As the founder of the Thursday Night Mowing League, imagine the validation I felt this week when the Wall Street Journal ran a story titled, “Why White-Collar Men Are Obsessed With the Perfect Lawn.”
In the story, the reporter, Callum Borchers, writes that, “For a lot of office workers—OK, mostly middle-aged male office workers—a manicured lawn is as much a status symbol as a luxury car in the driveway.”
Once again, this league and its league members are one step ahead of pop culture. We’re about a year away from the WSJ running a report on why mowing on Thursday night is the ultimate adult flex.
In a 2011 report for Psychology Today, clinical psychologist Ben Michaelis addressed this mowing phenomenon that dominates our brains. He believes it’s a male’s way of being creative. “I believe that all people were made to create,” Michaelis wrote. “The impulse to express ourselves creatively is often suppressed once we leave childhood behind. This is especially true for men who don’t consider themselves to be artistic. For these men, their front lawns have become the culturally sanctioned canvasses of their stifled creative souls.”
In other words, white-collar men…and blue-collar men…who are obsessed with their lawns are expressing care for the world. The lawn is our canvas. It’s art. It’s sport. It’s competition. It’s dopamine.
There’s research that suggests even the smell of cut grass is like a drug for our brains.
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In 2009, University of Queensland researcher Dr. Nick Lavidis developed a grass spray that smelled like cut grass. The spray was marketed to people as a stress reliever. The idea behind the scent was developed by Lavidis after a trip to the U.S., including a stop at Yosemite National Park.
“Three days in the park felt like a three-month holiday,” Lavidis said at the time. “I didn’t realize at the time that it was the actual combination of feel-good chemicals released by the pine trees, the lush vegetation and the cut grass that made me feel so relaxed.
“Years later, my neighbor commented on the wonderful smell of cut grass after I had mowed the lawn and it all started to click into place.”
This idea that a beautiful lawn equals prestige in the U.S. isn’t exactly new. On August 2, 1954, Time reported on the growth of the DIY industry and what it meant for the mental state of American men.
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“The therapeutic value of do-it-yourself is hard to overestimate. One Dallas doctor, a do-it-yourself addict himself, often advises patients to ‘go home and start doing things themselves,’ Time’s reporter wrote.
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You guys are simply following in the footsteps of those who came before you. Mowing not only spikes your dopamine and improves your mental health, it also serves as a nod to our fathers and grandfathers, who used lawn chores as a release.
This obsession we all have is simply in our DNA. It’s who we are.
July 9 Thursday Night Mowing League reports from around the United States:
Read the full article here
