With so much talk about gender politics (and game) dominating the accidental feminist for the past few months (and my continued inability to figure out how to comment), I decided to look at the topic through the phenomenon of knitting. Though it may be particular to sassy women (OK, and gay/emo men) in American culture, it is not so through the entirety of the world. In Peru and Bolivia, men do the knitting while women dye the fibers and hold the yarn! If men in those countries get yarn holders, then why can’t we American women get our men folk to do the same? Is the fact that these women have to sit and watch in boredom as the men drop stitches of their beautiful wool a sign of subjugation? Is it disrespectful for my boo to reply with “You’ve got to be kidding” when asked to hold my yarn?
During the “research” (googling the words “men knitting”) for this entry, I stumbled upon this wonderful page. I swear I’ll marry the first man I meet who has a subscription to “Men Knit” magazine. (Note: A quick perusal of the blogs indicates that I’m probably not going to have to worry about breaking that promise, if you know what I mean).
Maybe gender politics through knitting isn’t quite as controversial as through the lens of humor or dating. Here are some more cultural oddities concerning knitting (the last one may or may not be true as it is some fuzzy memory of something told to me years ago):
During WWI and WWII, the Red Cross launched a massive knitting campaign to send warm goodies to American soldiers. They even distributed patterns, had quality control, and bought enough yarn to wrap around the world at the equator 32 times.
In Japan, rich women often have personal knitters to whip them up anything their little fad-obsessed hearts desire. Japan also has what is probably the world’s only “fiber arts” school, where after 7-9 years of training one is proficient enough to knit top fashions by sight. If only my high school guidance counselor had told me about this life option…
Somewhere in the British Isles, the wives of fishermen used to knit sweaters for their husbands with a slight flaw so that if a sweater, but not a body, ever washed ashore, they’d be able to identify him…kind of like really fun dental records!
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