#339: The Wooden Model
Building upon a masculine hobby
A lot of online lockdown chatter was about hobbies, about who was making banana bread or doing sudokus. But also the fact that we didn’t need to bow to the pressure to try something new.
I have been thinking about hobbies again. This time I have been thinking not just about their relevance now, but about how they evolved in the past. And I have been thinking specifically about building models, models like this vintage wooden camera I built.
Model building, specifically from kits, is a test of how well you follow instructions, your dexterity, and your patience. You get to build something from scratch without ever really using your imagination. It engages the brain but in a sharply focussed and uncreative way. Model building helps me switch off. I’ve become a little addicted.
But when I went to the store for more models, I was struck by how “masculine” my options were. I use quotes here because I know that gender is a social construct and really who am I to categorise an object into a specific gender based on tradition, and yet it was clear that deep within the toy industry, someone was doing just that.
I could choose from model aeroplanes, helicopters and cars, dinosaurs and lions. There is greater variety if you look online, and this camera doesn’t necessarily conform to a gender stereotype, but if we think traditionally about model train sets, airfix and matchstick models, I think we think of boys and men — Daddy helping little Jim with his spitfire, but really quite enjoying it himself. Jane, however, probably had a doll and a little iron. While Jim was learning to build machines, Jane was building a home.
Though scale model building had been a useful architectural tool for a long time, and wooden models have also been built throughout history, it was in the mid-twentieth-century that building models as a hobby took off. Plastic and mass-consumerism combined, and the model-building industry grew.
With many models, the appeal to adults is in the precision. It is the scale replica of great machines in tiny detail that attracts. And I wonder if it is the motivation that is actually more “masculine” that the types of object, the trains and aeroplanes, made.
When you build something that is a scale model of something important, a historically significant ship, for example, your model is also lent some of that importance. It is not just a hobby, but an educational tool, a representation of history. It fills you with the idea that you can build great things. It feeds into the view that while women stay in the house all day, men do the important work. And it pushes that idea even into recreational time.
I wonder if this is why I have found it hard to find the types of models that I want to build. As I said above, I am not interested in building an Aston Martin to scale, replicating the exact details of the original. I just want to fit pieces together in an absorbing and therefore calming way. Make a house maybe, or a little piano, or even an elephant.
Perhaps there is a market for different model builders, model builders like me.
