Acceptance and Judgement...

Do you know what I think is the #1 cause of death of the spirit of the scrapbooker?

Acceptance and Judgement

Acceptance keeps making little cameo appearances in this wacky world of paper crafting, and I'm beginning to wonder if it really should have a place here. The need for acceptance of our work, the desire to be accepted into the folds of the elite, the race to be accepted into positions that could speed up our ascension up that imaginary ladder. Those are the types of acceptance that I think the scrapbooking industry could do without. The good old fashioned acceptance of each other as individuals with different design perceptions... well that poor thing has been kicked, prodded and sentenced to a lifetime sentence in the dungeons of public opinion. Which brings me to judgement.

I swear if I say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder one more time, somebody take an eyelet setter to me. Judgement is the worst thing to happen to this industry, to this craft for that matter. The problem with judgement in scrapbooking is that even in it's most well meaning form, it is a determination that one (or some) person (people) are capable of producing better work than their peers. That in turn lays a firm foundation for glory seeking and yes, even more judgement. The sad thing is that while all of this judgement is going on, somewhere someone is packing up their scissors and paper because they don't feel that have "what it takes". Sadder still is that somewhere someone is struggling with a hobby that is supposed to fun and from the heart because she is trying to modify her work to make her more acceptable to those who judge her.

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I swear, it just makes me want to scream sometimes. I've been there; I hung up my paper trimmer for almost 6 months because of the judgement/acceptance game. I tried to be what I was told I needed to be to get where I thought I needed to get. I wound up chipping away at a scrapblock until I found my own style, albeit a style that was a representation of who I am as a crafter and not what I was being told what the industry dictated to be "in"...*gasp*. When I did that, I found myself eternally an undesirable... well, my family and friends thought I was good at what I did...but that still wasn't enough. I set myself on an impossible mission to achieve the goals that I felt I needed to achieve, while remaining true to my sense of style and design. It was an uphill battle in roller skates... and it almost cost me my hobby.

I walked away from scrapbooking completely. I closed up my craft room and resigned myself to do 'other things' during the time that I would normally be scrapping. I nursed my emotional wounds for 5 or so months. I did my soul searching and vacuuming at the same time (you should try it). One day, everything that I wrote in the last post hit me and it was like a bomb went off in my head. I rushed into my scrap room, dusted everything off, reinventoried, and reinvented myself. Well, actually... there was no need to reinvent... I just learned to accept myself. Since that day, the only acceptance that I've allowed myself to need is my own.
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I'm not going to be so stupid as to say that judgement and acceptance hasn't paved the way for many scrappers to take their craft to different levels (with or without ascension up the ladder), there is no doubt that it has pushed some who would've otherwise not pushed themselves. But sometimes it gets to the point where the judgement and acceptance are wielded like a razor edged sword and people really get hurt. That has no place here. How can a hobby that is geared around preserving memories so easily make room for the practice of ripping someone elses work apart for not other reason than the beholder not caring for it. There is always going to be some incredulous and crude comment about how 'so and so shouldn't have put that layout in a public gallery'; that can't be stopped unless you have a way to keep people from voicing their judgemental opinions. The problem with this is that it takes liberties with that scrapbookers that it has not right to. Really, who are we to tell someone that their work sucks simply because it doesn't appeal to our own personal sense of style? What right do we have to dictate that a person's work doesn't deserve a LO of the Day title because it doesn't meet our own unpublished list of guidelines for acceptable design? What right does anyone have to tell someone who chooses not to put a lot of embellishments on their layouts that they need to 'take it to the next level"?

I think that the main thing that is being forgotten in this industry is that scrapbooking is a form of artistic expression. [I don't give a hairy rats behind whether or not OTHER artists and scrappers see scrapbooking as artistic... that's just that whole judgement thing again. I see it as an artistic expression... and well, that's my opinion.] That expression is, at least for me, an extension of who I am. If the layouts that I create are an extension of how I see the world, what right does anyone else have to pass a judgement based on their own personal filters?

Critique Groups:
I can't sweep the good old critique group thing under the rug because it's a good thing when done correctly. Unfortunately, having seen some of the critiques that people get, much of the time the advice that they receive is little more solicited judgement. A critique, IMO, should be a tool with which to help the seeker bring continuity to their style of artistic representation. A critique should not attempt to lead the scrapper towards a path of creative expression that will be in conflict with her own creative spirit. All that gobbledygook simply means that if a critique of a layout includes telling an obviously clean and linear scrapper to "tilt this", "doodle here", "put some buttons and flowers there", despite the fact that he/she doesn't want any of that incorporated into her pages, then that critique becomes a judgement. A judgement based on the critiquers desire to change the layout to suit HER personal tastes. It really is hard to critique art because you have to step outside your personal preferences and sidle up next to the personal style of the person you are critiquing...otherwise you run the risk of giving advice that would create conflict with someones creative spirit.

You have to be able to accept the truths presented to you before you can work to affect them.

Sometimes, the scrapper might request a critique that could help her incorporate a style outside her comfort zone onto her pages. This should be the only instance where the above mentioned critiquing behavior should be employed; you've been asked to assault her creative spirit and she is ready to do battle with it to evolve. That too is a good thing.


Sadly, many have fallen into the habit of seeing pages that are not of their taste to be less than what they would deem acceptable. In doing this they have taken up the mettle of being judge, jury and executioner in the court of public opinion. I've gotten into the habit of checking my thoughts at the door before they run down the hall to my mouth or worse to my fingers, and it's really not that hard to train yourself to accept what is different.

• Is it really that much harder to accept that perhaps the layout is simple because the scrapper likes clean, graphic pages?
• Is there any possibility that the layout that is chocked to bursting with doodling and swirls is simply the inner workings of a playful mind instead of a 'ununified mess'?
• Perhaps the scrapbooker chose to use those colors or those types of patterned papers because she personally liked the way that they make your eyes cross and your nose bleed when you view them together. Everyone has a right to make a statement and nobody has the obligation to agree with it.

The masses have pretty much proven that they aren't willing to use acceptance and judgement in such a way that they do more good than harm, so I think it needs to go back to the depths from whence it came. The attitude of acceptance of ones differences should be celebrated once more instead of ridiculed. It doesn't help that the magazines have fertilized this atmosphere of nonacceptance with their insistence on selecting works for publishing that follow the set trend while overtly ignoring the rest of the majority (yes, we are the majority). So it's easy to see how some equate work that doesn't emulate the trends to inferiority. If the mags don't think it's worthy enough to be on the pages of the mags then why should their readership tolerate it's presence elsewhere in their lives?

If mama teaches you to ignore, disregard, or devalue work that is not like what you see in her magazine, how long do you think it will take for your readers to use that newly honed eye of judgement to tear down the work of others? Sometimes, mama is wrong.

I think that a large part of the responsibility for reinstating the attitude of general acceptance rests with the magazines that gave it the boot to begin with. If magazines would just take a chance on the public they might just be surprised. Yes, those who are loyalists will no doubt pull out their hair and gnash their teeth at the first sign of a layout that they consider "mediocre", but once the mags open the doors of acceptance to all of the scrapbookers out here who are not like what they deem to be "hot", they'll be surprised at the outcome.

Sometimes I wonder if anyone has ever thought of coming up with a Hippocratic oath for scrapbooking... I really think we need one.