The society we live in today is afraid of three things: being ugly, being mediocre and being bored.
Harmful beauty standards have existed for as long as humans have been around, and it’s unlikely that children will ever stop whining about having nothing to do or asking “Are we there yet?” These are patterns passed down from generation to generation, and people are used to interacting with them.
What’s newer and less familiar is our aversion to failure and struggle that has run rampant through social media.
Every day, influencers across every platform blast their “perfect” lives and unrealistic accomplishments across millions of people’s algorithms. They describe projects completed at inhuman speeds, and difficult skills mastered in miniscule amounts of time. They take the things people enjoy doing and turn them into competitions, with unattainable perfection always in first place.
Even the most aware social media users can fall into the trap of comparing one’s finished product to the photoshopped version displayed online and feeling self conscious, and the doubt thrust upon even the best of creators and artists is sometimes enough to drive people away from their interests entirely. Sometimes, people are exposed to these online standards early and are driven away before they’ve even started.
My solution? Make grandma hobbies great again.
These hobbies – knitting, crocheting, baking, sewing, embroidery, gardening and all the other wonderful things we associate with the kindly, white-haired grandmother on TV – are the most popular targets of these unattainable accomplishments. They take time and effort and experience, and are some of the easiest to paint dissuading pictures of.
So, what better way to dismantle these imposed ideas of perfection than to make their subjects accessible and understood among more people?
Grandma hobbies never went away, but there’s a reason they’re typically associated with older people. They didn’t really catch on with many of the younger generations until a recent resurgence began spreading across social media.
There are two main reasons I hear when people explain why they don’t want to learn how to bake or sew or knit. The first is that they often take years to fully master, with progress being difficult to see in the early days. The second is that it feels impossible to catch up to the skill level other people have, so it’s easier to just not participate.
It’s true. Most people can’t bake a perfect batch of cookies on their first try. Most people can’t figure out the mechanics of a sewing machine without practice. Most people can’t pick up some knitting needles and pop out a sweater in a few hours without months or years of trial and error. It takes a long time just to become “decent.”
But, isn’t that the point?
Grandma hobbies aren’t supposed to be perfect every time. You’re not supposed to be the best at them. You’re not supposed to treat them like assignments to get good grades on.
We need to remind ourselves that it’s okay to have fun doing something, even if we’re not the best at it. We need to remind ourselves that it’s okay to struggle and make some shitty rough drafts before we figure out how to clean it up. We need to remind ourselves that crafting and creating is supposed to be an enjoyable outlet, not just another thing we have to stress over.
The more that people are encouraged to work with these activities, the easier it will be to discourage the online narrative that everything has to be the best all the time. It’s difficult for influencers to have that kind of power over someone if that person has leaned into crocheting or gardening for the fun of it, not to show it off to judges.
Our society is afraid of many things, and it can feel overwhelming and unbearable sometimes, but we always have the option to reclaim grandma hobbies and remember how to relax, just a little.