During a period of growing passivity and risk aversion, how is it that even the minority of people who still have something of a taste for risk can't manage to put it to much use?
Most of the risky endeavors we'd like to take part in are social, and hence require us to find numerous others who also have a taste for risk. Having the trait on your own doesn't get you very far. On the harmful side, there's opportunistic teams of criminals, up to gangs. It's a lot easier to rob a store if you can find someone who's willing to drive the getaway car, or lend a hand inside.
On the creative side, there's forming a music group -- putting yourself out there before an audience, let alone trying to record a hit song, means all of you need to be willing to risk failure. I think that's why there don't seem to be as many successful bands as individuals in pop music these days.
Keeping things simple, let's say you only need one other partner for some endeavor, and that people come in two types -- risk-taking or not. If you are both wandering around your local area without being able to detect each other and thereby move purposefully toward each other, then your chances of encountering each other are R^2, where R is the share of the population that's risk-taking. (This is the "law of mass action" from chemistry, or the chance of drawing two risk-takers from a large population, where the draws are independent.)
Even if R starts to fall over time in a straight line, the decline in R^2 will be much more dramatic. For example, if 40% of the population are risk-takers, then they'll bump into each other with a 16% chance. Cut their numbers in half to 20% of the population, and they now only meet each other with a 4% chance. We shrank their share by half, but their encounters shrank far more -- a 75% drop.
As R falls, R^2 falls very fast at first, and then more shallowly. For most things I can think of that involve risk in a social context, they've all declined over the past 20 years, but it seems like the drop was steeper over the '90s and shallower during the 2000s. The crime rate is one (the web or network of criminality effect), and the teen pregnancy rate is another (it takes two to tango).
Things that aren't so easy to quantify are tougher to call, but the re-segregation of the sexes was a lot more rapid during the hysterical '90s, where we went from the popularity of power ballads to indoctrinating college freshmen to believe that every male student is a hidden date-rapist. Same with the re-segregation of the races -- very steep drop from white people driving up the TV ratings for the Cosby Show, Family Matters, and the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, to the L.A. riots, O.J., "institutional racism," etc.
Extending social relations across major demographic barriers, like male-female or black-white, is risky stuff -- they are the Other, after all. So even a linear decline in risk-taking will cause a rapid collapse in such across-group relations.
How do the more risk-taking people try to find an outlet in more cocooning times? Well, teaming up with other risk-takers is going to quickly become nearly impossible, so they pursue more individualistic risky pursuits. There was that whole Jackass phenomenon that exploded in the '90s, where you jump off your roof, run into a tree, or whatever, just for kicks. Often you didn't have anyone else there since it wasn't like a team sport.
I remember jumping off the roof of our carport with an umbrella on an extremely windy day, sometime in the later '90s. The idea just hit me walking home from school, and it was pretty fun. The rise of EXTREME sports is part of this difficulty of risk-takers to team up with like-minded folks in their neighborhood, and so having to sky-dive, skateboard, rock-climb, or whatever, as individuals.
And then there's that EXTREME foodie stuff. Who can eat the grossest or strangest stuff. Again, not an activity that requires a partner or team, but is still risky. Basically all of the EXTREME activities of the '90s and 21st century fit this pattern.
Is there any domain that's more immune? Well, anywhere that people can detect one another as risk-takers and purposefully meet up. Since they're rare, that means the search will have to range over a large area, and they'll be in organizations that are scaled up more highly than just the neighborhood or even region. Then the assumptions of "mass action" don't apply.
Venture capitalists, for example, seem to be doing OK at indulging their taste for risk in a group setting. Politicians and high-ranking bureaucrats coming together from across the nation in high levels of the federal government, in order to socially experiment through policy -- that'll satisfy their taste for risk all right.
But for anything at the more local level, we're back to the dilemma of the few risk-takers having such trouble bumping into each other. Low-level entrepreneurism seems to be at a low point compared to the Reagan years. It takes balls not to suck mega-corporate dick, and back then people were less willing to just take the easy way out. Now everyone's casting their lot with the big guys, at a level unseen since the mid-century. Then it was GE, IBM, and General Motors, now it's Apple, Google, and Walmart / Target. Back in the '80s, there was actually popular demand for breaking up the big guys, AT&T being the most shocking casualty.
As a consolation, Western societies have been through these phases of the cycle many times before, so we'll make it into a more adventuresome zeitgeist sometime soon, probably within 5-10 years. The Gilded Age of robber barons was followed by the entrepreneurial Jazz Age, the technocratic mid-century by the New Wave Age of yuppies, and the neo-company-man Millennial era by... well, whatever's in store for us just around the bend.
February 25, 2013
February 24, 2013
TV dinners then and now
Lunchables were test-marketed in the late '80s, went national around '89 or '90, and have only gained in popularity since. There were only a few varieties at first, but I checked my supermarket yesterday and they have an entire end-of-aisle display offering dozens of options -- not just lunchmeat, cheese, and crackers, but now also pizza, mini-hot dogs, and so on. 1990 also saw the introduction of the still popular Kid Cuisine, a more explicitly TV dinner tray for the microwave.
I remember those very clearly when they came out, the idea that you were making a meal all by yourself. One of the businessmen quoted in the article mentions that this was the main appeal to kids -- you were putting together the pieces however you wanted, not opening up a sandwich already made by your mom. And of course the appeal to the mothers buying them was saving time and effort -- no prep, no clean-up, just throw the trays away. They were part of the re-emergence of the cult of convenience and efficiency in American culture, last seen during the mid-century.
Here is an extensive gallery of the first wave of TV dinners, mostly from the late '50s and early '60s, though continuing with altered marketing through the '60s and early '70s. Swanson's came out with the first line in 1957. The early ads make the pitch based on convenience (no prepping before, no dishes after) and the interchangability of the TV dinners for mom's home cooking. See this example. Already by the mid-'60s (see this gallery), they dropped the emphasis on convenience -- it was now about giving the kids something special -- and made little or no suggestion that they were a substitute for home cooking.
After their retreat from mid-century triumphalism about convenience, TV dinners seem to have more or less disappeared from the mid-'70s through the '80s. Lunchables and Kid Cuisine really were a novelty for us. I don't remember ever eating TV dinners in the '80s, either us kids or our parents. I searched Google Images for tv dinner(s) 1980s, and tv tray(s) 1980s, and came up with nothing. So it wasn't just my house. In fact, I don't remember any of my friends eating TV dinners, either themselves or their parents, and we used to eat at our friends houses fairly often back then.
Sure, we cooked a lot of food in the microwave, but it wasn't an all-in-one tray pitched for its convenience for frazzled mothers, and made to substitute for real food. The TV dinner bonanza of the late '50s and early '60s seems like one of the mid-century social charades that was undone starting in the '60s.
Housewives of the '50s and early '60s increasingly felt like their domestic work was not appreciated, but you can hardly blame their families. How grateful are your children and husband supposed to react when your meal-making consists of throwing some pre-fab grub into the oven, and only cleaning silverware and glasses afterward? For any woman who truly wanted to get joy from housewifery, she must have realized how unrewarding it was to go the TV dinner route, and that they were just an excuse for her own domestic laziness.
By the mid-'60s, the jig was up. Even youth culture icons like the Rolling Stones took note. Their 1966 song "Mother's Little Helper" mentions the mid-century mom's rationalizations about not cooking real meals and running off to pop some happy pills:
"Things are different today," I hear every mother say
Cooking fresh food for a husband's just a drag
So she buys an instant cake and she buys a frozen steak
And goes running for the shelter of her mother's little helper
And to help her on her way, get her through her busy day.
Sound familiar? Only today it's Lunchables and Prozac. What's the opposite of convenience and efficiency? Committedness, thoughtfulness? Well, whatever you want to call it, once the pendulum swings away from convenience and back toward thoughtfulness, we'll see more real family meals. And none of these science fair experiments and arts-and-crafts dioramas made out of food that super-moms toil over these days either. That's more of a show-off thing for herself as against the other mothers, not made out of caring thoughtfulness for the family. And it's patronizing to the children -- "Look kids, your gingerbread raccoons even have little milk moustaches made out of vanilla icing!" Jeez, get a life, mom...
Returning finally to the idea that Lunchables give kids autonomy, that's just an illusion too, which all sides are willing to believe in these days. Real autonomy means teaching the kid how to make food by himself. Before Lunchables, etc., I remember my parents, mostly my mom, teaching me and my brothers how to do simple things, but that still gave us the ability to make a quick meal for ourselves. And all while we were still in elementary school.
