Sports Fans and Man Caves
PHOTO: store display.Johnny-Be-Good: But mum, why should I clean my room? I’m the only one using it.
Mother: Because the world out there doesn’t want you baby boy, so you better be clean and I mean clean, clean.
Johnny-Be-Good: I won’t clean my man cave when I grow up.
Mother: What? My son living in a cave. God forbid!
Johnny-Be-Good: Chill mum. A cave is a room for big boys, rich boys you see on TV. Big Boys that ball hard, and relax cool.
There’s no podcast where ‘big boys’ talk about the recreation space called the man cave. Before cellphones, former NBA, NFL and other sportsmen bought houses with rooms they could turn into man caves with the basics: big screen T.V., reclining chairs, state of the art music system, pool table, card table, mounted dart board, a bar and bar stools.
Men like being alone, most of the time. It has nothing to do with ball players. It goes back to Victorian England. Castles are carved into living quarters. The nursery used to be upstairs with the nanny’s rooms nearby, in case the little princes and princesses cried at night. Kings and queens lived together separately. Adult princes lived in their own space with valets to tend to their every need.
In ancient times, Zulu kings had bigger versions of the ‘man cave,’ because they owned the land. They had servants called ‘insila yenkosi.’ Such a man was more powerful than army generals and the king’s wives because of his domestic responsibility.
Do religious societies have man caves? Not necessarily, because the separation of men and women is ordained by religion, which gives men their own living space, not just three rooms in $20 million mansions in LA, Atlanta, Monaco, London, Paris or Milan.
Nonqaba waka Msimang
Blogger Without Borders
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