancy. I attempted once to do a layout, but I just don't have the patience for it. I buy a stack of acid free plain paper (it's the weight of poster board) and just put pictures on it. I then write on the bottom what the pictures are with acid free pens. It is relatively cheap and is quicker than a layout. I usually have the tv on in the background and can get a few pages done in an hour.
Why do I scrapbook? Because I always liked looking at family photo albums, and I just want them organized. I am also a paranoid archivist who must have everything acid free. I learned it at a stake fireside once at BYU that you should cut slats with an x-acto knife in the board and stick the corner of the pictures in the slats. The sticky stuff ruins the photos.
I have albums of my study abroad and BYU days. I have redone albums for my mom, sister and myself. I am also currently doing my grandmas and have stacks of pictures from the 1980s to work on from home. As I look at my grandma's pictures, I just wonder who the people are. My grandma can't remember, but if someone was on top of their scrapbooking I would have known. I'd love to scan all the pictures so they aren't lost to posterity but I have no idea when that is going to be done. I guess in a lot of ways its an extension of my family history. I don't want to be forgotten like many of my ancestors. I just want to leave a footprint of myself on the earth for my posterity. I also write a journal too but why is for another day.
Abby you certainly did inspire this post, in part. It's true that keeping a photographic record requires more than just putting pictures in a photo album (as I have done) because I look back at some of my photos and have a very difficult time remembering names. So writing down that kind of information is a good idea. I didn't intend to give the impression that I don't like or respect those who scrapbook because I often wish I had the talent or patience to do it. But keeping it simple would definitely be my preference. It's the really gaudy and expensive looking scrapbooks that don't make a lot of sense to me. But as a way to document family memories, names, and events, it's truly a worthwhile endeavor. I should look more into it and getting acid free materials. I would definitely want them to last. I made a really cheesy one for David for Valentine's Day two years ago and the ink has already started to bleed which is sad.
I also want to scan in my photographs as well, but I don't know when that will happen either. I guess if you equate the scrapbook with the journal it makes more sense. Thanks for your comment! I really enjoyed it.
I have a hard time with scrapbooking, even though I used to enjoy it a lot, simply because it takes so much time. Anyway, I don't know why it's considered a Mormon woman thing--if it started as that, it certainly has moved beyond that. I think the draw is that it's a creative outlet for women, something they enjoy doing (assuming they do enjoy it), but I think the key is that they can still justify it because it's also doing something for the family. It's preserving family memories for the kids. Women, especially those who grow up believing it is their role to care for their family as their primary concern, probably wouldn't spend a whole lot of money or time on things wholly unrelated to their family. I'm not going to go out and get a massage just because I feel like it. But if I can find a way to work a purchase into doing something for my family, that's different. (Like there are these fruit/vegi supplements I'd like to get, and Adrian even pointed out that I can't feel bad about spending the money because it's for the baby. He already knows how I think, and we don't even have young kids yet.)
I think the quilt comparison is pretty fair. Part of homemaking is often making the necessary things also beautiful. It would have been easy 150 years ago to make a really plain quilt that provides warmth, but women would take the time to make a detailed design which they probably felt showed their love for their families. In today's world, not only is quilting not really in style, but it's not needed anymore. Anybody can go to the store and buy a blanket providing the utility function but is also pretty, and it takes a lot less time and effort than making a quilt. Women simply don't have to make things in order to provide the necessary things for their families, but there's still a desire, I think, to make something nice for your family, and for a lot of women this comes out in scrapbooking. It's the same feeling that I get from cooking.
Now, why people automatically assume that you, as a Mormon woman, must absolutely adore scrapbooking I have no idea. We put as much pressure on ourselves internally as comes from others looking in and not understanding what Mormon women are really all about. I guess it's just that since a lot of women do enjoy it, people assume all do. It's the same as any false generalization. It doesn't mean anyone who doesn't like it is wrong or something.
In a cynical way, perhaps it picked up in Mormon culture as a response from women wanting a more modern way to be crafty and cute--knowing that they weren't going to be able to compete with the generation before in terms of those homemaking skills but wanted to be able to feel like they could do SOMETHING.
I don't know. Enough commenting from me for now. I'm getting sleepy, as may be obvious from the clarity or lack thereof in all I've written. :)
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