Chapter 7: Leisure And Fun

A 16-year-old Dutch boy has drawn a picture of the ideal man as a wind surfer (⁰⁸²). The man, wearing dark sunglasses, looks relaxed, content, and cool. Wind surfing is a popular sport in the Netherlands, a country famous for wind and windmills. This ideal man is using the Mistral brand of wind surfing equipment, and he is wind surfing in the Mediterranean Sea.

The Dutch boy who drew the picture lives near the Zuider Sea in Enkhuizen, once a small rural town and now expanded, with many residents who are commuters to Amsterdam. The boy is in the MAVO track, the middle educational track. His high school education will not prepare him for the university; he anticipates that he might follow a career as a pilot, auto mechanic, travel agent, importer, steward, or professional wind surfer. For his free time activities he has listed wind surfing, skateboarding, skiing, jet-skiing, tennis, squash, flying, driving a car, going on vacation, and going to the movies. He has indicated that it is very important (7s on a 1 to 7 scale) for the ideal man to be fun, to be kind and honest, and to like children. He stresses the importance of having positive relationships over having a lot of money or being good looking to which he assigns the values of “1” and “3,” respectively. This young person comes from the group most likely to describe the ideal person as fun, to draw the ideal person at leisure, and to depict brand names; he is a male from a wealthy Western country.