Real Men Draw Superheroes

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 We’re going to keep getting these kind of results if we continue to cleave to an outdated definition of the arts.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.

About Joe Patti

I have been writing Butts in the Seats (BitS) on topics of arts and cultural administration since 2004 (yikes!). Given the ever evolving concerns facing the sector, I have yet to exhaust the available subject matter. In addition to BitS, I am a founding contributor to the ArtsHacker (artshacker.com) website where I focus on topics related to boards, law, governance, policy and practice.

I am also an evangelist for the effort to Build Public Will For Arts and Culture being helmed by Arts Midwest and the Metropolitan Group. (http://www.creatingconnection.org/about/)

My most recent role was as Executive Director of the Grand Opera House in Macon, GA.

Among the things I am most proud are having produced an opera in the Hawaiian language and a dance drama about Hawaii's snow goddess Poli'ahu while working as a Theater Manager in Hawaii. Though there are many more highlights than there is space here to list.

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