From Tim Evanson on Facebook this morning:
It’s Labor Day in the United States.
Here is a Labor Day image by J.C. Leyendecker, the gay illustrator who was probably the greatest magazine cover artist of the early and mid 20th century. (Norman Rockwell blatantly copied him.)
Image may be NSFW.
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(#1) [AZ:] JCL’s tribute to both masculinity and labor; labor is conventionally represented as a big muscular man in grimy work clothes, engaged in hard physical work, typically with a sledgehammer (as here) — as the cultural ideal of masculinity“The American Weekly” was a Sunday insert carried in nearly all American newspapers at the time.
To come: more on JCL; and more on US Labor Day images.
On J.C. Leyendecker. From my 1/21/21 posting “Leyendecker’s jockey”, on manly brand icons and JCL’s homoeroticism, taking off from this JCL ad:
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
(#2) [AZ:] Good clothes for the elegant man about town and for the working man; note JCL’s attention to the jockey’s buttocksNot ony were JCL’s depictions of men often homoerotic, JCL was himself homosexual. See the discussion in my 7/10/20 posting “Hiding homosexuality: JCL”, with [an] inventory of my earlier postings about the artist
US Labor Day celebrations and recognitions. Since the 19th century, the day has been the occasion for parades, public addresses, picnics, family gatherings, and celebrations recognizing the unofficial end of summer and beginning of fall. Back in 1956, the day was recognized by the issuance of a first-class postage stamp (which was 3¢ at the time), in a design embodying the then-current cultural ideals of (among other things) gender and work:
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
(#3) Issued 9/3/56; the design is from a mosaic mural at the AFL-CIO headquarters in Washington: “Labor is Life”, designed by artist Lumen Winter
The ideal man / worker is wielding both a sledgehammer and a pickaxe and is carrying coils of rope and hoses; if you’re a man, real labor is hard physical work, not skilled trades, service work, office work, or professional work.
If you’re a woman, your work is domestic labor (caring and nurturing): maintaining a household, feeding and clothing families, caring for infants, children, and the aged, nursing the sick, and — as illustrated in #3 — teaching the young. (Also providing sexual services to her husband and bearing children, neither of which gets illustrated on stamps.)
I was 16 when this stamp came out. Not long after that I was on my own, soon to get a job at the Reading (PA) Eagle newspaper, eventually with a Press Card and a 40-hr per week contract at federal minimum wage (then 75¢ an hour, or $30 a week, before an assortment of deductions). I was officially in the work force, though no sledgehammers, pickaxes, ropes, or hoses were involved. Not very long after that, I started getting paid for teaching (tutoring intro calculus to Princeton undergraduates). And eventually became a teacher full-time. And taught a kid to read, though not for money.
The stamp, and all the official Labor Day celebrations, can be read another way — not as an expression of cultural ideals, norms to which we all are supposed to aspire, but as a kind of pride event for identities that often get lip service but are in fact systemically devalued (so that we have unions as a contrary force). It’s then distressing that these remediation activities get sucked into the swamp of gender normativity.