An interesting article in Pacific Standard came across my feed in the last few weeks. It suggests that male disinterest in the arts is a result of social pressure to conform during the early teen years.
Author Tom Jacobs was reporting on a study involving 5227 students in Belgium, which found:
The results: “We found that the more typical a male adolescent considers himself to be, the lower his interest in highbrow culture,” the researchers report. “The more gender congruent a female adolescent is, the higher her interest in highbrow cultural activities.”
Perhaps more importantly, they found “the more pressure for gender conformity a young man experiences, the lower his interest in highbrow culture.”
Young women under similar conformist pressure were more interested in cultural activities, but only to a small degree. This difference reflects the fact “it is more difficult for young men to like an activity perceived as feminine than it is for young women to dislike a feminine activity,” the researchers write.
If you are like me, you may have caught the repetition of the term “high brow culture,” and wondered if perhaps the results would have been different if they changed their definition of art.
The categories they surveyed on were “making music, studying drama, painting or drawing, attending plays or dance performances, using the library, visiting an art museum, and reading.” While these don’t seem inherently highbrow I wondered if the Dutch terms they used had certain highbrow connotations.
One of the article commenters, Ginnie Lupi, (who, on closer inspection, I see is the Director of the NH State Council on the Arts), said much the same thing:
“I agree with the study designers in the need to focus “on topics that are closer to young men’s interests.” We’re going to keep getting these kind of results if we continue to cleave to an outdated definition of the arts. Maybe some of the questions should have involved video games, reading comics and drawing superheroes?”
Drawing superheroes especially resonated with me. My friends and I used to draw all sorts of sci-fi and superhero battles as kids. If you had asked me if I had any desire to hone my skill to become better, I would have said no.
However, if you were able to draw me out into a conversation and asked me why I liked to draw these scenes, I might not have been the most erudite, but I would have given you a sense of how it helped me connect with my imagination and with my classmates who were doing the same thing. That could have provided the basis of further conversation.
Now granted, I went into the arts so I probably didn’t need that further conversation, but discussions like that can provide good opportunities.
"Though while the author wishes they could buy it in Walmart..." Who is "they"? The kids? The author? Something else?…