I want to rescue hobbies from their stereotypes and show why they should not be dismissed as dull, trivial, or derisory. Hobbies bring a unique value to our lives, something that is not offered by other forms of leisure. They are good for us as individuals and they are good for us as community: hobbies provide diverse social interactions that are essential for well-functioning democracy. Hobbies have political significance, too: they have implications for how we order our family life, our employment practices, and our schools – as well as our free time.

To convince you of the importance of hobbies, I’ll explore the empirical findings from sociology, psychology, and medicine, and I’ll tell stories of some of the hobbies being pursued in my home town of Cambridge and beyond. I’ll give an account of what hobbies are, and what makes them distinctive and important. I’ll explain why hobbies are a distinctive part of a flourishing life, something that we should all endeavour to pursue. I’ll show how we’re often prevented from pursuing hobbies by the demands of family, school, work, and screens. And I’ll show that hobbies are gendered. In their current incarnation, hobbies often increase burdens on women and reduce them on men, and they reinforce gendered stereotypes. 

This manifesto for hobbies shows how to access and deploy the power of hobbies. Everyone needs access to hobbies, which means dismantling economic, employment, and educational structures that prevent some people from pursuing them. And hobbies can help us to counteract some of the challenges of modern life.

Hobbies, I’ll argue, are important precisely because they’re unimportant. They have purpose just because they are unnecessary. And they add to our individuality even – especially – when they are shared and social. Hobbies make us who we are, help us find our place in the world, give us cause to celebrate our accomplishments, and allow us to step back from our obligations. They are good for all of us.

Are your jeans skinny fit, boot cut, or wide leg? Which TikTok dance routines do you know? What happened to Tamagotchi, Pokémon, fidget spinners, and loom bands? Does your tween daughter lust after expensive anti-ageing skincare? 

Many of us follow trends, whether in matters of aesthetics, hobbies, or even philosophical theories. Do we autonomously choose to follow trends, or do trends undermine our autonomy? On the one hand, trends are often things we follow consciously and deliberately, cultivating our trend-following in the manner of an expensive taste. Being trendy might, then, simply be a conception of the good. On the other hand, various features of trends suggest that they are non-autonomous. A trend is something we want or do just because others are doing it too – somewhat like Mill’s despotism of custom. We may not be able to give any rational reasons for favouring a trend, and it is likely that we will disfavour it in the near future when it is no longer trendy, making trend-following appear irrational and non-autonomous – somewhat like adaptive preferences. Advertisers and influencers try to persuade us to follow trends, even making truth-adjacent claims in support of the products they sell – somewhat like manipulation. This paper explores trends in the light of existing liberal theories of autonomy and shows that none of them quite capture trend-following. In their place, I gesture towards a liberal theory of trends.

Abstract: There is a gendered division of cooking, meaning that women do the majority of the everyday cooking, shopping, and meal planning. Cooking is usually considered only as part of the wider gendered division of labour, but this paper makes the case for considering it in its own terms. Cooking is burdensome in practical and normative ways that do not apply to other housework, making the gendered division of cooking a particular problem that is not compensated for by men taking on other household tasks. At the same time, women are trained to be hyper-vigilant about food by a culture of appearance norms that associates food with weight and requires women to be slim. This hyper-vigilance about food may give women expertise in food preparation, but also means that they pass on their own disordered relationship with food to their children. Food, then, reveals itself as gendered at both ends. On the supply side, it is women who mainly bear the burden of providing food. On the demand side, it is women and girls who bear the brunt of a toxic relationship with food. Women are therefore likely to be both the victims of injustice related to food and the perpetrators of it. This means that the gendered division of cooking is bad for both women and children, and addressing it is essential.