Anyone else ever learn how to make an Egg McMuffin in the microwave? Throw some English muffins in the toaster, and while they're going, spray Pam inside a coffee mug, crack an egg into it, cover with wax paper and nuke on high for a minute, and you've got the egg part. Take out a slice of cheese, and presto, an Egg McMuffin in under 5 minutes. You could also nuke some bacon (wrapped between two layers of paper towels) to make a bacon, egg, and cheese McMuffin. Nuked bacon also goes great with fresh tomato, lettuce, mayo, and toast for a quick BLT.
That was on the fast food-y side, but we also learned how to scramble eggs and make omelettes in the skillet, how to make pancakes from mixing milk and eggs with the flour up through pouring the batter and flipping at the right time, how to fry hash browns, how to boil water to make mac & cheese (not very hard, but still felt more dangerous and grown-up than zapping a pre-made TV dinner), etc. I remember my friends being able to do simple independent stuff like this too, at least the friends close enough where I might see them fixing their own food at home.
Are small children allowed to boil water or cook with stove burners anymore? Probably not. Or roasting marshmallows over the stovetop flame to make s'mores after you get back from a long day of sledding and snow forts? Yeah, probably not. That was real childhood autonomy, not cooking at an adult level, but giving us our first big shove toward the edge of the nest, letting us take risks and allowing us to learn from our mistakes. What's the alternative? -- clinging to your mommy's skirt or microwaving Ramen noodles for the rest of your life.
February 21, 2013
Where do young people hang out in our cocooning times, and why?
The percent of people who stay holed up in their private sphere these days is far greater than it was in the 1980s; Americans in all parts of the country have not hunkered down this much since the mid-century. Still, there's a continuum of cocooning -- some are mostly invisible to the outside world, but some go out every day, even into public spaces. And yet the types of places they go to show that they aren't as open, trusting, and outgoing as it may appear from the mere fact that they left home. First, a review of where people go, and then an account of why they visit these places and not others.
Children are not allowed outside at all anymore, so their public hang-outs have vanished -- the video game arcade, the roller rink, the mall, the park, the playground, the pool, etc., and have not been replaced or built over by new public hang-outs for kids. Teenagers who haven't left for college don't hang out much in public either. Occasionally you'll see a few at the shopping centers, Jamba Juice, Starbucks, but mostly they're locked inside by helicopter parents too. Worse, they don't rebel against their smothering mothers and sneak out.
College students are different -- they're typically away from their parents, so they have more freedom. The biggest change in campus life over the past 15-20 years has to be the transformation of the library into a primary hang-out spot. Movies, TV shows, and commercials from the '80s show people studying in the library, perhaps with friends, but it wasn't a main destination for hanging out. Now students are eager to spend hours at a time inside the library.
Before, campus libraries had at most a few vending machines for food and drink, but now that so many students spend so much time there every day, a new space has been created to meet their needs -- the campus library cafe. It's not a bustling cafeteria, or like the food court at the mall, but a small quiet place with places to sit down, and that mostly sells snacks.
I should mention at this point, for those who were in college before these changes (I remember them being under way during the early 2000s), that people don't go to the library to browse the stacks, check out books, or even do that much nose-to-the-grindstone work (college classes have never been easier). Instead, they go there for the multitude of "study areas," some wide-open, some more intimate, some with talking allowed, some quiet-only, some with a huge computer cluster, some where students bring their own laptops, and so on. In the 21st century, college kids are so not hormone-crazed that their main social destination is a great big study hall.
Despite the library's popularity, very little socializing actually takes place. You might if you already know the person, but it is not a place where people go to interact with people they don't know. If you sat down with a person or group that you don't know and tried to strike up a conversation, that would be awkward.
It's like the rise of the small house party, where the only ones in attendance are directly known to the hosts, or at most by one degree of separation. Further degrees of removal means you can't be sure they're trustworthy. Young people today just feel uncomfortable socializing with perfect strangers. The mass of students packed into the library might seem like an exception to small-only gatherings, but they're all cut off from each other. It's more like cells in a hive than a bustling crowd.
You do see people trying to make minimal contact with others around them, though only in the form of fleeting eye contact, and so only between the sexes. It's not an invitation to come over and talk to them, or an invitation to them to come on over to you. It's not even a strong expression of sexual interest or intent, since again it never goes any further than a quick glance.
It's more like an agreement to give their ego a little boost if they give yours a little boost. If they're out in a public space, they aren't in the most anti-social category -- they still feel some need for social recognition, appreciation, and belonging. Totally cut off from everyone else, they'd have no idea where they stood in the eyes of their peers. So, head on down to the library and see how many people are willing to make eye contact with you. Like, "I got a look -- thank god, I'm not ugly after all!" or "That chick over there just looked at me and didn't have a creeped-out look on her face -- thank god, I'm not the biggest loser after all!"
Because this contact is so superficial, only kids in the normal-to-"popular" range go there. (I use quotes because in anti-social times, no one is actually popular with a broad group. I mean those who would've been the popular kids back in the '80s.) You generally don't see the fat/ugly side of the bell curve, or even the nerdy/geeky side -- surprising for a library, eh? I'd guess that they tried out the library as hang-out, but noticed they didn't get any looks, or got creeped-out looks, and decided the hell with it, might as well stay in my room and play Xbox or have a Twilight and Ben & Jerry's marathon again.
And because this contact is so fleeting, they do it a lot more frequently. It's not like a huge party on the weekend where you get along well with strangers, some of whom may become new friends, or go all the way with someone you've had your eye on, or maybe even just met. The heady after-effects of that kind of socializing will last well into the next week. They're such a powerful signal to your brain, that it doesn't need reassurance of your normal-to-desirable status for awhile.
But split-second eye contact isn't such overwhelming evidence, so you need to be constantly scanning to see if others are trying to establish it with you. Girls especially seem to strut around frequently in a see-and-be-seen way, never quite sure if they're perceived as hot or just do-able. This self-doubt would be easily settled if they went to large parties once a week and got a sense of how many guys made a move on them. Way more convincing evidence than eye contact. But today, lots of unfamiliar guys making a move on you feels awkward and creepy. Or even if they had school dances -- how many date offers did you get? But if they don't want to go to those dances in the first place, they'll disappear, and that option for self-evaluation disappears too.
There's an obvious parallel to texting and posting on Facebook as a replacement for voice calls or in-person conversations. Receiving a single text gives you only minimal reassurance that you aren't ugly or a loser, so you need to keep receiving them -- and to return the favor for assuaging your own self-doubt, you need to keep sending them to those who sent them to you. Young people's social exchanges (hard to call them interactions) are thus part of their broader suite of OCD tendencies -- they're always teetering on the brink of self-doubt, and feel compelled to keep pushing some button to receive the little food pellet for their ego, again and again and again. They don't want the social equivalent of an intensely flavored, endorphin-releasing meal that would satisfy them for some time to come.
Without going into too much detail, you see the same general dynamics at the other major hang-outs for college kids and 20-somethings -- the coffee shop has been turned into a campus library computer cluster, for instance. Somehow supermarkets have become hang-out destinations (although you don't hang out there for very long), with some now offering their own little cafe area with seating, like the campus library cafe. Quiet small-scale food places are somewhat popular too, like Noodles & Company, Lunaberry, etc. Not "fast food," though -- too many cars constantly pulling around to the drive-thru. The gym is the only place where young people get physical in public these days, again with interaction among strangers being understood as forbidden.
For contrast, where don't you see college kids and 20-something hanging out much anymore? Well, the student union is more or less dead as the central, all-purpose hang-out, and so are the large green spaces around campus that social-seeking and sun-worshiping students would have flocked to back in the '60s, '70s, and '80s. Food places that are more bustling and carnivalesque are gone too -- cafeterias, mall food courts, the automat. And all commercial stores where the purpose is to browse are also gone as hang-out spaces -- the bookstore, the record store, the video rental store.
As for physical activity, playing sports in public spaces is gone -- an informal game of football in a field, tennis courts for tennis or roller hockey, basketball courts, baseball / softball diamonds, kicking the soccer ball around, frisbee, hacky sack, etc. Public pools, mini golf courses, roller rinks, and dance floors have also been abandoned. If people do get physical in an open area, it's always jogging with earbuds jammed in their head -- don't interrupt me.
