Since the decline of wild times around 1991, the influence on culture from 15-24 year-olds has all but disappeared; now everything is for older adults and small children. Malls are no longer overrun with teenagers because they're holed up in their room. The mall instead caters to the needs of 25+ status-seekers -- Crate and Barrel, spas and salons, etc. -- and any tots they may have (Build-A-Bear). The top 10 box office draws have for a long time now focused more and more on children (Harry Potter) and older adults, with teen-oriented movies dropping out of view.
As a result, the culture has never been more asexual: everything is about the stages in life when you're too young to care about the birds and the bees, or when you've already gotten that messy business of finding a mate and making babies out of the way and it's now time to raise them right.
This is not because there is a wealth of great adolescent culture out there being suppressed by demographically more powerful grown-ups and their ankle-biters. Anyone with sense really would rather see a Harry Potter movie than Superbad, and would rather stroll through Barnes and Noble than putz around Hot Topic. Young people's cultural comparative advantage is in anything requiring wildness, so that when they become domesticated, they have nothing special to offer and vanish into the background.
As though pop music didn't sound juvenile enough already -- as opposed to the coming-of-age and reckless youth themes popular from the '60s through the '80s -- there's now a movement within indie to make music for small kids. (Even indie for adults sounds pretty kiddie to me.) Listen to the song samples at the NYT link; sounds pretty hokey. The acoustic folksy sound is trying too hard, and the lyrics about cotton candy at a baseball game and Mama taking off her ring because she's sad are too self-conscious. At least there's an attempt to not really patronize the children like you see with Barney or Dora the Explorer, but it still doesn't work. The zeitgeist just won't let music makers get into the right mindset. About the only pop music song for small kids that I liked as a kid was "NeverEnding Story" by Limahl.
In fact I'm glad there wasn't dedicated little-kid music when I was growing up because it made you yearn even more to join the cool older-kid age group -- you could just tell they were having a lot of fun with their music, whether it was your high school babysitter playing "Open Your Heart" on your tape player or your friend's older brother blasting Bon Jovi out of his van windows. Sure, as a pre-pubescent kid you don't really relate to the lyrics that much, but you can't help but feel the beat and get sucked into the melody. Plus once you get into third or fourth grade, you start paying attention to girls but are nervous about not appearing guyish enough in front of your friends. You're looking for some role model to say it's OK, just go with it and don't worry about their cooties. I mean hey, if Michael Hutchence likes girls, maybe they're not so bad after all...
Who are small children going to hear "I need you tonight" from these days? It breaks your heart thinking about how deprived their childhoods are going to be.
April 30, 2010
April 28, 2010
Why don't comedies age well?
Unlike most other genres, whatever the medium, comedies thought to be good from the past tend to fall flat today. Aristotle thought that one function of humor and comedy is to look down upon someone -- not just as in making someone the butt of a joke, but even looking down on yourself when you realize what a ridiculous situation you're in. Others building on that point to the status-seeking function of comedy. I don't see that so much because that assumes it's an individual satirist taking on his enemies. In reality, it looks more like a way for members of a single tribe to heighten the in-group vs. out-group distinction -- white people dance like this, and black people dance like this.
After awhile, the satirizing group may no longer be influential or even exist, and the same goes for their opponent tribes. A contemporary audience cannot sympathize with jokes about a group who they don't even know about; the group would need to be updated. And most of the comedy tends not to be a blatant attack on the group but a series of more subtle barbs at the group's mannerisms, slang, clothing style, minor foibles, and so on. No one in 100 years is going to know that such things were being spoofed by the makers of Ron Burgundy from Anchorman or the goth kid from South Park. Hell, look at how quickly Napoleon Dynamite vanished from public awareness. Superbad is just about there too.
Certainly every bit of topical humor added lowers the shelf-life of a comedy. It's only one generation later, and yet how many would laugh at a current events or pop culture-related gag from 1985 -- even among those who would still recognize its origin and logic?
