Non Threatening Boys*: Decoding the Boy Room

"We imagine the computer as a refuge, a digital portal out of the physical world, bedrooms becoming a mere backdrop to the liberated lives led in cyberspace."

Words: Tabitha Carver

This week’s post is taken from our latest issue, The Bed Issue. Take out a paid subscription to Non Threatening Boys* to unlock a code for 50% off The Bed Issue at the bottom of this post!!

A naked, floppy mattress on an aluminium frame. A duvet half out of its seldom-washed sheath. Next to crumpled tissues on the ground are the beginnings of a floordrobe, presided over by a dusty lamp.

There is a blue-tacked poster clinging onto the wall – it might be related to a cult film or some obscure band; maybe it’s an image of a beautiful woman, watching the scene beneath her. Perhaps tinny music plays from a well-worn speaker attached to a smartphone with a spider-webbed broken screen.

Maybe you have found yourself there, heart sinking, at the end of a date, or could it be that this familiar space belongs to your brother or friend. If you have trawled through sufficient viral posts sourced from r/malelivingspace or watched enough episodes of Rachel Coster’s Boy Room series you will easily recognise the signs: what I am describing is the archetypal boy bedroom.

We know generalisations like this are broad and often lazy. However, while stereotypes occlude, they simultaneously lay bare precisely what needs to be captured: unilaterally accepted societal norms better off addressed than pushed to the back of a sock drawer. While women and girls are told from a young age to take pride in their appearances and the spaces they inhabit, messy boy rooms may reflect and reproduce an accepted form of desirable masculinity.