According to our currently accepted definition of “scrapbooking”, it tends to be a sport dominated, much to the chagrin of manufacturers and folks who earn their living in the crafting industry, by Women. A “girlie” feel good sport all about stickers, warm fuzzy emotions and feel good moments complete with the little freckled angel sitting in the red wagon with his puppy….. “Real Men” don’t “scrapbook”. Well, when it is described like *that*, I would have to tend to agree. The guys in my classrooms aren’t really into the stickers and “cutesy” paper. They have no sentimental attachment to the supplies but, oh my, are they passionate about the task of documenting their memories! Men look at “scrapbooking” COMPLETELY differently than women do from the get go. Wrap your heads around this for a minute, where did our history books come from, our field guides, our illuminated manuscripts and sacred texts, our star charts, our medical drawings and such? Who wrote a good chunk of our history? How do we know about those who came before us? Is this not “scrapbooking” in it’s most primitive form? Da Vinci, Galileo, all those gifted Greek and Roman thinkers, and even Mark Twain were noted “scrapbookers”- hoarders of random facts and collectors of trinkets and treasures from around their world stuck to pages as to not forget about the important details….
Catching my drift here? “Scrapbooking” means different things to different folks but, when it is boiled down to it’s basic form, it is about people and the events that made a mark. How we choose to remember them isn’t really important, it is that we do that is. Read more about Mark Twain and his fantastic “scrapbooks” here.
Very interesting post, Sarah. I have a friend — a single dad who scrapbooked his only daughter’s life. She’s now 18. He has books and books filled with her life. No stickers. Just paper and memories and a father’s complete love for his child. It’s touching and beautiful.
I think one of the coolest groups of guys I teach are a group of WWII vets- their books are amazing. There isn’t a lot of fluff, they just call it like they see it. One gentleman added braille to his pages so a buddy of his could read the page about himself…it was pretty cool.