What distinguishes the spaces that have fallen from the ones that have risen seems to be how purposeful your visit is expected to be. If it's the kind of place that you visit for some specific, deliberate purpose, then that wasn't so popular in the '80s but has taken over now. If it's the kind of place where you visit with no plan or purpose in particular, that used to be popular but is now being reclaimed by the wilderness.
When people develop the cocooning, distrusting mindset, they don't want unfamiliar people to approach them. How can you manage that while still venturing out into public spaces? And how can you still take part in at least minimal social exchanges? Well, simple: hang out at a place where there's a very well understood expectation that strangers do no approach one another there. Why? Because everybody goes there for some specific purpose and is otherwise occupied -- studying, writing a paper, checking items off their grocery list, getting a quick bite to eat in between studying, meeting friends to catch up with them on important matters over lunch, and so on.
So, if someone unfamiliar approaches you, you can just give them that look or vibe of, "Uh, do I know you? This is a place for studying, you know..." In a bar or on the dance floor (other deserted spaces), you can't give someone a look like the very act of approaching you is violating an unspoken behavior code. So blowing a guy off in those spaces makes you feel more bitchy. But if you're sitting at a booth in the Whole Foods cafe area, you can give them a weird look -- after all, you're just taking a little rest while running errands, and they'd be interrupting you.
For the same reasons, you can't make any new same-sex friends at these places. If a bunch of guys are huddled around the TV in the union to watch the game, they can shoot the shit all day long even if they don't know each other. But plopping down across from some random dude at Starbucks, just to chat, would give off mad homo vibes. Striking up a conversation with a same-sex stranger is no problem at a record store or bookstore if you've got similar tastes, but you wouldn't think of doing so in a supermarket just because you both like Spanish cheeses.
This little investigation shows why it's worth paying attention not just to gross quantitative measures of sociability, like how much time to people spend outside their home, but to qualitative aspects as well. You might think that cocooning, while worse compared to the '80s, still isn't so bad -- look at all the kids hanging out in the library, in Starbucks, jogging around the park, etc. But they only choose these places because they can be assured that strangers won't approach them; they'll have plausible deniability because people don't go to those spaces to really interact. So, "I'm not being anti-social and awkward, I'm just here to conduct other business." Even when people do venture out into public areas these days, their lack of trust and social awkwardness still shows through.
Children are not allowed outside at all anymore, so their public hang-outs have vanished -- the video game arcade, the roller rink, the mall, the park, the playground, the pool, etc., and have not been replaced or built over by new public hang-outs for kids. Teenagers who haven't left for college don't hang out much in public either. Occasionally you'll see a few at the shopping centers, Jamba Juice, Starbucks, but mostly they're locked inside by helicopter parents too. Worse, they don't rebel against their smothering mothers and sneak out.
College students are different -- they're typically away from their parents, so they have more freedom. The biggest change in campus life over the past 15-20 years has to be the transformation of the library into a primary hang-out spot. Movies, TV shows, and commercials from the '80s show people studying in the library, perhaps with friends, but it wasn't a main destination for hanging out. Now students are eager to spend hours at a time inside the library.
Before, campus libraries had at most a few vending machines for food and drink, but now that so many students spend so much time there every day, a new space has been created to meet their needs -- the campus library cafe. It's not a bustling cafeteria, or like the food court at the mall, but a small quiet place with places to sit down, and that mostly sells snacks.
I should mention at this point, for those who were in college before these changes (I remember them being under way during the early 2000s), that people don't go to the library to browse the stacks, check out books, or even do that much nose-to-the-grindstone work (college classes have never been easier). Instead, they go there for the multitude of "study areas," some wide-open, some more intimate, some with talking allowed, some quiet-only, some with a huge computer cluster, some where students bring their own laptops, and so on. In the 21st century, college kids are so not hormone-crazed that their main social destination is a great big study hall.
Despite the library's popularity, very little socializing actually takes place. You might if you already know the person, but it is not a place where people go to interact with people they don't know. If you sat down with a person or group that you don't know and tried to strike up a conversation, that would be awkward.
It's like the rise of the small house party, where the only ones in attendance are directly known to the hosts, or at most by one degree of separation. Further degrees of removal means you can't be sure they're trustworthy. Young people today just feel uncomfortable socializing with perfect strangers. The mass of students packed into the library might seem like an exception to small-only gatherings, but they're all cut off from each other. It's more like cells in a hive than a bustling crowd.
You do see people trying to make minimal contact with others around them, though only in the form of fleeting eye contact, and so only between the sexes. It's not an invitation to come over and talk to them, or an invitation to them to come on over to you. It's not even a strong expression of sexual interest or intent, since again it never goes any further than a quick glance.
It's more like an agreement to give their ego a little boost if they give yours a little boost. If they're out in a public space, they aren't in the most anti-social category -- they still feel some need for social recognition, appreciation, and belonging. Totally cut off from everyone else, they'd have no idea where they stood in the eyes of their peers. So, head on down to the library and see how many people are willing to make eye contact with you. Like, "I got a look -- thank god, I'm not ugly after all!" or "That chick over there just looked at me and didn't have a creeped-out look on her face -- thank god, I'm not the biggest loser after all!"
Because this contact is so superficial, only kids in the normal-to-"popular" range go there. (I use quotes because in anti-social times, no one is actually popular with a broad group. I mean those who would've been the popular kids back in the '80s.) You generally don't see the fat/ugly side of the bell curve, or even the nerdy/geeky side -- surprising for a library, eh? I'd guess that they tried out the library as hang-out, but noticed they didn't get any looks, or got creeped-out looks, and decided the hell with it, might as well stay in my room and play Xbox or have a Twilight and Ben & Jerry's marathon again.
And because this contact is so fleeting, they do it a lot more frequently. It's not like a huge party on the weekend where you get along well with strangers, some of whom may become new friends, or go all the way with someone you've had your eye on, or maybe even just met. The heady after-effects of that kind of socializing will last well into the next week. They're such a powerful signal to your brain, that it doesn't need reassurance of your normal-to-desirable status for awhile.
But split-second eye contact isn't such overwhelming evidence, so you need to be constantly scanning to see if others are trying to establish it with you. Girls especially seem to strut around frequently in a see-and-be-seen way, never quite sure if they're perceived as hot or just do-able. This self-doubt would be easily settled if they went to large parties once a week and got a sense of how many guys made a move on them. Way more convincing evidence than eye contact. But today, lots of unfamiliar guys making a move on you feels awkward and creepy. Or even if they had school dances -- how many date offers did you get? But if they don't want to go to those dances in the first place, they'll disappear, and that option for self-evaluation disappears too.
There's an obvious parallel to texting and posting on Facebook as a replacement for voice calls or in-person conversations. Receiving a single text gives you only minimal reassurance that you aren't ugly or a loser, so you need to keep receiving them -- and to return the favor for assuaging your own self-doubt, you need to keep sending them to those who sent them to you. Young people's social exchanges (hard to call them interactions) are thus part of their broader suite of OCD tendencies -- they're always teetering on the brink of self-doubt, and feel compelled to keep pushing some button to receive the little food pellet for their ego, again and again and again. They don't want the social equivalent of an intensely flavored, endorphin-releasing meal that would satisfy them for some time to come.
Without going into too much detail, you see the same general dynamics at the other major hang-outs for college kids and 20-somethings -- the coffee shop has been turned into a campus library computer cluster, for instance. Somehow supermarkets have become hang-out destinations (although you don't hang out there for very long), with some now offering their own little cafe area with seating, like the campus library cafe. Quiet small-scale food places are somewhat popular too, like Noodles & Company, Lunaberry, etc. Not "fast food," though -- too many cars constantly pulling around to the drive-thru. The gym is the only place where young people get physical in public these days, again with interaction among strangers being understood as forbidden.
For contrast, where don't you see college kids and 20-something hanging out much anymore? Well, the student union is more or less dead as the central, all-purpose hang-out, and so are the large green spaces around campus that social-seeking and sun-worshiping students would have flocked to back in the '60s, '70s, and '80s. Food places that are more bustling and carnivalesque are gone too -- cafeterias, mall food courts, the automat. And all commercial stores where the purpose is to browse are also gone as hang-out spaces -- the bookstore, the record store, the video rental store.
As for physical activity, playing sports in public spaces is gone -- an informal game of football in a field, tennis courts for tennis or roller hockey, basketball courts, baseball / softball diamonds, kicking the soccer ball around, frisbee, hacky sack, etc. Public pools, mini golf courses, roller rinks, and dance floors have also been abandoned. If people do get physical in an open area, it's always jogging with earbuds jammed in their head -- don't interrupt me.
