Here's a fascinating, if somewhat academic and long, article on the cultural iconography of the Bachelor Pad.
Here's the abstract of the full article:
The Bachelor Pad as Cultural Icon
Masculinity, Consumption and Interior Design in American Men's Magazines, 1930–65
Bill Osgerby London Metropolitan University
Si Non Oscillas, Noli Tintinnare (Trans: ‘If You Don't Swing, Don't Ring’).
Inscription on a brass plaque at the entrance to the Playboy Mansion, 1960
Focusing on the representation of domestic interiors in American men's magazines during the mid-twentieth century, this article explores the history and significance of the ‘bachelor pad’ as an icon of high-living modernity. Beginning with a consideration of Esquire magazine in the 1930s, attention is given to representations of the sleek, stylish bachelor apartment and its role as a totem of forward-looking and ‘liberated’ masculine consumerism. Depicted as a place where men could luxuriate in a milieu of sybaritic indulgence, the ‘bachelor pad’ was configured as the spatial manifestation of a consuming masculine subject who later became pervasive amid the consumer boom of the 1950s and 1960s. During this period, the fantasy of the chic, gadget-laden ‘bachelor's lair’ was a recurring icon of hedonistic, masculine consumption in men's magazines such as Playboy, Escapade and
Rogue. Cosmopolitan and brimming with รก la mode luxuries, the ‘bachelor pad’ was a leitmotif in these magazines' wider celebration of masculine consumer pleasure and desire. Analysis of these representations, it is argued, suggests that in American culture during the mid-twentieth century the ‘masculine’ arena of production and the ‘feminine’ domain of consumption were not neatly and clearly divided. Instead, the iconography of the ‘bachelor pad’ in American men's magazines points to a significant masculine presence within mid-twentieth century commodity culture.The full article is available for download on The
Journal of Design History.
It's fascinating - the thought of a time when men were equal consumers of home design products and lifestyle ideas and this helped him define himself as the unquestionably masculine "Mans' Man, Ladies Man". Today we have the Metro-Sexual, which feels closer to the "straight gay-guy". The women's movement certainly played a part in the downsizing of the concept of "man as predator", but how did we go from "Bachelor Pad as Cultural Icon" to "real men don't eat quiche, or shop for home furnshings"?
