Criticism of Gender Expectations/Roles in Lumberjanes

Lumberjanes Response: Category A, Prompt 1

            Lumberjanes is a comic book series that focuses on five teenage girls (Jo, April, Mal, Molly, and Ripley) in a summer camp and their encounters with magical creatures, puzzles, and secrets. Throughout Lumberjanes, there are various different adolescent themes prevalent, ranging from curiosity/exploration to power and rebellion. One of the main themes in the story, though, unlike some of the other adolescent texts read during this semester, is the criticism of heteronormative gender roles/expectations. The comic engages this theme in a few ways, the most obvious being the title of it; the word “lumberjanes” is a twist on the gendered word “lumberjack,” which originally excluded women (due to assumptive heteronormative gender roles when the word was coined). The comic also does this by including Jo as a transgender main character and openly romancing Molly and Mal together.

However, there is a particular passage in the text in which the authors of Lumberjanes heavily criticize societal heteronormativity pressure than in other instances: the scene in which the Lumberjanes visit the Scouting Lads’ cabin. Prior to entering the cabin, Jo comments to April that she feels, “something’s not right.”  She then goes on to explain that her “gut” was telling her not to trust the Scouting Lads. However, upon entering their cabin, Jo’s qualms and feelings of suspicion simmer down. The Lumberjanes, along with their leader Jen, comment on how kind and clean their cabin was. Some of the boys begin to serve them cookies and provide them healing cream for all of their poison ivy rashes. This moment alone in the passage breaks against the heteronormative stereotype that boys are “messy” and “disorganized.” Instead, in this moment, the Scouting Lads are empowered by being depicted as nurturing, caring, and orderly, traits commonly associated, in a heteronormative lens, as “feminine.”

In contrast to them, the Scouting Lads’ leader is portrayed as overtly masculine, aggressive, disruptive, and problematic. His first lines in the text are, “WHAT THE BEJABBERS IS GOING ON HERE? I THOUGHT I HEARD TEA KETTLE. PATHETIC.” Here, Lumberjanes is calling attention to the fact that the leader is so cisgendered and caught up with heteronormative gender roles that he doesn’t see how ridiculous it is for him to have a problem with the Scouting Lads simply making tea. His hypermasculinity also causes him to act misogynistic towards the Lumberjanes and Jen. His first words to them are, “GIRLS? EW.” He proceeds to argue with Jen for no real apparent reason and calls her stupid to the point where his face his red and his temples are throbbing. Turning to the Scouting Lads, the leader says, “COOKIES ARE FOR THE WEAK. REAL MEN SHOULD BE SPLITTING UP WOOD AND SMOKING PIPES.” He then slaps the cookie tray out of one of the boys’ hands, causing the boy to cry out, “But I LIKE baking cookies.” Once he is gone, the Lumberjanes, annoyed, begin talking about the incident. One of them, Barney, comments on his leader, saying, “He’s the WORST.”

Here, readers are able to see the comic’s direct commentary on heteronormative expectations/gender roles; it views it as both problematic and unnecessary. The hyperbolized leader, for that reason, is included in order to help make readers understand that criticism. The incident with the cookies also serves as a moment to shed light on the notion that gendering an act, like baking cookies, is ridiculous and absurd. Lumberjanes continues to revisit this theme throughout the text and even closes its first volume on the cliffhanger of the hypermasculine leader “mind controlling” all of the Scouting Lads.