What distinguishes the spaces that have fallen from the ones that have risen seems to be how purposeful your visit is expected to be. If it's the kind of place that you visit for some specific, deliberate purpose, then that wasn't so popular in the '80s but has taken over now. If it's the kind of place where you visit with no plan or purpose in particular, that used to be popular but is now being reclaimed by the wilderness.
When people develop the cocooning, distrusting mindset, they don't want unfamiliar people to approach them. How can you manage that while still venturing out into public spaces? And how can you still take part in at least minimal social exchanges? Well, simple: hang out at a place where there's a very well understood expectation that strangers do no approach one another there. Why? Because everybody goes there for some specific purpose and is otherwise occupied -- studying, writing a paper, checking items off their grocery list, getting a quick bite to eat in between studying, meeting friends to catch up with them on important matters over lunch, and so on.
So, if someone unfamiliar approaches you, you can just give them that look or vibe of, "Uh, do I know you? This is a place for studying, you know..." In a bar or on the dance floor (other deserted spaces), you can't give someone a look like the very act of approaching you is violating an unspoken behavior code. So blowing a guy off in those spaces makes you feel more bitchy. But if you're sitting at a booth in the Whole Foods cafe area, you can give them a weird look -- after all, you're just taking a little rest while running errands, and they'd be interrupting you.
For the same reasons, you can't make any new same-sex friends at these places. If a bunch of guys are huddled around the TV in the union to watch the game, they can shoot the shit all day long even if they don't know each other. But plopping down across from some random dude at Starbucks, just to chat, would give off mad homo vibes. Striking up a conversation with a same-sex stranger is no problem at a record store or bookstore if you've got similar tastes, but you wouldn't think of doing so in a supermarket just because you both like Spanish cheeses.
This little investigation shows why it's worth paying attention not just to gross quantitative measures of sociability, like how much time to people spend outside their home, but to qualitative aspects as well. You might think that cocooning, while worse compared to the '80s, still isn't so bad -- look at all the kids hanging out in the library, in Starbucks, jogging around the park, etc. But they only choose these places because they can be assured that strangers won't approach them; they'll have plausible deniability because people don't go to those spaces to really interact. So, "I'm not being anti-social and awkward, I'm just here to conduct other business." Even when people do venture out into public areas these days, their lack of trust and social awkwardness still shows through.
February 20, 2013
Neuroses about feminine hygiene: The past (douching)
Part 1 here covered the trend toward pubic hair removal of the past 20 years. It's not an aesthetic or sexual thing, but a hygiene/disgust thing, in their own words. They obsess about it if it begins to grow in, and they compulsively remove it to alleviate their anxiety. Yet the OCD woman of today never feels real relief because the damn thing keeps growing back in.
Now let's turn to the previous outbreak of both OCD and of neurosis about feminine hygiene, the mid-century.
The prevalence of OCD back then is pretty easy to diagnose from the ubiquitous hygiene films that were screened to schoolchildren. Here you can see stills and summaries of a couple dozen of them, mostly from the '40s and '50s. They didn't fall on deaf ears either: most candid pictures from the mid-century show people who are fairly fastidious about grooming and hygiene.
As for their obsessive thinking and compulsive behavior about feminine hygiene purification rituals, they centered around douching rather than hair removal back then. A concise account can be found in chapters 8 and 9 of Flow: The Cultural Story of Menstruation. (I know, the things I read to uncover the truth...) The tone is your standard snarky sassypants, and the rest of the book consists of predictable feminist griping about having to live up to male-determined standards bla bla bla. But the chapters that stick more to primary sources like ad campaigns are quite revealing for just how out-there the mid-century zeitgeist was, and how similar to our own.
Unlike the seeming mystery of pubic hair removal, it's a no-brainer to interpret douching as a hygiene and disgust-related practice. Not always -- sometimes they market them about feeling comfortable and fresh, not appealing to the yuck factor. But in the mid-century, the mindset was all about purifying her disgusting, offensive odors.
There were two major purveyors of douching solutions, Zonite (weak bleach) and Lysol -- I mean, why only disinfect your counter-tops with the stuff? To see how widespread they were, do a Google image search for douche ad lysol, and douche ad zonite. These dozens of ads span decades and appeared in perfectly mainstream magazines like Woman's Day and Good Housekeeping. You want to see how surprisingly bizarre the '40s and '50s were? -- take a look for yourself. Below are only a few that illustrate the pattern.
Her husband has locked himself away from her disgusting odor, which because of doubt and inhibition she's neglected to do anything about. Some of the copy:
Also note how disgustingly palpable the word choice is -- "mucous," "matter," "odors," etc. They had little sense of taboo when talking about the effluvia and odors of the female sex organ, no roundabout references here. This taboo-violating word choice is not uncommon to find across the ads.
Young married couple were supposed to enjoy a little roll in the hay during their quiet evening at home, but the disgusted huband just can't bring himself to tell his eager wife that it stinks.
So what's the big deal, you might ask? Wasn't it great that ads could so freely shame women for not pleasing their husbands, and that husbands were still allowed to look disgusted if their wives didn't meet the standards?
Well, no, that atmosphere is just like ours today with hair removal. Women feel a crippling shame themselves, other women try to shame them if they don't shave or wax, and hysterical "men" get all grossed out by normal female appearance and texture. Indeed, the guys' inflexibility and appeal to violations of hygiene/disgust norms shows that the guys themselves suffer from OCD and fetishism, almost as though they'd be unable to perform if her vulva didn't look the way they preferred.
A normal woman has nothing to be ashamed of down there, unless she truly does have an infection or something. Clearly the douching phenomenon was hysterically blowing the "problem" out of all proportion. We don't know how men felt, but if they were like those depicted in the ads, then they were psychologically stunted too, in that "ewww, girls are yucky!" stage of childhood.
Crippling shame and juvenile girls-have-cooties disgust are not signs of healthy minds. Rather, we've found yet another case of the broader picture that the mid-century was the "Age of Anxiety". They make the population look more like that of tropical gardening societies (horticulturalists), where there's a pervasive fear and disgust of female sexuality. These are the societies with little to recommend them, they're the most savage. Think of your first impression of the Amazon, New Guinea, or sub-Saharan Africa. In fact, even today African-American women are much more likely than whites to douche, owing to the tropical gardening culture of their ancestors.
The ads are more disgusting than the "problem" they seek to treat -- imagine opening a mainstream magazine and reading the words "mucous matter," "odor-causing waste substances," etc., in the context of feminine hygiene. That's what's gross -- violating the taboo that you talk about that somewhere else.
Aside from warped minds and gross language, the douching phenomenon had real consequences for women's health -- negative. Doctors don't even recommend it anymore because it's now understood how altering the vulvo-vaginal ecosystem so radically can eliminate the good bacteria and allow the nasty ones to take over. See here for the negative outcomes that douching is associated with, and see here for a longitudinal study showing that douching raises the risk of getting bacterial vaginosis (similar symptoms as a yeast infection, including a fishy smell, but more common than it). So, douching causes at least some of those problems, including infection, rather than being a harmless bystander in a web of mere correlations.
We don't even know yet what the parallel harms are that pubic shaving and waxing do, but we don't need to right now. It's clear that they're there, because of such radical alteration of human nature. And no, as some airhead suggested before, it's not the same as shaving the armpits -- there are loads more pathogenic organisms in and around the vagina, which is an opening into the body, unlike the armpit. You're messing with something more serious when you remove pubic hair vs. armpit hair.
At any rate, harm is not the main issue here. It's how well-adjusted, healthy-minded, and socially integrated people are. Normal men and women will not show such an OCD mindset and behavior toward feminine hygiene, as indeed they did not during the '80s, the '70s, and even most of the '60s. The neurotic preoccupation with douching provides another example, then, of how unwholesome the mid-century culture was.
I'm sure it didn't occupy their every waking moment, but then neither does pubic hair removal today. It was so common -- if 30% douche today, when doctors discourage it, it must have been near or over 50% during its heyday. And it was so centered on shame. As with pubic hair, it's just not the kind of thing women should be obsessing over and compulsively trying to "treat," only to remain neurotic.
Now let's turn to the previous outbreak of both OCD and of neurosis about feminine hygiene, the mid-century.