On this basis, what comedy previously thought to be funny do I think will be most doomed to obscurity after its initial run? -- Family Guy. Most of the jokes are references to contemporary (or past!) pop culture and current events. What remains is mostly an attack on the tribes that rival with the creators' tribe for social and cultural influence. And even the jokes that don't seem to be aimed at anyone in particular still serve only as tribal membership badges for the creators and viewers -- we belong to the tribe that, for whatever reason, makes these kinds of pointless remarks. We're just weird like that.
I would add all of those dopey series on Cartoon Network like Aqua Teen Hunger Force and Robot Chicken, but I don't think most people found them funny to begin with. Their existence has only been due to their use as a membership badge for a sub-culture of adolescent male dorks. The recent "frat pack" movies starring Will Ferrell, Ben Stiller, bla bla bla will do terribly too, but at least they had to appeal to a broader audience than Family Guy did, so they aren't so pointless.
And which will hold up the best? Obviously those that focus on more timeless and universal themes, not dated provincial turf wars. Those themes are usually the forte of action or drama specialists, though. So drama-comedies like The Simpsons and action-comedies like Ghostbusters will endure the longest. Unfortunately the increase in identity politics and tribalism within American society means that most of the comedies from the past two decades are disposable, with a few exceptions. Still, the action-comedy reached its peak just before then, and it's currently OK to re-visit and enjoy stuff from the '80s. So you won't feel like such a weirdo for going outside the contemporary mainstream.
After awhile, the satirizing group may no longer be influential or even exist, and the same goes for their opponent tribes. A contemporary audience cannot sympathize with jokes about a group who they don't even know about; the group would need to be updated. And most of the comedy tends not to be a blatant attack on the group but a series of more subtle barbs at the group's mannerisms, slang, clothing style, minor foibles, and so on. No one in 100 years is going to know that such things were being spoofed by the makers of Ron Burgundy from Anchorman or the goth kid from South Park. Hell, look at how quickly Napoleon Dynamite vanished from public awareness. Superbad is just about there too.
Certainly every bit of topical humor added lowers the shelf-life of a comedy. It's only one generation later, and yet how many would laugh at a current events or pop culture-related gag from 1985 -- even among those who would still recognize its origin and logic?
On this basis, what comedy previously thought to be funny do I think will be most doomed to obscurity after its initial run? -- Family Guy. Most of the jokes are references to contemporary (or past!) pop culture and current events. What remains is mostly an attack on the tribes that rival with the creators' tribe for social and cultural influence. And even the jokes that don't seem to be aimed at anyone in particular still serve only as tribal membership badges for the creators and viewers -- we belong to the tribe that, for whatever reason, makes these kinds of pointless remarks. We're just weird like that.
I would add all of those dopey series on Cartoon Network like Aqua Teen Hunger Force and Robot Chicken, but I don't think most people found them funny to begin with. Their existence has only been due to their use as a membership badge for a sub-culture of adolescent male dorks. The recent "frat pack" movies starring Will Ferrell, Ben Stiller, bla bla bla will do terribly too, but at least they had to appeal to a broader audience than Family Guy did, so they aren't so pointless.
And which will hold up the best? Obviously those that focus on more timeless and universal themes, not dated provincial turf wars. Those themes are usually the forte of action or drama specialists, though. So drama-comedies like The Simpsons and action-comedies like Ghostbusters will endure the longest. Unfortunately the increase in identity politics and tribalism within American society means that most of the comedies from the past two decades are disposable, with a few exceptions. Still, the action-comedy reached its peak just before then, and it's currently OK to re-visit and enjoy stuff from the '80s. So you won't feel like such a weirdo for going outside the contemporary mainstream.
"Don't worry, I'm legal..."
That's a new deflecting response I'd like to try out when some nubile honey bunny asks me how old I am, but I never get the chance anymore. Soon after the recession sank in, it became gauche to dress up, and I started wearing a t-shirt and jeans to dance clubs instead of a jacket and tie. It must've been that type of clothing that made younger people curious about my age because literally no one has asked me since I switched. Just last week someone asked, only half-certain, "...you're over 21...right?" when pointing out a bar area that they thought I'd like.
