A man cave shows what a bad wife you are
Lately I've been wondering: Don't Man Caves -- those spaces we give our husbands to store the stuff we won't allow in the rest of the house -- say more about us than they do about our husbands?
You know what I'm talking about, right? Man Caves are those designated rooms in which we let our spouses hang the baseball pennants, jerseys, and posters they rescued from their childhood bedrooms. Maybe they display their stamp or beer-bottle collections, or play their ridiculously infantile video games, or -- for all we know -- tuck away their secret collection of porn. (Really, who knows what they do in there?)
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Sometimes these Man Caves are hatched inside a spare bedroom, sometimes it's a corner of the basement, or the garage, or a shed. (My own husband doesn't even get that -- his sports paraphernalia is either shoved behind the shredded settee in our kids' playroom or left littering the bottom of his closet.)
Lots of us laugh at our husband's Man Caves (whether we call them that or not). In fact, it's probably fair to say that we cede those spaces to them in part just so we can laugh at their ridiculously silly crap. (Honestly, what grownup really needs to keep the decor from his childhood bedroom? I know it was a big deal when your baseball team won the Series, but that was several decades ago. You are no longer 8. It's time to move on.)
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But no matter how absurd the contents of our husband's Man Caves, I'm wondering if those segmented spaces don't reflect more poorly on us women than they do on our men: What does it say about our relationships that while our stuff gets a whole house, his stuff gets only one stanky corner? That doesn't seem very equitable.
Maybe it's time we release our guys from their Man Caves, liberate their silly collections (no matter how unsightly), and somehow find a way to integrate their crap (and their taste, interests, and opinions) into the rest of the house.
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And who knows, maybe there's a way to make those pennants look cool on your living-room wall: Just think of them as retro kitsch!
Does your husband have a Man Cave? And if so, what does he keep in there?
Image via puuikibeach/Flickr
Written by Amy Reiter on CafeMom's blog, The Stir.
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