The prevalence of OCD back then is pretty easy to diagnose from the ubiquitous hygiene films that were screened to schoolchildren. Here you can see stills and summaries of a couple dozen of them, mostly from the '40s and '50s. They didn't fall on deaf ears either: most candid pictures from the mid-century show people who are fairly fastidious about grooming and hygiene.
As for their obsessive thinking and compulsive behavior about feminine hygiene purification rituals, they centered around douching rather than hair removal back then. A concise account can be found in chapters 8 and 9 of Flow: The Cultural Story of Menstruation. (I know, the things I read to uncover the truth...) The tone is your standard snarky sassypants, and the rest of the book consists of predictable feminist griping about having to live up to male-determined standards bla bla bla. But the chapters that stick more to primary sources like ad campaigns are quite revealing for just how out-there the mid-century zeitgeist was, and how similar to our own.
Unlike the seeming mystery of pubic hair removal, it's a no-brainer to interpret douching as a hygiene and disgust-related practice. Not always -- sometimes they market them about feeling comfortable and fresh, not appealing to the yuck factor. But in the mid-century, the mindset was all about purifying her disgusting, offensive odors.
There were two major purveyors of douching solutions, Zonite (weak bleach) and Lysol -- I mean, why only disinfect your counter-tops with the stuff? To see how widespread they were, do a Google image search for douche ad lysol, and douche ad zonite. These dozens of ads span decades and appeared in perfectly mainstream magazines like Woman's Day and Good Housekeeping. You want to see how surprisingly bizarre the '40s and '50s were? -- take a look for yourself. Below are only a few that illustrate the pattern.
Her husband has locked himself away from her disgusting odor, which because of doubt and inhibition she's neglected to do anything about. Some of the copy:
One most effective way to safeguard her dainty feminine allure is by practicing complete feminine hygiene as provided by vaginal douches with a scientifically correct preparation like "Lysol." So easy a way to banish the misgivings that often keep married lovers apart.Once again we see the crippling self-doubt of the mid-century on full display. Women who are more well-adjusted don't get hysterical about this kind of stuff, and would not be susceptible to these kinds of ads. The fact that these campaigns lasted so long, and so presumably drummed up so much business, tells us that women of the time really were ashamed of their sex and neurotic about feminine hygiene, far beyond taking basic care of themselves. Just like today's hair-removers.
. . . truly cleanses the vaginal canal even in the presence of mucous matter.
. . . the very source of objectionable odors is eliminated.
Also note how disgustingly palpable the word choice is -- "mucous," "matter," "odors," etc. They had little sense of taboo when talking about the effluvia and odors of the female sex organ, no roundabout references here. This taboo-violating word choice is not uncommon to find across the ads.
Young married couple were supposed to enjoy a little roll in the hay during their quiet evening at home, but the disgusted huband just can't bring himself to tell his eager wife that it stinks.
And she must constantly be on guard against an offense greater than body odor or bad breath -- an odor she may not detect herself but is so apparent to other people.Again the appeal to self-doubt and shame, the OCD emphasis on "constantly" being on guard, and the vivid description of "odor-causing waste substances". Here are a couple other funny ones from Lysol and Zonite, but again just wade through the Google image results for yourself. To find ads for other brands, try douche ad 1940s, or douche ad 1950s.
Zonite... actually destroys, dissolves and removes odor-causing waste substances.
So what's the big deal, you might ask? Wasn't it great that ads could so freely shame women for not pleasing their husbands, and that husbands were still allowed to look disgusted if their wives didn't meet the standards?
Well, no, that atmosphere is just like ours today with hair removal. Women feel a crippling shame themselves, other women try to shame them if they don't shave or wax, and hysterical "men" get all grossed out by normal female appearance and texture. Indeed, the guys' inflexibility and appeal to violations of hygiene/disgust norms shows that the guys themselves suffer from OCD and fetishism, almost as though they'd be unable to perform if her vulva didn't look the way they preferred.
A normal woman has nothing to be ashamed of down there, unless she truly does have an infection or something. Clearly the douching phenomenon was hysterically blowing the "problem" out of all proportion. We don't know how men felt, but if they were like those depicted in the ads, then they were psychologically stunted too, in that "ewww, girls are yucky!" stage of childhood.
Crippling shame and juvenile girls-have-cooties disgust are not signs of healthy minds. Rather, we've found yet another case of the broader picture that the mid-century was the "Age of Anxiety". They make the population look more like that of tropical gardening societies (horticulturalists), where there's a pervasive fear and disgust of female sexuality. These are the societies with little to recommend them, they're the most savage. Think of your first impression of the Amazon, New Guinea, or sub-Saharan Africa. In fact, even today African-American women are much more likely than whites to douche, owing to the tropical gardening culture of their ancestors.
The ads are more disgusting than the "problem" they seek to treat -- imagine opening a mainstream magazine and reading the words "mucous matter," "odor-causing waste substances," etc., in the context of feminine hygiene. That's what's gross -- violating the taboo that you talk about that somewhere else.
Aside from warped minds and gross language, the douching phenomenon had real consequences for women's health -- negative. Doctors don't even recommend it anymore because it's now understood how altering the vulvo-vaginal ecosystem so radically can eliminate the good bacteria and allow the nasty ones to take over. See here for the negative outcomes that douching is associated with, and see here for a longitudinal study showing that douching raises the risk of getting bacterial vaginosis (similar symptoms as a yeast infection, including a fishy smell, but more common than it). So, douching causes at least some of those problems, including infection, rather than being a harmless bystander in a web of mere correlations.
We don't even know yet what the parallel harms are that pubic shaving and waxing do, but we don't need to right now. It's clear that they're there, because of such radical alteration of human nature. And no, as some airhead suggested before, it's not the same as shaving the armpits -- there are loads more pathogenic organisms in and around the vagina, which is an opening into the body, unlike the armpit. You're messing with something more serious when you remove pubic hair vs. armpit hair.
At any rate, harm is not the main issue here. It's how well-adjusted, healthy-minded, and socially integrated people are. Normal men and women will not show such an OCD mindset and behavior toward feminine hygiene, as indeed they did not during the '80s, the '70s, and even most of the '60s. The neurotic preoccupation with douching provides another example, then, of how unwholesome the mid-century culture was.
I'm sure it didn't occupy their every waking moment, but then neither does pubic hair removal today. It was so common -- if 30% douche today, when doctors discourage it, it must have been near or over 50% during its heyday. And it was so centered on shame. As with pubic hair, it's just not the kind of thing women should be obsessing over and compulsively trying to "treat," only to remain neurotic.
February 19, 2013
Men paved the way out of the mid-century malaise
I don't think there's a strong received wisdom about women leading the charge out of the stultifying mid-century culture, or about men and women leaving at the same time. So this post isn't to "debunk" a standard story, but to show something you wouldn't notice without looking.
Our Millennial age is the re-incarnation of the mid-century, and we're a good ways into our falling-crime phase by now. We're 21 years past the 1992 peak in the crime rate, and 21 years past the previous 1933 peak in the crime rate was 1954. Within the next five years, then, we're going to see the culture open up and breathe a little more freely, just like the mid-late-'50s. That will set the stage for the mass exodus from private cocoon life during the next 1960s -- yeah, a lot of that time to come will be annoying, but it'll one of those gear-shifting times that will ultimately lead us into the neo-'80s.
In looking over the period of the mid-'50s through the early '60s, when you can see people starting to leave their cocoons, it's striking how different the timing was between men and women. Already by the mid-'50s men were growing discontent with the social role they were supposed to accept (that of the "company man"). This is summed up in the 1955 hit novel, and 1956 hit movie, The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit. It wasn't until 1963 that the rough female counterpart came out, The Feminine Mystique.
Sloan Wilson and Betty Friedan were born just one year apart in the early 1920s. Belonging to the same generation, they should've heard similar rumblings among their same-sex peers at the same time, if men and women were growing equally tired. Yet Friedan didn't even get the idea to write the book until the late '50s, let alone publish it. By then, more than half a decade had gone by of discontented 30 and 40-something men revealing their grievances in public forums, such as pop culture. So, women felt that the trail blazed by men wasn't going to grow back over -- it had been trodden enough to be safe for female feet now too.
Related to the passivity and risk-aversion of the mid-century was a widespread acceptance and usage of amphetamines, barbiturates, and minor tranquilizers to help confine one's emotional ups and downs to a narrow, steady band. The backlash against that kind of "cosmetic pharmacology" first made an issue of men taking them -- the reformers portrayed them as emasculating and domesticating the more animal-driven nature of male users.