Even though I haven't gotten the chance to try it out, it still sounds like it would work for anyone. If you're youthful looking, it emphasizes this good quality of yours and has a nice mischievous ring to it. If you're noticeably older and mature-looking, it shows how big your balls are that you're accusing her of wanting you and only being worried about whether you were old enough. And the self-deprecating humor in it shows how secure you are about your increasing age. In either case, a deadpan delivery with solid eye-contact (and maybe a barely visible smirk) is the only way to go. If you say it with the slightest hint of interest or eagerness, it'll sound totally creepy -- definitely do not smile.
Clearly this line should only be used when you sense an interest, not if she asks in disgust like uggh i mean how old ARE you anyway?
Even though I haven't gotten the chance to try it out, it still sounds like it would work for anyone. If you're youthful looking, it emphasizes this good quality of yours and has a nice mischievous ring to it. If you're noticeably older and mature-looking, it shows how big your balls are that you're accusing her of wanting you and only being worried about whether you were old enough. And the self-deprecating humor in it shows how secure you are about your increasing age. In either case, a deadpan delivery with solid eye-contact (and maybe a barely visible smirk) is the only way to go. If you say it with the slightest hint of interest or eagerness, it'll sound totally creepy -- definitely do not smile.
Clearly this line should only be used when you sense an interest, not if she asks in disgust like uggh i mean how old ARE you anyway?
April 27, 2010
Even in cradle of agriculture, high-carb diets drive up obesity and diabetes
People who know about human biodiversity often argue that low-carb diets are too broad-brush of an approach because different races adopted agriculture at different times, so while the late adopters might get really dinged by the novelty of grains and sugars, surely those who adopted it first have had enough time to evolve a decent (if not total) genetic resistance to poor diets. They point out that recent work shows how fast natural selection can work on humans -- just look at how quickly Europeans got lighter in their skin, hair, and eye color, or how quickly the dairying populations evolved lactase persistence. That's all within the past 10,000 years!
Unfortunately that logic only applies to easy changes where only a single mutation gets the job done. For skin, hair, and eye color, there are under 10 genes that make most of the difference, and really just a handful of those do most of the work. Lactase persistence is due to a single mutation. Why are these changes so easy to make? Because the basic machinery was already there, the result of millions of years of painstaking, gradual tinkering by natural selection. All these new traits represent are the dialing up or down of some knob -- break a gene that colors your skin, and you're pale; break a gene that shuts off lactase production, and you have lifetime lactase activity.
What they do not do is invent things from scratch or fundamentally re-draw the blueprint of any of the body's systems. That takes too long for 10,000 years to yield anything useful. Henry Harpending and Greg Cochran emphasize this point in their excellent and very readable book on the topic of recent human evolution, The 10,000 Year Explosion (check the Amazon box above). A mutation or two might break the process by which neuronal growth slows down, and that might make the person smarter. But inventing neurons in an organism that had no neurons is not going to happen in a short time and not by just a handful of mutations. The body's systems are too complex for random mutation to hit on them in a single shot.
In particular, the human digestive system is not going to change much at all in 10,000 years. Agricultural populations have relied far more on plant foods than hunter-gatherers ever did, and yet no human makes cellulase, the enzyme that lets herbivores digest plants. Wouldn't it be useful for us to have it too, rather than pass those plant foods through as undigested fiber? Sure it would -- it just takes a long time to invent it if you don't have it at all. More relevant to agriculture, eating grains like a bird or a rodent won't give you their digestive system unless this goes on for millions of years.
Just to check that this is true, let's have a look at the prevalence of obesity worldwide and focus on the Middle East where agriculture began. In the US, where most of the population came from later adopters, we have roughly 1/3 overweight and another 1/3 obese. To compare, check whoever you want, but the picture is clear -- the earliest adopters of agriculture are fat as hell right now. Here is an NYT article on how obese Qataris have become, which has the usual Western baloney about obesity being caused by too much food and not enough exercise. (Another case of harmful foreign aid -- shaming people in poor countries into becoming vegan joggers.)
But we know from fat marathoners and bike riders that even enormous amounts of exercise won't melt fat, and we know from hunter-gatherers like the Ache -- who eat between 3000 and 4000 calories a day and are still lean and muscular -- that quantity of food has little to do with it. What are Qataris eating so much of that makes them fat? The article says fast food, as well as home meals of rice, clarified butter, and lamb. Well, butter and meat are just about all the Maasai live on (plus cow's blood) and they're lean and muscular, even though they don't live life on a stairmaster. It must be the heapings of rice.
