Sight Pollution
I find it increasingly curious the amount of rules certain sectors of our society have set up to prevent people from living green. Granted, the stated rationales are not strictly to prevent green living, but that's the result nonetheless. Some of these rules make some sense. For instance, many communities have banned water recycling systems. So people can't set up tanks that collect their used sink water to use to water their gardens. The rationale – a child might walk by and drink from the hose or sprinkler and get sick from recycled water. I understand the impulse (even as I also wonder why those child advocates don't also complain that the typical garden hose contains lead).
What I don't understand are the "sight pollution" complaints. The communities than ban clotheslines or gardens or solar panels or wind turbines because they are unsightly. While it's disturbing that people these days would even consider gardens or clotheslines outside of the normal pattern of day to day living, I also don't get why it is those things that are banned. These communities allow cookie cutter houses fitted with multiple satellite dishes. Garish banners and windsocks dangle from their porches and garden gnomes and polyresin angels peep out from their gardens. Come Fall, giant inflatable Winnie-the-Pooh vampires and mass-produced scarecrows adorn their lawns. Signs advertising their roofer, pool company, security system, or electric dog fence stand alongside pronouncements of what issue or candidate they are voting for. And yet they can't dry their laundry in the backyard taking advantage of the benefit of sunlight to sterilize because some people say it pollutes their view. It's not like the solar array is being built to block their view of a mountain range or the sunset over the lake, it's all just part of all the other everyday stuff in their neighborhood. But apparently stone geese wearing clothes but saving the planet is not.
It's so silly, that I really just wonder if it is an excuse spread by the electric companies. Of course they don't want people going green, using alternative energy sources like the wind our the sun – it will make them lose money. But since they can't say that they are too greedy to take care of the earth, they introduce the idea of sight pollution – that it is offensive and inappropriate to have to witness environmentalism in action.
I don't know. Anyone have any better ideas? I'm just trying to wrap my mind around why tacky yard art is okay but a clotheslines isn't.
julieclawson(at)gmail(dot)com 
I wish I had a good answer for you, but I don't. I'm so with you. Our HOA has a rule against flags, so we don't have the innumerable holiday banners or anything like that, but we also don't have American flags, which makes me sad. The worst of all, of course, is that clotheslines are specifically prohibited. Nothing better for the environment and my own mental state than freshly wind-dried bedsheets when I snuggle into bed at night!
This probably sounds silly, but I think I might have a partial answer to this…
Clotheslines point to a time and place where people had to "do without." Because we've tied up our security in money and possessions, things like clotheslines and food gardens and homemade clothing scare us. When we see a clothesline, it leads us to think one of two things:
1) That person can't afford a dryer. They're too poor and have to hang their clothes. That's going to drop property values, making my property less, thereby lessening my security.
2) The person could afford a dryer but chooses to hang their clothes. By doing so, they are challenging the idea that security is found in property. But I've put all my security into my material wealth. If it turns out I'm wrong in that, I'm in real trouble.
I don't know everything about the situation, but I can certainly affirm that the arguments I've heard against clotheslines have often been tied to property values, so I certainly can echo #1 in caedmon's post. Even "sight pollution" arguments I've heard before have had more to do with property values (explicitly so) than about aesthetics, per se.
Property values are often the expressed concern, but I wonder if the real fear isn't something deeper. I think we freak out when people around us do things differently because we feel like we're being put on trial.
Maybe we need to be?
Yeah – property values are a big issue. Doesn't make it any less stupid. In some area of the country buying an "eco-home" can cost you at least a million, but try to green the average home and you drive down the property value???
Aren't clothes lines used in advertising fairly often? It's probably mostly for laundry detergents that are supposed to make your clothes smell like they've been out in the breeze, but it seems to indicate that clothes lines don't have a negative connotation in all contexts. When I see those ads, I picture people in a rural summer home where they can live a simpler life for a while and maybe pretend we live in simpler times. I don't know what it conjures up for other people. Maybe in that setting a clothes line can imply that the residents are wealthy enough to afford a place where they can get away like that.
I agree with caedmon's comment about feeling like we're being put on trial. I react that way a lot.
I wonder if any communities like this have successfully overturned some of these ridiculous rules. I wonder if it was put to the community for a vote, along with the point that it would be more green to allow these things, if it would change. Are these communities just slow to change or are they truly fighting against a green lifestyle?
caedmon pretty well covers it, but I'd comment that I think point (1) is not just about property values, but about class. Even if it had no effect on property values, I think there would be distaste for the low-class activity of hanging your clothes out to dry.
sigh – where I live it's not simply an HOA rule that I'd be flaunting to have a clothesline, but a city ordinance. I've been pondering ways around it. I think a drying rack or two that I put on my deck would work, but it's so inefficient. So, I may flaunt the ordinance instead and see what happens. It's always better to beg forgiveness than ask permission if your cause is just.
The core problem is that we as a people have allowed our governments to make so many rules and laws. The government's job (speaking of the federal and state mainly) is to protect people's rights and freedoms, NOT to determine what people should or shouldn't do with relation to their private lives. Having allowed this for about a century now, we find ourselves and our lifestyles being influenced far too much by the lawmakers who themselves are influenced by various media or business interests.
@ Andy: re: Clotheslines in Ads – it's the threat of the unmentionables that makes people nervous. Hanging one's underwear out to dry is like sitting outside scratching in one's bvds. An condos with clotheslines reminds people too much of tenements. I suppose if we all wore "approved" clothing and underwear that might change. But do I really want to know what comes between you and your Calvins?
Meant to say re: advertisements, they never show underwear. Just sheets and fluffy white things. Not the full panoply of real life.
caedmon – I think you've hit it right on, on both accounts.
Got Dog Kennels – in this instance it doesn't seem to me that "the government" is really the problem. If we're talking about HOA's and/or city ordinances, that's about the lowest level of "government" you can get – i.e. the ones where we as individuals can have the most direct influence. That being the case, it would seem that the problem is more with us, the people – i.e. our friends, our neighbors, and even ourselves – not with some faceless big gov't meddling in our lives.
oh how i long for simpler days. thanks for pointing out the absurdities, julie.
Let's all do yard art with our laundry!!
Not sure I have anything new to add, except that I've really enjoyed this post and the thoughtful comments. Well done everyone!!!
Julie,
I've experienced similar marginalization by simply choosing to recycle and re-use at Cracker Barrel, where I work. I asked our General Manager at the time if I could save the coffee and tea grounds for composting in our garden, and he said yes. He has since left, and two of the four managers I work for have told me I can't do that for fear of "setting a precedent." I've collected aluminum cans for recycling to bring home, and I've received the same message, essentially, "If we let you bring the cans home, soon someone might want to bring a steak home."
Now, I've settled for saving the cans over several days until an understanding manager closes so I can recycle them, though I've virtually stopped the coffee saving because the one manager kept throwing my bucket away and telling other people to stop dumping the grounds in.
*sigh*
And yet, we try to pursue justice in our small ways, whether covert or in the open.
Nate
I stumbled in here, looking for something on advertising, but you reminded me of that NIMBY mentality and the silliness over banning clotheslines.
If you want to see a real application of common sense, then turn off your dryer and save power in the months of the year when you can dry clothes outside, right?