Only somewhat later did the more numerous female users come out about their problem, mainly suburban housewives popping Valium. By then I think the backlash took on something of the flavor of the Feminine Mystique -- they saw their drug addiction as the unwholesome extreme that they'd gone to in the quest to play the role of Supermommy.
I don't recall the dates off the top of my head, but they're in the Happy Pills book by Herzberg that I cited before. I want to say it was the late '50s / early '60s when men began to rebel against being emotionally medicated, and women around the mid-late-'60s.
The Billboard year-end singles charts show a fairly ho-hum procession of songs throughout the early half of the 1950s. Then all of a sudden, the 1956 charts show male performers unashamedly opening up, putting it all out there, and cutting loose -- mostly Elvis, but also the Teenagers with "Why Do Fools Fall in Love". By '57, there are even more (there's a table with all the year-end charts at the bottom of the previous link). There's still Elvis, but now also the Everly Brothers, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Buddy Holly / the Crickets. And it just goes on from there through the last two years of the '50s -- even more Everly Brothers, Dion and the Belmonts, Ritchie Valens, the Drifters, etc.
Those early songs are breaking away from the emotional restraint -- or perhaps lack of much emotion to begin with -- of songs about boys and girls from the mid-century. They're pointing the way toward the power ballad of the 1980s, after which emotional numbness and blandness would set in once more, lasting through today.
What about female performers? There's a noticeable lack of them altogether in the '50s. The most memorable ones were probably the Chordettes, but they don't sound like they're letting go -- it sounds more rehearsed and under-control than the songs by male performers of the same time. "Mr. Sandman" came out in '55, when "Rock Around the Clock" ushered in the rock era, and "Lollipop" came out in '58, the same year that saw "All I Have to Do Is Dream," "Great Balls of Fire," "Peggy Sue," and the original recording of "Do You Want to Dance".
Nope, the first year with a clear breakthrough by emotional females, akin to Elvis in '56, was 1961 when the Shirelles took the world by storm as the first "girl group" -- i.e., the just-go-with-it, boy-crazy type. Whereas the late '50s saw the male rock explosion, it took until 1963 for female singers to join in the excitement -- just about every classic early song came out in that single year: "Be My Baby," "Then He Kissed Me," "Da Doo Ron Ron," "Just One Look," "One Fine Day," and so on. They were pointing the way toward the Pointer Sisters and Bananarama, who perfected the genre in the '80s. Again we see females trailing males by about five years.
Finally, there's clothing, another obvious difference between the drab mid-century and the upbeat '60s - '80s period that followed. The main shift seems to have involved variety of colors and the presence of patterns, both of which make clothing look more striking and signal the willingness of the wearer to put themselves out there and get noticed, trusting that others aren't going to ridicule them, or perhaps feeling too carefree to pay them any mind if they did.
In an earlier post on Christmas sweaters, I detailed how men were the first to re-adopt them after their more or less disappearance during the mid-century, after having been so popular during the Jazz Age. The Sears Christmas catalog ("wish book") shows sweaters with multiple colors and winter-themed patterns for men starting in the 1956 edition, when women's sweaters are still uniform in color and lacking in patterns. Multiple colors and bold patterns don't show up for women's winter sweaters until the early '60s -- they're definitely in the '62 edition, and perhaps in the '60 or '61 editions, though neither is online for me to check.
Outside of seasonal clothing, everyday shirts showed the same timing. By the mid-'50s, the Sears catalogs have lots of what we'd call "flannel shirts," with their bold all-over pattern and contrasting colors. (Sounds more fun than a gray t-shirt, khaki cargo shorts, and brown sandals.) Not until the early '60s do we see a similar profusion of multi-colored and patterned shirts for women. Once again, men led the way out of drabness by a good five years or so.
There are surely other examples, but these are diverse enough to make the point. A falling-crime era selects for more feminized traits, so naturally men will be the first to grow restless and try to pave the way out toward a somewhat more dangerous but ultimately more fulfilling way of life.
By the same logic, when the outgoing zeitgeist grinds to a halt and swings back toward the cocooning side -- most recently, circa 1990 -- women seem to be the first to drop out of public spaces and to withdraw trust in the opposite sex, while men stick it out for a little longer before closing themselves off as well. But that's for another post.
Our Millennial age is the re-incarnation of the mid-century, and we're a good ways into our falling-crime phase by now. We're 21 years past the 1992 peak in the crime rate, and 21 years past the previous 1933 peak in the crime rate was 1954. Within the next five years, then, we're going to see the culture open up and breathe a little more freely, just like the mid-late-'50s. That will set the stage for the mass exodus from private cocoon life during the next 1960s -- yeah, a lot of that time to come will be annoying, but it'll one of those gear-shifting times that will ultimately lead us into the neo-'80s.
In looking over the period of the mid-'50s through the early '60s, when you can see people starting to leave their cocoons, it's striking how different the timing was between men and women. Already by the mid-'50s men were growing discontent with the social role they were supposed to accept (that of the "company man"). This is summed up in the 1955 hit novel, and 1956 hit movie, The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit. It wasn't until 1963 that the rough female counterpart came out, The Feminine Mystique.
Sloan Wilson and Betty Friedan were born just one year apart in the early 1920s. Belonging to the same generation, they should've heard similar rumblings among their same-sex peers at the same time, if men and women were growing equally tired. Yet Friedan didn't even get the idea to write the book until the late '50s, let alone publish it. By then, more than half a decade had gone by of discontented 30 and 40-something men revealing their grievances in public forums, such as pop culture. So, women felt that the trail blazed by men wasn't going to grow back over -- it had been trodden enough to be safe for female feet now too.
Related to the passivity and risk-aversion of the mid-century was a widespread acceptance and usage of amphetamines, barbiturates, and minor tranquilizers to help confine one's emotional ups and downs to a narrow, steady band. The backlash against that kind of "cosmetic pharmacology" first made an issue of men taking them -- the reformers portrayed them as emasculating and domesticating the more animal-driven nature of male users.
Only somewhat later did the more numerous female users come out about their problem, mainly suburban housewives popping Valium. By then I think the backlash took on something of the flavor of the Feminine Mystique -- they saw their drug addiction as the unwholesome extreme that they'd gone to in the quest to play the role of Supermommy.
I don't recall the dates off the top of my head, but they're in the Happy Pills book by Herzberg that I cited before. I want to say it was the late '50s / early '60s when men began to rebel against being emotionally medicated, and women around the mid-late-'60s.
The Billboard year-end singles charts show a fairly ho-hum procession of songs throughout the early half of the 1950s. Then all of a sudden, the 1956 charts show male performers unashamedly opening up, putting it all out there, and cutting loose -- mostly Elvis, but also the Teenagers with "Why Do Fools Fall in Love". By '57, there are even more (there's a table with all the year-end charts at the bottom of the previous link). There's still Elvis, but now also the Everly Brothers, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Buddy Holly / the Crickets. And it just goes on from there through the last two years of the '50s -- even more Everly Brothers, Dion and the Belmonts, Ritchie Valens, the Drifters, etc.
Those early songs are breaking away from the emotional restraint -- or perhaps lack of much emotion to begin with -- of songs about boys and girls from the mid-century. They're pointing the way toward the power ballad of the 1980s, after which emotional numbness and blandness would set in once more, lasting through today.
What about female performers? There's a noticeable lack of them altogether in the '50s. The most memorable ones were probably the Chordettes, but they don't sound like they're letting go -- it sounds more rehearsed and under-control than the songs by male performers of the same time. "Mr. Sandman" came out in '55, when "Rock Around the Clock" ushered in the rock era, and "Lollipop" came out in '58, the same year that saw "All I Have to Do Is Dream," "Great Balls of Fire," "Peggy Sue," and the original recording of "Do You Want to Dance".
Nope, the first year with a clear breakthrough by emotional females, akin to Elvis in '56, was 1961 when the Shirelles took the world by storm as the first "girl group" -- i.e., the just-go-with-it, boy-crazy type. Whereas the late '50s saw the male rock explosion, it took until 1963 for female singers to join in the excitement -- just about every classic early song came out in that single year: "Be My Baby," "Then He Kissed Me," "Da Doo Ron Ron," "Just One Look," "One Fine Day," and so on. They were pointing the way toward the Pointer Sisters and Bananarama, who perfected the genre in the '80s. Again we see females trailing males by about five years.