And what exactly does "fast food" include? Judging by the picture of boys chowing down on McDonalds, we see that there's almost no animal products at all -- I think I can make out a 2-oz slice of beef and perhaps a slice of cheese (which I doubt came from an animal anyway -- probably another soy-based abomination). Instead, they're sucking down five pounds of straight up sugar (Pepsi, ketchup, and barbecue and honey sauces), starch (a mountain of French fries), grains (white bread buns), and fibrous carbs (tomatoes, onions, and other toppings). All of that glucose is going to send their insulin sky-high, and insulin is the hormone that signals fat to stay locked away in fat cells.
You might not see this pattern where people don't get much to eat at all -- there would be little fat to lock away in the first place. High-carb diets don't conjure fat out of nothing, but if you are getting enough to eat, a high-carb diet will keep the fat you're eating locked in fat cells rather than dumped into your bloodstream to be burned for fuel. Places like India where people get little to eat aren't teeming with obese people, but they sure are hit by diabetes. This is another member of the full range of symptoms of Metabolic Syndrome (along with high blood pressure, hypertension, etc.), and you don't need to be eating a lot to get diabetes. Here is an article showing that over 4% of Indians have diabetes and that this will only get worse over time. And those Middle Eastern countries with high obesity levels? They have some of the highest diabetes rates in the world, around 15-20%.
No matter where your ancestors came from, their digestive system and metabolism was not designed at all for relying on nuts, grains, green plants, fruits, tubers, etc. If adapting to agricultural diets were only a matter of dialing up the level of some enzyme that we already had, they could have adapted quickly. But because we have to invent an agricultural digestive system from one designed for consumption of animal products, it would take a million or so years. The other prime examples of rapid selection are resistance to infectious diseases, but again these solutions just jigger with something that's already been invented, like taking a red blood cell and bending it so that it's somewhat sickle-shaped. You're not going to evolve red blood cells where there were none before in only 10,000 years.
There is individual variation relating to diet, since obesity is heritable -- some of the differences between people in body fat composition are related to genetic differences between them, even if they all eat the high-carb diets typical of the modern world. So some people get harmed more than others by bad food. Still, the real difference between individuals or groups when we look at the many facets of Metabolic Syndrome is the split between hunter-gatherers -- who have none of those many diseases -- and grain-munching farmers who are plagued by diabetes, obesity, and heart disease (not to mention depression and gout). You may have to fine-tune a low-carb diet because of your unique set of genes, but to a first approximation the reason you're fat, diabetic, or not thriving is because you're eating an agricultural diet.
Let the nutritionist classes tremble at a Paleolithic revolution. The dieters have nothing to lose but their grains. They have a full stomach to win.
Meat-eating Men of All Countries, Unite!
Unfortunately that logic only applies to easy changes where only a single mutation gets the job done. For skin, hair, and eye color, there are under 10 genes that make most of the difference, and really just a handful of those do most of the work. Lactase persistence is due to a single mutation. Why are these changes so easy to make? Because the basic machinery was already there, the result of millions of years of painstaking, gradual tinkering by natural selection. All these new traits represent are the dialing up or down of some knob -- break a gene that colors your skin, and you're pale; break a gene that shuts off lactase production, and you have lifetime lactase activity.
What they do not do is invent things from scratch or fundamentally re-draw the blueprint of any of the body's systems. That takes too long for 10,000 years to yield anything useful. Henry Harpending and Greg Cochran emphasize this point in their excellent and very readable book on the topic of recent human evolution, The 10,000 Year Explosion (check the Amazon box above). A mutation or two might break the process by which neuronal growth slows down, and that might make the person smarter. But inventing neurons in an organism that had no neurons is not going to happen in a short time and not by just a handful of mutations. The body's systems are too complex for random mutation to hit on them in a single shot.
