HER maneutics:: Why Women Are Obsessed with Pinterest

"Last Generation Forums" :: WOMEN'S STUDIES (enjoyed by Men) :: HER maneutics:: Why Women Are Obsessed with Pinterest  Author Topic: Why Women Are Obsessed with Pinterest (Read 1 time) Michael James Stone Administrator Site-Administrator member isonline   Joined: May 2012 Gender: Male Posts: 809 Why Women Are Obsessed with Pinterest « Thread Started Today at 1:51pm »    Why Women Are Obsessed with Pinterest The spirituality of the booming online "self-expression engine." Laura Leonard “Men are more visual than women.” It’s a refrain we’ve all heard to explain the differences between men's and women's sexuality. If you want proof of the contrary, look no further than Pinterest. What is Pinterest? TechCrunch describes it as a “self-expression engine” along the lines of Twitter and Facebook. Users can create virtual “mood boards” or “vision boards" on which they can collect images. Users can create separate boards for any kind of interest--fashion, art, books, decor, crafts, recipes, workout ideas, inspirational quotes--and “pin” to those boards images that reflect their style and tastes. Users can share these curated collections with friends or inspired strangers. The community is a large part of the draw--users can browse and search the entire network, which now includes over 1.5 million actives users (the majority of whom are women). I am one of them. I first heard of the site a few months ago. A friend insisted I had to join and rapturously boasted she’d “wasted so many hours” poring over pages of pins (she assured me this was a good thing, and after a few minutes on the site I would realize she was right on both counts). I now have six different boards to which I regularly post. They’re mostly of clothes I can’t afford but like to look at, and a few home decor ideas I’ll never try but would like to think I could. As of right now, I follow 65 people: mostly friends, but a few I don’t know but have decided have excellent (read: similar) taste. And 65 people follow me, including more than a few I have never met. And I have spent many hours scrolling through page after page of recipes, hair styles, incredible home libraries, and vintage cookware, looking for inspiration. What I thought would be a mindless time waster has become an active pursuit, and I tend to my boards as one might a garden. Whenever I get an e-mail that someone new is following my boards, I feel validated in my tastes, and, in some small way, in myself. So what does all this say about the ways in which women are visual? Why do so many women spend so much time seeking out images to pin? Some users simply want a place to track things they don’t want to forget. Wedding planning seems to be a popular theme, as do crafting, cooking, and decorating. Many items are accompanied by comments like “I want this!” or “I need to try this!” Workouts, recipes, and “thinspiration” images motivate users to get in shape, and DIY crafting and home improvement ideas inspire project ideas. “Research has shown that making a ‘vision board’ with pictures of things that inspire you to live healthier are more effective than writing goals on a piece of paper or just resolving to do them in your mind,” says a Shape article entitled, “Can Pinterest Change Your Life?” And the site proves that women can be visual in exactly the same ways as men--I’ve seen more than enough images of shirtless men to confirm this hypothesis. Pinterest seems to be a forum for building up “innocent” fantasies--dream closets, dream homes, dream men--and in this way encouraging consumer tendencies. These fantasies engage both a visual and emotional fantasy that is often disconnected from reality. By collecting and displaying these images, we are laying ourselves and our desire out for all to see. Pinterest is at heart a social platform. In August, Time named it one of the 50 best websites of 2011. In a Wall Street Journal column, Emily Rosman identifies Pinterest as one of the technologies that is “holding her marriage together.” She said the site has become “an affectionate way of communicating” for her and her husband, as he surprises her with gifts and craft supplies inspired by her pins, and she posts images she knows he will like. But Rosman also taps into the risk of any social media: self-expression can all too quickly become self-definition. In other words: you are what you pin. On Pinterest, users gain social capital by acquiring new followers and getting their images liked or reposted. A pinboard can function like a Facebook profile--a proclamation of who you are, communicated through what you like. We love beautiful things, and want others to associate us with those beautiful things. Beauty is a good thing, and God created us to enjoy it. This is a truth that explains the fascination with Pinterest, which connects the visual with the emotional, as well as the visual component of male sexuality, which connects the visual with the physical. And it is true, for both men and women (and both can be and are visual in both ways). But just as the visual aspects of sexuality can easily lead to habits that feed the visual and physical appetite without engaging the object of beauty, so too can this form of visual stimulus feed the visual and emotional appetite and lead to mindless and harmful consumption. How many hours spent on Pinterest are rooted in discontent? As I scroll through the pages, I am overwhelmed by the feeling that I will never have enough: enough money, to own all the beautiful things I want; enough time, to cook all the tempting recipes; enough skill, to attempt all the crafting projects; enough beauty, to have that hair or to pull off that dress. To what extent can we simply enjoy beauty without lusting after the objects (and people) we find beautiful? I believe it can be done. I own a few things I consider really beautiful, and my tea set is one of them. From time to time, especially on leisurely Saturday mornings, I break it out and make a pot of tea. I call it my simple pleasure, and in it I enjoy not just the tea but the beauty of the teapot, the cup, the sugar bowl. But while this little ritual engages only itself, Pinterest keeps us looking for the next thing, keeps us wanting more. Even if I purchased or attempted to make every single thing on my board, even on every existing board, there will always be a new pin waiting to appear. Pinterest isn’t evil. It can be fun, and is a simple way to express creativity and share it with others. But it makes it so easy to exploit this natural and healthy appreciation of beauty and lead us to its basest expressions. An image won’t define us, and neither will the possession of the object it represents. A pin is just a pin, after all.   Report to Mod - Link to Post - Back to Top   Logged

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