Finally, there's clothing, another obvious difference between the drab mid-century and the upbeat '60s - '80s period that followed. The main shift seems to have involved variety of colors and the presence of patterns, both of which make clothing look more striking and signal the willingness of the wearer to put themselves out there and get noticed, trusting that others aren't going to ridicule them, or perhaps feeling too carefree to pay them any mind if they did.
In an earlier post on Christmas sweaters, I detailed how men were the first to re-adopt them after their more or less disappearance during the mid-century, after having been so popular during the Jazz Age. The Sears Christmas catalog ("wish book") shows sweaters with multiple colors and winter-themed patterns for men starting in the 1956 edition, when women's sweaters are still uniform in color and lacking in patterns. Multiple colors and bold patterns don't show up for women's winter sweaters until the early '60s -- they're definitely in the '62 edition, and perhaps in the '60 or '61 editions, though neither is online for me to check.
Outside of seasonal clothing, everyday shirts showed the same timing. By the mid-'50s, the Sears catalogs have lots of what we'd call "flannel shirts," with their bold all-over pattern and contrasting colors. (Sounds more fun than a gray t-shirt, khaki cargo shorts, and brown sandals.) Not until the early '60s do we see a similar profusion of multi-colored and patterned shirts for women. Once again, men led the way out of drabness by a good five years or so.
There are surely other examples, but these are diverse enough to make the point. A falling-crime era selects for more feminized traits, so naturally men will be the first to grow restless and try to pave the way out toward a somewhat more dangerous but ultimately more fulfilling way of life.
By the same logic, when the outgoing zeitgeist grinds to a halt and swings back toward the cocooning side -- most recently, circa 1990 -- women seem to be the first to drop out of public spaces and to withdraw trust in the opposite sex, while men stick it out for a little longer before closing themselves off as well. But that's for another post.
February 18, 2013
Gayest states vs. gayest cities
Via Steve Sailer, here is a Gallup poll on homosexuality rates across the 50 states and DC. Below is a slightly edited comment of mine.
Homosexuals congregate in cities, so we should really be asking which cities are the gayest, per capita. In 2012, the queer magazine The Advocate put together a list of 15, with honorable mentions. It's not number of homosexuals per capita, but fixtures of queer "culture" per capita -- how in-your-face the queer lifestyle would be.
The index consists of: queer elected officials, WNBA teams (lol), International Mr. Leather competition semifinalists, Imperial Court chapters (they fundraise by holding gay balls), teams that competed in the Gay Softball World Series, gay bookstores, nude yoga classes, laws protecting trannies, and concerts by Gossip or the Cliks or the Veronicas.
This way of measuring a city's gayness seems better than asking a random sample if they are or are not. For one thing, even in a fag-friendly age like ours, responses won't be totally honest. That might not matter, as we could just add however many percent we think are lying to the reported percent. However, the underestimation may not be uniform across the country -- in more conservative regions, the underestimation is probably greater than in more liberal regions.
By measuring honest signals of queer activity like gay bookstores and nude yoga classes, we can sidestep the issue of response bias. It doesn't matter if some city reports a far lower-than-average rate of homosexual identification to pollsters -- if they participate in the Gay Softball World Series or compete in the International Mr. Leather competition, we know they're gay.
Also, measuring unmistakable, public signs of queer culture gets more at what normal people truly dislike so much about fags, namely their in-your-face lifestyle. No one advocates having the police trail queers 24/7, because we know they're going to do what they're going to do. We just want them to keep it out of our awareness and out of our communal spaces. If you want to make a lifestyle out of sucking off 10 different dicks in a single night, then go drop dead from AIDS where we don't have to look at your rotting half-corpse of a body. Otherwise, try to at least appear and act normal when you're out and about.
Now, which city would you guess is the #1 most gayest in the country? Salt Lake City, UT. No surprise to anyone who's ever visited there. Even on a one-day visit, you'll hear more lisping buzzing voices than you'd hear during a week in San Francisco. Nearby Denver also makes the list.
Looking at the state-level data, it makes sense -- the Mountain states, except Arizona, are so low in homosexuals per capita, that those who are there would find it impossible to meet another one. So every faggot from the whole Mountain Time Zone picks up and heads off for Denver or Salt Lake City.
There seems to be a similar thing going on in the South. Most of those states are very low on the state list, and yet Little Rock, Knoxville, and Atlanta all make the cities list. Judging from HIV rates, Atlanta seems to be the most over-run by gay corruption.
On the flip-side, states with higher rates of gayness generally don't have cities on the city list -- Vermont, Maine, Hawaii, etc., don't have cities on the list. Because it's much easier for them to find each other in the suburbs or perhaps even rural areas, they don't feel the need to all flock to the same nearby city.
So in high-gay states, their influence is more diluted, no one area seems that in-your-face. But in low-gay states, although most of the areas are emptied of gays, the largest nearby city will feel like a latter-day Sodom.
Homosexuals congregate in cities, so we should really be asking which cities are the gayest, per capita. In 2012, the queer magazine The Advocate put together a list of 15, with honorable mentions. It's not number of homosexuals per capita, but fixtures of queer "culture" per capita -- how in-your-face the queer lifestyle would be.
The index consists of: queer elected officials, WNBA teams (lol), International Mr. Leather competition semifinalists, Imperial Court chapters (they fundraise by holding gay balls), teams that competed in the Gay Softball World Series, gay bookstores, nude yoga classes, laws protecting trannies, and concerts by Gossip or the Cliks or the Veronicas.
This way of measuring a city's gayness seems better than asking a random sample if they are or are not. For one thing, even in a fag-friendly age like ours, responses won't be totally honest. That might not matter, as we could just add however many percent we think are lying to the reported percent. However, the underestimation may not be uniform across the country -- in more conservative regions, the underestimation is probably greater than in more liberal regions.
By measuring honest signals of queer activity like gay bookstores and nude yoga classes, we can sidestep the issue of response bias. It doesn't matter if some city reports a far lower-than-average rate of homosexual identification to pollsters -- if they participate in the Gay Softball World Series or compete in the International Mr. Leather competition, we know they're gay.
Also, measuring unmistakable, public signs of queer culture gets more at what normal people truly dislike so much about fags, namely their in-your-face lifestyle. No one advocates having the police trail queers 24/7, because we know they're going to do what they're going to do. We just want them to keep it out of our awareness and out of our communal spaces. If you want to make a lifestyle out of sucking off 10 different dicks in a single night, then go drop dead from AIDS where we don't have to look at your rotting half-corpse of a body. Otherwise, try to at least appear and act normal when you're out and about.
Now, which city would you guess is the #1 most gayest in the country? Salt Lake City, UT. No surprise to anyone who's ever visited there. Even on a one-day visit, you'll hear more lisping buzzing voices than you'd hear during a week in San Francisco. Nearby Denver also makes the list.
Looking at the state-level data, it makes sense -- the Mountain states, except Arizona, are so low in homosexuals per capita, that those who are there would find it impossible to meet another one. So every faggot from the whole Mountain Time Zone picks up and heads off for Denver or Salt Lake City.
There seems to be a similar thing going on in the South. Most of those states are very low on the state list, and yet Little Rock, Knoxville, and Atlanta all make the cities list. Judging from HIV rates, Atlanta seems to be the most over-run by gay corruption.
On the flip-side, states with higher rates of gayness generally don't have cities on the city list -- Vermont, Maine, Hawaii, etc., don't have cities on the list. Because it's much easier for them to find each other in the suburbs or perhaps even rural areas, they don't feel the need to all flock to the same nearby city.
So in high-gay states, their influence is more diluted, no one area seems that in-your-face. But in low-gay states, although most of the areas are emptied of gays, the largest nearby city will feel like a latter-day Sodom.
February 17, 2013
Catchy chewing gum jingles
What is it about chewing gum that made a rockin' little jingle so central to their commercials? No other product type had such consistently likable music. Like, you don't have to worry about basic things anymore, now go have yourself some good clean, wholesome fun? Whatever it was, it seems like every brand had a catchy commercial in the second half of the 1980s.
Extra. Hands-down the best. Great build-up and climax, and there are about three separate melodic phrases, with no mindless repetition. How'd they pack all that, plus the voice-over pitch, into just 30 seconds? Great funky bass line too. Another version.
Big Red. Almost as much melodic variety as the Extra jingle, and another great build-up to the climax.