In particular, the human digestive system is not going to change much at all in 10,000 years. Agricultural populations have relied far more on plant foods than hunter-gatherers ever did, and yet no human makes cellulase, the enzyme that lets herbivores digest plants. Wouldn't it be useful for us to have it too, rather than pass those plant foods through as undigested fiber? Sure it would -- it just takes a long time to invent it if you don't have it at all. More relevant to agriculture, eating grains like a bird or a rodent won't give you their digestive system unless this goes on for millions of years.
Just to check that this is true, let's have a look at the prevalence of obesity worldwide and focus on the Middle East where agriculture began. In the US, where most of the population came from later adopters, we have roughly 1/3 overweight and another 1/3 obese. To compare, check whoever you want, but the picture is clear -- the earliest adopters of agriculture are fat as hell right now. Here is an NYT article on how obese Qataris have become, which has the usual Western baloney about obesity being caused by too much food and not enough exercise. (Another case of harmful foreign aid -- shaming people in poor countries into becoming vegan joggers.)
But we know from fat marathoners and bike riders that even enormous amounts of exercise won't melt fat, and we know from hunter-gatherers like the Ache -- who eat between 3000 and 4000 calories a day and are still lean and muscular -- that quantity of food has little to do with it. What are Qataris eating so much of that makes them fat? The article says fast food, as well as home meals of rice, clarified butter, and lamb. Well, butter and meat are just about all the Maasai live on (plus cow's blood) and they're lean and muscular, even though they don't live life on a stairmaster. It must be the heapings of rice.
And what exactly does "fast food" include? Judging by the picture of boys chowing down on McDonalds, we see that there's almost no animal products at all -- I think I can make out a 2-oz slice of beef and perhaps a slice of cheese (which I doubt came from an animal anyway -- probably another soy-based abomination). Instead, they're sucking down five pounds of straight up sugar (Pepsi, ketchup, and barbecue and honey sauces), starch (a mountain of French fries), grains (white bread buns), and fibrous carbs (tomatoes, onions, and other toppings). All of that glucose is going to send their insulin sky-high, and insulin is the hormone that signals fat to stay locked away in fat cells.
You might not see this pattern where people don't get much to eat at all -- there would be little fat to lock away in the first place. High-carb diets don't conjure fat out of nothing, but if you are getting enough to eat, a high-carb diet will keep the fat you're eating locked in fat cells rather than dumped into your bloodstream to be burned for fuel. Places like India where people get little to eat aren't teeming with obese people, but they sure are hit by diabetes. This is another member of the full range of symptoms of Metabolic Syndrome (along with high blood pressure, hypertension, etc.), and you don't need to be eating a lot to get diabetes. Here is an article showing that over 4% of Indians have diabetes and that this will only get worse over time. And those Middle Eastern countries with high obesity levels? They have some of the highest diabetes rates in the world, around 15-20%.
No matter where your ancestors came from, their digestive system and metabolism was not designed at all for relying on nuts, grains, green plants, fruits, tubers, etc. If adapting to agricultural diets were only a matter of dialing up the level of some enzyme that we already had, they could have adapted quickly. But because we have to invent an agricultural digestive system from one designed for consumption of animal products, it would take a million or so years. The other prime examples of rapid selection are resistance to infectious diseases, but again these solutions just jigger with something that's already been invented, like taking a red blood cell and bending it so that it's somewhat sickle-shaped. You're not going to evolve red blood cells where there were none before in only 10,000 years.
There is individual variation relating to diet, since obesity is heritable -- some of the differences between people in body fat composition are related to genetic differences between them, even if they all eat the high-carb diets typical of the modern world. So some people get harmed more than others by bad food. Still, the real difference between individuals or groups when we look at the many facets of Metabolic Syndrome is the split between hunter-gatherers -- who have none of those many diseases -- and grain-munching farmers who are plagued by diabetes, obesity, and heart disease (not to mention depression and gout). You may have to fine-tune a low-carb diet because of your unique set of genes, but to a first approximation the reason you're fat, diabetic, or not thriving is because you're eating an agricultural diet.
Let the nutritionist classes tremble at a Paleolithic revolution. The dieters have nothing to lose but their grains. They have a full stomach to win.
Meat-eating Men of All Countries, Unite!
