Decluttering is a common solution when people need a new start to life. Going through a break-up? Get rid of things that remind you of that individual. Moving to a new home? Sell or donate all of the excess furniture items to make the move as easy as possible. Have a sudden increase in the need to give back to your community? Donate all of the clothes, books, and/or movies you haven't utilized in the last five years. It seems that is the go-to solution for any kind of difficulty people are facing. While the positive benefits (both on a personal and occasional community level) of decluttering, or, minimalizing and learning to live with the basic essentials, cannot be denied, the 2016 documentary found on Netflix presents a slightly troubling and gendered perspective on this trend.
The documentary itself centrally focuses on two men, Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus, and their respective and personally transformative journeys through becoming "minimalists." Essentially, by downsizing the amount of personal belongings they have (i.e., their clothing, only having purposeful and select furniture to provide function in a room without excess), or even converting to the ever-growing popular trend of "tiny houses" with a few hundred feet of square footage, people have reported increased feelings of happiness, ambition, and a deep satisfaction with the newfound simplicity with their lifestyle.
While this is an important concept and can provide new clarity for individuals, the people this documentary chooses to focus on provides a difficult and gendered concept to face. The majority of the people that are interviewed are men. These men range from motivational speakers who promote the minimalist lifestyle to others, owners of tiny houses, and a man living out a dream that every person has expressed desire for at some point in their lives, to be a full-time traveler and rent flats in different countries while writing about his experience and owning only 51 items, including clothes, to his name. These men are the focus of the documentary, and the people that we are supposed to admire and aspire to be. The portrayal of women and their goals toward minimalism, is presented in an entirely different way.
The one woman they interview (for a grand total of about two minutes, and never return to her story), only gets a chance to talk about her husband and it shows her interacting with the animals on their farm. She has virtually no screen time to explain the benefits that she has seen of this style of living, and what it has taught her, and the moments that she is featured involves her doing stereotypical things, such as discussing her husband or interacting with animals and children. Not once are we allowed the same amount of insight on her life and her motivations that we are with all of the other interviewees, who are all men.
Video footage in this documentary is spliced with news reports about mass consumerism, usually revolving around Black Friday, arguably one of the single biggest and materialistic days in America. Whenever this footage isn't of general mobs and crowds of people rushing the opening gates of a Forever 21, PINK, or a Wal-Mart, it focuses on the obnoxious and occasionally horrific fights that break out. Typically? These fights always seem to be footage of two women fighting over an appliance or article of clothing. There isn't an equal amount of focused footage of men throwing punches over a video game or plasma T.V. By automatically placing women in the roles of catty ad petty consumers who will fight to the death over a stand-up mixer, it discourages the minimalist movement from being open and successful to and for everyone. The countless stories of men have epiphanies of minimalizing their lives and becoming fulfilled turn this trend in to a success story for men, and leaves women to be continuously portrayed as the target audience for all things shiny. Ultimately, this documentary sadly reinforces gender roles about the endless possibilities for men to change, and, again, leaves women behind to suffer at the hands of consumerism.
Becoming a minimalist is a trend and lifestyle that I admire. Personally, it would be an extremely difficult shift in consumer habits and my lifestyle, and would take a while to transition out of these habits. It's a trend that I would love to see more people embody as our world continues to grow closer and closer together and our resources become scarcer and scarcer. Until we have a sense of equal representation in this lifestyle rather than just a token female character for the sake of a filmmaking quota, only then will this movement grow from a select few men, to encompassing a global community.