Juicy Fruit. It's not quite as varied as the Extra jingle, nor with as much build-up. The jangly timbre of the instruments does give it more of a footloose feeling, though.
Doublemint. Rounding out the classics, this one has good melodic variety, more on the easy-breezy side compared to the energy of the others. Nice sincere sense of humor, too, about the most you can get out of a 30-second commercial.
Carefree. A little more repetitive, but still fun and upbeat.
Dentyne. Couldn't find a good original jingle for this brand, and they did take a stab at it many times. But hey, a nice sample works too.
Spearmint. Another one that I couldn't find a catchy original jingle for, but these ads are so rad it doesn't matter if they're music-free. Here is another. In 30 short seconds, they capture the '80s attitude toward technology pretty well -- somewhat anxious (dark lighting), somewhat optimistic (smiling faces), and trying to have fun and a sense of humor about it all. Very new wave, even though these ads came out in '88.
Ever since the '90s, gum commercials have led the way toward the meta-ironic faggotry that we're still stuck in today. As the ads from the '80s show, it's not that hard to make something upbeat, catchy, and non-saccharine, even if it's advertising chewing gum.
These things aren't terribly entertaining on their own, but they're not meant to be -- and when you think of how many ads we have to watch every day, every week, it all adds up. The unrelenting tide of wacky-zany commercials these days makes it unbearable to watch TV anymore, aside from the programming itself. Back in the '80s, I don't think we reflexively dove for the remote every time a commercial break came on, and you can see why -- they were pretty fun for what they could be.
Extra. Hands-down the best. Great build-up and climax, and there are about three separate melodic phrases, with no mindless repetition. How'd they pack all that, plus the voice-over pitch, into just 30 seconds? Great funky bass line too. Another version.
Big Red. Almost as much melodic variety as the Extra jingle, and another great build-up to the climax.
Juicy Fruit. It's not quite as varied as the Extra jingle, nor with as much build-up. The jangly timbre of the instruments does give it more of a footloose feeling, though.
Doublemint. Rounding out the classics, this one has good melodic variety, more on the easy-breezy side compared to the energy of the others. Nice sincere sense of humor, too, about the most you can get out of a 30-second commercial.
Carefree. A little more repetitive, but still fun and upbeat.
Dentyne. Couldn't find a good original jingle for this brand, and they did take a stab at it many times. But hey, a nice sample works too.
Spearmint. Another one that I couldn't find a catchy original jingle for, but these ads are so rad it doesn't matter if they're music-free. Here is another. In 30 short seconds, they capture the '80s attitude toward technology pretty well -- somewhat anxious (dark lighting), somewhat optimistic (smiling faces), and trying to have fun and a sense of humor about it all. Very new wave, even though these ads came out in '88.
Ever since the '90s, gum commercials have led the way toward the meta-ironic faggotry that we're still stuck in today. As the ads from the '80s show, it's not that hard to make something upbeat, catchy, and non-saccharine, even if it's advertising chewing gum.
These things aren't terribly entertaining on their own, but they're not meant to be -- and when you think of how many ads we have to watch every day, every week, it all adds up. The unrelenting tide of wacky-zany commercials these days makes it unbearable to watch TV anymore, aside from the programming itself. Back in the '80s, I don't think we reflexively dove for the remote every time a commercial break came on, and you can see why -- they were pretty fun for what they could be.
February 16, 2013
So many slang words about how suspicious you find every place and everyone
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February 15, 2013
Girls' hair that "frames the face" vs. reveals the face
[Edit: See the comments for many examples of 1940s hairstyles that look like those of the Millennial age.]
Today at Starbucks I overheard some loud airheaded faggot giving beauty tips, or beauty commandments, to his fag hag friend. Something about how she can't get a certain haircut that she'd wanted -- it needed to be some other way in order to "frame her face". I didn't get a real good look at her, but she didn't look fat, ugly, or mannish, hence no need to worry about disguising her face through hairstyling.
What does this phrase mean, then? Here are some examples from Google images, all from the past 20 years naturally:
The common denominator seems to be a lack of volume, and using the hair to hide the face. Sometimes even the eyes are hidden from view. You generally don't see the ears or a good part of the jawline, perhaps not the forehead / temples / upper face area either. It appears more common for hair below the chin to angle or curve inward rather than outward, thus hiding the neck from view as well. The face peeks out from a narrow opening between an almost closed pair of forward-jutting curtains. Basically the goal is to look like you're wearing a hoodie.
That fits in with the tendency toward cocooning, feeling awkward about your body, and of course the rise of hoodies. Wrap your face in a little security blanket, and venturing out into public doesn't feel so threatening.
For comparison, here are counterpart pictures to the ones above, but from the '80s:
You sure can see a person's face without so much hair getting in the way. It gives a more open, trusting, and confident look -- no security blanket vibe given off here. And by throwing it away from the face, creating volume, it puts the hair, as well as the face, on full display. The blown-back look also makes it seem less self-conscious, and so less neurotic or narcissistic, compared to the micro-adjusted arrangements of hair in the framing look. Plus she can now get your attention by showing her earrings.
Guys with long hair show the same change over time from face-revealing to face-concealing:
Aside from its use in comforting the cocooners, the face-framing hair also gives contemporary women another outlet for their OCD. There are a half-dozen facial shape types, and through hairstyling all are supposed to be altered Procrustes-like toward a single ideal. Plus, each type has its own intricacies of how to use hair to re-shape it into the single ideal. All right, more rule systems to wrap our brains around! And as long as you check off all the items in the list of prescriptions, you can rest stress-free!
Back on planet Earth, though, the OCD types are always super-stressed. You'll only feel care-free by just letting your face be your face (again, if it isn't fat, ugly, or mannish).
I wonder if that's why girls have started to pay so much attention to queer advice about beauty over the past 20 years vs. would have written them off in the '80s. If their goal is to not look very pretty for the boys, then why not take advice from a boy with a broken aesthetic antenna?
Normal dudes look on at such an interaction and think she's either clueless or being manipulated -- but just maybe she finds boys bothersome and doesn't want to attract attention from them. Yep: no jewelry, all clothing items baggy as hell, no smile. Her little faggie friend is just telling her what she wants to hear, in this as in so many other cases.
Today at Starbucks I overheard some loud airheaded faggot giving beauty tips, or beauty commandments, to his fag hag friend. Something about how she can't get a certain haircut that she'd wanted -- it needed to be some other way in order to "frame her face". I didn't get a real good look at her, but she didn't look fat, ugly, or mannish, hence no need to worry about disguising her face through hairstyling.
What does this phrase mean, then? Here are some examples from Google images, all from the past 20 years naturally:
The common denominator seems to be a lack of volume, and using the hair to hide the face. Sometimes even the eyes are hidden from view. You generally don't see the ears or a good part of the jawline, perhaps not the forehead / temples / upper face area either. It appears more common for hair below the chin to angle or curve inward rather than outward, thus hiding the neck from view as well. The face peeks out from a narrow opening between an almost closed pair of forward-jutting curtains. Basically the goal is to look like you're wearing a hoodie.
That fits in with the tendency toward cocooning, feeling awkward about your body, and of course the rise of hoodies. Wrap your face in a little security blanket, and venturing out into public doesn't feel so threatening.
For comparison, here are counterpart pictures to the ones above, but from the '80s:
Guys with long hair show the same change over time from face-revealing to face-concealing:
Aside from its use in comforting the cocooners, the face-framing hair also gives contemporary women another outlet for their OCD. There are a half-dozen facial shape types, and through hairstyling all are supposed to be altered Procrustes-like toward a single ideal. Plus, each type has its own intricacies of how to use hair to re-shape it into the single ideal. All right, more rule systems to wrap our brains around! And as long as you check off all the items in the list of prescriptions, you can rest stress-free!
Back on planet Earth, though, the OCD types are always super-stressed. You'll only feel care-free by just letting your face be your face (again, if it isn't fat, ugly, or mannish).
I wonder if that's why girls have started to pay so much attention to queer advice about beauty over the past 20 years vs. would have written them off in the '80s. If their goal is to not look very pretty for the boys, then why not take advice from a boy with a broken aesthetic antenna?
Normal dudes look on at such an interaction and think she's either clueless or being manipulated -- but just maybe she finds boys bothersome and doesn't want to attract attention from them. Yep: no jewelry, all clothing items baggy as hell, no smile. Her little faggie friend is just telling her what she wants to hear, in this as in so many other cases.
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