April 25, 2010
If Hollywood pushes natural look, will we get better-looking women?
Here's an NYT article on what may be a push by casting directors and filmmakers toward a less synthetic look among women, whether stars or extras. I assume this trend isn't one of those fake ones that the NYT feature writers cook up just to draw an audience and generate buzz. Those pretend to talk about national trends among common people, and they just don't have the resources to conduct all the necessary research. Even their more qualitative approaches consist mostly of interviewing their their elite social circle in the tri-state area. But those who drive Hollywood are few and geographically concentrated, and usually willing to talk about where things are going.
On the one hand, a greater emphasis on natural looks will select for those with greater natural beauty and hence better genes -- and no amount of plastic surgery can match that. Right now you can't really alter the geometry of your skull, and that's just as important as the softer features that can be tinkered with.
On the other hand, good genes are in incredibly short supply, so unless Hollywood wants only one or two actresses to play all females roles, from lead down to extras, they'll have to draw from the other group with naturally good looks -- young girls. In Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Phoebe Cates and Jennifer Jason Leigh did not need any work done because they were 18 and 20 years old. Jennifer Beals didn't need a facelift to star in Flashdance because she was 19. Brooke Shields was 14 in The Blue Lagoon. Really the only older sex symbol from youth-oriented movies is Kelly LeBrock who played the Frankenbabe in Weird Science. Mature, savvy, and cool-headed, she provided a good contrast for the juvenile dorks who created her. And how old was this icon of wisdom and stoicism? -- 25.
That's what used to pass for "no longer young," whereas the NYT article says that people now find it disturbing how "young" some of the plastic surgery women are, using a 23 year-old as an example. That's hardly old, but sorry, that's not exactly young either. This mindset is what has given us an older set of sex symbols, contrary to all the whining you hear from aging women (and dickless white knight males) about the culture's obsession with youth. The culture has never been so free of adolescent and young adult influence -- everything is made for middle-aged adults (those of childrearing age and older) or pre-pubescent children.
With all this pressure of the zeitgeist bearing down on them, Hollywood is just not going to go there with young girls. So, the result will be worse-looking women in movies -- we'll get a handful of naturally beautiful ones, but without the ace-in-the-hole of plastic surgery or sheer youth, the majority of actresses aren't going to spin any heads.
On the one hand, a greater emphasis on natural looks will select for those with greater natural beauty and hence better genes -- and no amount of plastic surgery can match that. Right now you can't really alter the geometry of your skull, and that's just as important as the softer features that can be tinkered with.
On the other hand, good genes are in incredibly short supply, so unless Hollywood wants only one or two actresses to play all females roles, from lead down to extras, they'll have to draw from the other group with naturally good looks -- young girls. In Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Phoebe Cates and Jennifer Jason Leigh did not need any work done because they were 18 and 20 years old. Jennifer Beals didn't need a facelift to star in Flashdance because she was 19. Brooke Shields was 14 in The Blue Lagoon. Really the only older sex symbol from youth-oriented movies is Kelly LeBrock who played the Frankenbabe in Weird Science. Mature, savvy, and cool-headed, she provided a good contrast for the juvenile dorks who created her. And how old was this icon of wisdom and stoicism? -- 25.
That's what used to pass for "no longer young," whereas the NYT article says that people now find it disturbing how "young" some of the plastic surgery women are, using a 23 year-old as an example. That's hardly old, but sorry, that's not exactly young either. This mindset is what has given us an older set of sex symbols, contrary to all the whining you hear from aging women (and dickless white knight males) about the culture's obsession with youth. The culture has never been so free of adolescent and young adult influence -- everything is made for middle-aged adults (those of childrearing age and older) or pre-pubescent children.
With all this pressure of the zeitgeist bearing down on them, Hollywood is just not going to go there with young girls. So, the result will be worse-looking women in movies -- we'll get a handful of naturally beautiful ones, but without the ace-in-the-hole of plastic surgery or sheer youth, the majority of actresses aren't going to spin any heads.
