[Within the Protestant Paradigm: Leisure and Relaxation across the Lawns of America]
Rarely does one see the American male in a passive state with nature. Our society, in particular, does not encourage men to endure much activity and comfort with its alliance to the outdoors, that is, unless it is in the framework of an assertive and sportive entity with nature. In fact, American men tend to experience their relation to the outdoors as an adventurous epic of aggression. We are seasonal hunters; we are weekend sportsmen; we are gardening-care-takers of our homes; we are campers across our vast country of parks and canyons; and we are hiking and fighting service-men at war overseas (and only on a commercial note, only here in the discourse of a break from the perilous escapes of enemy gun-fire, might we see a soldier up against a stump or ruined-like-building reading a love-letter from his woman/wife/lover back home). Yet it is quite rare to see men passively sun-bathing on the lawns and parks of our public domain—in fact, contrary to our European counter-parts, at least to my knowledge, the rule of law itself totally discourages this demeanor of public exposure from men in American society. There is, still to this day in American culture, very little room for the Renaissance man, and we seem to stand firmly on the frontiersman’s rugged beliefs—laid down to us by our Protestant forefathers— that there exists upon our United States, very little room for feminine-like felinity among her American men.
My Gender Photo Assignment sets out to observe that one does not see many American men relaxing on the lawns of college campuses or outside on public lawns, leisurely reading a book or calmly listening to the pastoral voices surrounding them on any given week-day or weekend spree. Perhaps, indeed, it was surely a common happening during that epoch of interims between Jefferson, Whitman, and Emerson, but so uncommon is it to view men bringing this vulnerable of leisure to such a modern arena or commune. It simply does not fit our social discourse or Zeitgeist.
I began my study watching the Duke University football gather in front of the cathedral. (Notice how the majority of the players seem to need the firmness of concrete under their feet. Is this even simply Chance or Consequent?) Among the continuity of other frames, there are other students waiting for both the arrival of the team and the arrival of buses that will take them to the first game of the season. An elder couple takes their place amongst the youthful. Elsewhere on the campus, there are a couple of students performing different rituals. While one woman speaks to her Parisian boyfriend via Skype [this picture has been immensely edited and excludes this conversation…], behind her, in the picture’s background, is a Duke freshman who happens to be from California. To me, she seems a bit superficial when I compare her focus to all the other women of whom I took photos. It would seem befitting that she were right in the center of a tennis court instead. With the exception of the last two photos that recur in the Starbucks surrounding (For example, pay attention to the guy on the mobile phone!), when I was not including the women of Duke in my collage, I engaged myself in studying a leisure-cycle that encompassed UNCG women. With little irony, I found these women to be very comfortable and attached to nature.
Superfluous to admit how, still, I cannot find any closure when I take the time to correlate my female assembly of “nature” photos to the two advertising photos from Sisley, and Duncan Quinn: one easily gets the eerie sense that the status quo is far from reconciling with altering its beliefs in the importance of keeping the rugged-edge norm of gamesmanship upon the psyche of the American male, and America’s global input on both marketing and advertising.
