Crafting Meaning at Home: Activism, Social Media, Productivity, and Creativity during the COVID-19 Pandemic
After several years’ worth of offers from my mother to teach me how to knit, it was only last spring, living in lockdown and attending classes online, that I finally agreed. The boredom of being stuck in the house had gotten to me, and I was tired of all the painting, watching Netflix, and cooking I had already spent weeks doing. It seemed like I was not the only one. When I opened social media apps like TikTok and Instagram, I saw videos and photos of people around the world showing off their handmade cardigans and beaded necklaces. Moreover, many of these posts were made by people even younger than me, such as high school students similarly dealing with a semester at home. They were edited expertly and set to the most popular recent music. Suddenly, knitting, crocheting, embroidering, and sewing had become cool. Even as the COVID-19 pandemic raged and protest movements rose and fell, I continued to see the popularity of these hobbies grow online, and even among my own friends. Among many of them, including myself, these crafts have continued to play a role in our lives even after returning to live on campus. In the past few weeks I have found that crafting for the college students I worked with is not only an entertaining hobby or a way to spend extra time during the pandemic and during quarantine. It is also a way to process political and social upheaval and gain some sense of control over larger, nation- and worldwide issues, particularly through environmental activism and escaping the pressure to be productive.
In researching with college students, I drew on both interviews and participant observation I conducted over several weeks on the Bates College campus. First, I interviewed two students: Emma, who is twenty and identifies as a woman, and Lydia, who is twenty-one and also identifies as a woman. Both of these students I knew previously and had kept in touch with throughout time spent at home and school. I interviewed each of them individually and took notes. Later, I also talked to them together for a short time and recorded our conversation. I also spent time doing participant observation during two crafting sessions with Emma and Lydia as well as other students. During these sessions, we talked, listened to music, and most of us worked on some sort of project. I also switched between taking down notes and working on a knitting project during this time.
My research also mainly focuses on the experiences of college students who are female, white, and middle to upper class. The students I researched with share a similar experience of living on campus at Bates, a small, residential liberal arts college. I, too, share many, though not all, of these traits and identities with them, and my positionality both brought me closer to and distanced me from the people I am studying with. I am also a Bates student, so I have had many similar experiences that directly relate to this research, such as being sent home last March and doing online learning. Additionally, I and almost all of the students I worked with are white women who come from similar socioeconomic backgrounds, where we have not had to worry especially about money during the pandemic. I also like to craft and have tried many different types of arts and crafts over the years and during the pandemic. All of these factors might make it easier for me to understand certain aspects of their experiences. However, there are also parts of my identity which place me more in the position of the traditional outsider anthropologist. For instance, I live more locally to Bates, while almost all of my informants live far away and are spread out across the United States. Thus we have spent significant portions of the pandemic in different regions with different rules, norms, and customs regarding COVID-19. Similarly, the crafts I personally have experience with are different from those practiced by the students I worked with. Due to this, my experience collecting data often took the form of the students I was researching with teaching me about their own crafts and how to do them, putting me in the position not only of an ethnographer, but also as a learner and student.
In a single dorm room, the space is organized for only one person to live. Between the standard wooden desk, bed, and dresser, only a small amount of tiled grey floor remains empty and open to the possibilities of activities besides work, sleep, and getting ready for the day. With our arms full of embroidery thread and yarn, Emma and I decide to sit on the floor of her single in order to spread our materials out. It is a cold and sunny Sunday afternoon, one of many which have kept us indoors for months. Emma picks up her latest embroidery, a canvas tote bag recovered from the last-chance bulk bins at Goodwill, saved from its final destination in a landfill. On it, she has embroidered colorful frogs, fish, tadpoles, and beetles, and is now turning her attention to a half-finished snake. I have been friends with Emma, a biology major planning on applying to veterinary school, for a long time, and her affection for animals and insects does not surprise me. However, the embroidery is something new. To the rhythm of the needle weaving in and out of the canvas fabric, she tells me that she picked up this new hobby last March or April after being sent home by Bates for remote learning due to COVID-19, inspired by posts on TikTok and a newfound appreciation for shopping second-hand.
Emma’s experiences with embroidery touch on two interrelated aspects of crafting during the pandemic: social media and activism. Previous research has already touched on the role of crafting and DIY as responses to the seemingly uncontrollable conditions of the world. For example, Brent Luvaas discusses the creation of homemade clothing by middle and upper class young people in Indonesia. He finds that they were not interested in making knock-offs or replicas to sell, but in remixing and repurposing logos and brands of global companies such as Nike, viewing themselves as “‘Cotton Warriors’ fighting on behalf of a fashion overthrow” (Luvaas 2013, 135) and using their work as a way to contest the authority of large clothing brands. Similarly, the Bates College students I worked with also viewed their own DIY work as tied into larger political issues. Almost everyone I talked to told me that they both used social media more and saw more political content on social media during the pandemic. Lydia specifically addressed this aspect of her quarantine experience: “I saw so many posts on Instagram and I think I definitely started to educate myself more, like with documentaries.” Although stuck at home, social media allowed Lydia into a virtual community where everyone was an activist sharing information. This position sometimes led to feeling overwhelmed and even guilty. Emma and Lydia both told me they wanted to attend Black Lives Matter protests and climate marches while at home; however, both found that they felt unsafe attending because of public health concerns over the large gathering of people. “I felt bad because I never went to a protest” Emma told me, and Lydia also nodded, agreeing with her.