April 22, 2010
No new Nightmares
Looks like they're going to take a stab at a reboot of the original Nightmare on Elm Street. Like I said about the upcoming sequel to Predator, don't make any new scary movies or cop movies until the crime rate shoots up again, so that the audience will actually be afraid of things out there and the actors will be able to easily tap into the fearful mindset when on camera. Here are several clues that the movie will stink, aside from being a horror movie made during safe times:
- The cast is not young enough. ("God, I look 20 years old...") Only the parents are the same age as before, but they're not important. Freddy Krueger is now 47 instead of 37, which would work if he were only supposed to be psychopathic, but not if he's supposed to be strong and quick enough to chase down his victims. Nancy is now 24 vs. 19 in the original, although her boyfriend is 22 vs. 21 in the original. The other two young people in the original were 20 and 23; in the new one they are 21, 22, and 24. The cast of the original were the age of college students, which is close enough to teenagers that we could believe they were seniors. The new cast are all the age of people who've graduated college and are just on the cusp of establishing their career, finding a husband or wife, bla bla bla.
Much of the suspense in the original comes from sympathizing with the plight of teenagers who still live at home and are still dependent on their parents, who don't believe or are just blind to what's going on. That sympathy won't be possible with people old enough to be out on their own. Those 5 years separating 18 from 23 see a hell of a change in personality and behavior, since by the latter point they're almost out the door of their wild years of 15 - 24. They aren't so easily spooked by that point, so they won't be as convincing on camera as a 17 or 18 year-old would be.
- Two of the characters aside from Nancy and her bf are described as "a jock on the swim team" and "a well-liked, well-off high school jock." Um, jealous much? Sounds pretty exaggerated and unsympathetic to me, unlike the believable characters in the original -- but then what do you expect from a director mostly known for music videos such as "Smells Like Teen Spirit," "No Rain," and "Bullet with Butterfly Wings"?
- Freddy Krueger is being downgraded from a monster to a mere sociopath like Hannibal Lecter, according to the director:
I can feel myself getting drowsy already. Seriously, how much more clueless do you get? The entire folklore genre of "monster terrorizes people and gets slain" doesn't bother at all with a deep backstory that the audience delves into. There's some scary motherfucker out there waiting to get you, your friends, and your family -- you don't care how it came to be. You only care about escaping its terror or standing up to it and cutting off its head. Those are the feelings the audience wants to identify with, not with those of some psychiatrist who chronicles and dissects the monster's personality development. That belongs to stories like Frankenstein or First Blood, whereas the director here claims to be making a terrifying horror movie.
- Last, the soundtrack is large and orchestral rather than minimal and synth-based like the original. There's something inherently spooky about synthesizers because their sounds are just close enough to organic instruments for us to perceive these sounds as music (as opposed to sound effects), but they're inorganic enough to make us uncertain. Even in pop music the more haunting songs typically rely on a synthesizer, like in "Billie Jean" and "Dirty Diana," and the same goes for TV, as with the soundtrack for Twin Peaks.
Instead of releasing these remake / reboot failures based on classic scary movies, they should just re-release the originals in theaters. Maybe at the second-run theaters -- so what if the first run was 26 years ago? I'd pay full price to see Nightmare on Elm Street, Beverly Hills Cop, or Ghostbusters in the theater today. Good and old will always beat dumb and new. That seemed to work for the 1997 re-release of the Star Wars trilogy. Unlike a bad new movie, re-releasing the original wouldn't involve the huge production cost -- it's already sitting there waiting to be distributed and projected.
Till then, you'd do best to just buy the DVD. It has one of the greatest commentary tracks if only because Heather Langenkamp sounded just as delightfully girly at 31 as she did at 19. I worry that commentary tracks made long after the movie itself will adulterate my memory of the movie by featuring people who are so far away from who they were when it was first made. Not with this one, though. (The only other case I remember where a 30-something female still sounds like a teenager is Kerri Green in the commentary for Goonies, when she was 34.)
- The cast is not young enough. ("God, I look 20 years old...") Only the parents are the same age as before, but they're not important. Freddy Krueger is now 47 instead of 37, which would work if he were only supposed to be psychopathic, but not if he's supposed to be strong and quick enough to chase down his victims. Nancy is now 24 vs. 19 in the original, although her boyfriend is 22 vs. 21 in the original. The other two young people in the original were 20 and 23; in the new one they are 21, 22, and 24. The cast of the original were the age of college students, which is close enough to teenagers that we could believe they were seniors. The new cast are all the age of people who've graduated college and are just on the cusp of establishing their career, finding a husband or wife, bla bla bla.