Facing these fears of going to in-person activism events, and subsequent guilt at not attending, crafting was one way for students to participate in political movements aimed at creating a better world, from their own homes. One political issue that emerged as especially relevant to the practice of crafting was environmentalism. Particularly, many students viewed crafting as a direct response that they as individual consumers could take to combat mass consumption, waste, pollution, and labor abuses. Emma told me, for example, that the beginning of her embroidery coincided with the beginning of her awareness of issues in the fashion industry: “The first project I did was these jeans that I literally spilled paint all over, but they were still good, and I didn’t want to waste them.” As a result, she covered the paint stain with swirling vines, leaves, and purple flowers, so as to avoid having to throw the jeans away.
All of her projects since have also been on clothing or bags bought secondhand. TikTok also played a large role in Emma’s embroidery. She showed me videos she had liked early in quarantine that featured people fixing old clothing using various DIY methods and emphasizing this upcycling as a lifestyle trend away from fast fashion retailers and towards sustainability. Lydia’s experience of crafting was also heavily influenced by environmentalism, particularly in the aesthetics of this movement she saw on platforms like YouTube. She told me: “I like the idea of being able to make my own clothes, like sewing or crocheting; I think it’s really cool.” Lydia mentioned two YouTube influencers in particular who launched her interest in sustainable fashion and crafts: Erika Kane and pyperbleu. Erika Kane frequently posts lifestyle vlogs as well as outfits and closet tours focused on secondhand clothing, while pyperbleu inspired Lydia with posts about textiles and making clothing out of thrifted shirts or old bedskirts. The aesthetics and lifestyle of these YouTubers combined art and crafting with a sense of social responsibility, leading Lydia to start crocheting and knitting, as well as thrift shopping.
Both Emma and Lydia’s experiences with crafting during the pandemic were inspired by the intersection of social media, activism, and a sense of isolation caused by the ongoing pandemic. Their emphasis on using crafting for the purpose of repairing or making new clothes reflects a way to contribute to larger issues from the safety of their own homes, unlike other actions such as attending protests that they judged as too risky during COVID-19. Environmentalism was an accessible issue they felt they could tackle as individuals with consumer power, electing to avoid mass consumption and instead make their own goods. At the same time, social media allowed them to, in their individual, isolated actions, also connect to a larger network of influencers and activists.
In addition to crafting as a reflection of active involvement with the world outside, students also used crafting to respond in a different way, emphasizing the dimensions of their hobbies which served as an escape and a challenge to narratives about productivity. All of the students I talked to told me that, in some way or another, crafting allowed them a rest not only from the stress of worrying about a dangerous pandemic, but also from the pressures of performing at work and school that continued during quarantine. In this way, the students’ crafting practices were intertwined with ideas of work and productivity. M. Cameron Hay, in writing about the experiences of people with chronic invisible diseases, defines productivity as participating in activities “that are deemed personally or socially important” (Hay 2010, 262). Hay finds that the people she worked with used specific strategies to alleviate suffering: “People who suffer turn first to cultural models of and for agency in an effort to suffer successfully (Parish 2008), to have their experiences socially legitimated and even applauded” (Hay 2010, 271). Although the college students I worked with did not suffer from physical pain, their situation is in many ways similar. Stuck in a situation where they suffered from the effects of social isolation and stagnation, as much of the rest of the world did, students approached the pressure to overcome this suffering and be productive by crafting, a practice that, while it did conform to the ideal of keeping busy, was much more than that.
Almost every student I talked to told me that they felt obligated to be productive during time spent at home in quarantine. For example, Emma said: “I definitely felt like I should be productive and I was always applying to internships and stuff like that.” Despite the fact that almost all of her peers were stuck in the same situation as her, Emma still felt that she should make the most of the extra time she now had. Even in a situation in which agency and ability to accomplish activities was severely limited, the pressure to be productive remained.
Most of the students I talked to used crafting as a way to oppose these expectations. Embroidery allowed Emma to rest and recover from her work at a retail store: “On my days off, I would do pretty much nothing because I was so tired. I basically made a nice breakfast and watched TV and embroidered.” Crafting was not just a way of keeping herself busy, but also a way to escape from job pressure and take back her time for herself. Lydia also used crafting in a similar way. Although she told me that she has many “perfectionistic tendencies,” she also said that when she painted during quarantine, she felt that she was more free to experiment and not worry about it looking good. She also compared this to art classes she had taken in high school, where she felt paralyzed and unable to mark the canvas because of fear of it looking imperfect, as well as the added pressure of grades. Thus, for Lydia, crafting was not just another way to fill up her schedule and feel productive during quarantine. Instead, she used her painting for the opposite purpose, to drop out of this mindset and create freely, resisting the pressure to produce something perfect. More than a way to fulfill expectations of keeping busy, crafting was a temporary escape that allowed her to respond to and resist this narrative of productivity.
In talking to other students who picked up crafting during the pandemic, I felt comforted by their observations. Although there were many differences in the way I saw my own experience crafting and the way they saw theirs, there also were some key similarities. I found that we all saw the time at home we had been suddenly gifted with as not only something negative, but also an opportunity to connect to ourselves and the world at large in new ways. Whether these took the form of engaging in activities to improve the world outside or allowing ourselves to defy expectations of productivity, or, as was the case for most of us, a little bit of both, crafting was much more than a mindless way to relieve boredom. It was an entryway into countless creative possibilities for making a meaningful life during uncertain times.
References
Luvaas, Brent. 2013. “Material Interventions: Indonesian DIY Fashion and the Regime of the Global Brand.” Cultural Anthropology 28(1): 127–143. doi:10.2307/23360310.
Hay, M. Cameron. 2010. “Suffering in a Productive World: Chronic Illness, Visibility, and the Space Beyond Agency.” American Ethnologist 37(1): 259–274. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1548-1425.2010.01254.x.