Much of the suspense in the original comes from sympathizing with the plight of teenagers who still live at home and are still dependent on their parents, who don't believe or are just blind to what's going on. That sympathy won't be possible with people old enough to be out on their own. Those 5 years separating 18 from 23 see a hell of a change in personality and behavior, since by the latter point they're almost out the door of their wild years of 15 - 24. They aren't so easily spooked by that point, so they won't be as convincing on camera as a 17 or 18 year-old would be.
- Two of the characters aside from Nancy and her bf are described as "a jock on the swim team" and "a well-liked, well-off high school jock." Um, jealous much? Sounds pretty exaggerated and unsympathetic to me, unlike the believable characters in the original -- but then what do you expect from a director mostly known for music videos such as "Smells Like Teen Spirit," "No Rain," and "Bullet with Butterfly Wings"?
- Freddy Krueger is being downgraded from a monster to a mere sociopath like Hannibal Lecter, according to the director:
We've gone in a slightly different direction with our take on Freddy and I like that. We delve a little deeper into him as a person. How he became the thing he was. That's certainly attracted me to this character. He's not a mindless guy with an axe. He's a thinking, talking, psychologically disturbed character.
I can feel myself getting drowsy already. Seriously, how much more clueless do you get? The entire folklore genre of "monster terrorizes people and gets slain" doesn't bother at all with a deep backstory that the audience delves into. There's some scary motherfucker out there waiting to get you, your friends, and your family -- you don't care how it came to be. You only care about escaping its terror or standing up to it and cutting off its head. Those are the feelings the audience wants to identify with, not with those of some psychiatrist who chronicles and dissects the monster's personality development. That belongs to stories like Frankenstein or First Blood, whereas the director here claims to be making a terrifying horror movie.
- Last, the soundtrack is large and orchestral rather than minimal and synth-based like the original. There's something inherently spooky about synthesizers because their sounds are just close enough to organic instruments for us to perceive these sounds as music (as opposed to sound effects), but they're inorganic enough to make us uncertain. Even in pop music the more haunting songs typically rely on a synthesizer, like in "Billie Jean" and "Dirty Diana," and the same goes for TV, as with the soundtrack for Twin Peaks.
Instead of releasing these remake / reboot failures based on classic scary movies, they should just re-release the originals in theaters. Maybe at the second-run theaters -- so what if the first run was 26 years ago? I'd pay full price to see Nightmare on Elm Street, Beverly Hills Cop, or Ghostbusters in the theater today. Good and old will always beat dumb and new. That seemed to work for the 1997 re-release of the Star Wars trilogy. Unlike a bad new movie, re-releasing the original wouldn't involve the huge production cost -- it's already sitting there waiting to be distributed and projected.
Till then, you'd do best to just buy the DVD. It has one of the greatest commentary tracks if only because Heather Langenkamp sounded just as delightfully girly at 31 as she did at 19. I worry that commentary tracks made long after the movie itself will adulterate my memory of the movie by featuring people who are so far away from who they were when it was first made. Not with this one, though. (The only other case I remember where a 30-something female still sounds like a teenager is Kerri Green in the commentary for Goonies, when she was 34.)
April 20, 2010
Paleo skin
Having covered paleo hair, let's move on to how to get great skin and keep it that way by using some simple biology. Clearly girls will benefit from this, but guys too will continue to enjoy solid mental health and a big fat smile on their face as long as they still get attention from young girls. And to point out the obvious, the men who adorn the walls and ceilings of nubile babes look more like Johnny Depp than Clint Eastwood.
Even if your genes don't predispose you to competing based on dreaminess, compare Berlusconi to other powerful men of the same age -- his skin looks like that of a man at least 20 years younger. The reason we find youthful looks attractive especially in middle or old age is that they are a signal of good genes. If you're 20 years old, male or female, you have to try to look repulsive. That's an easy task when you're 60, though. So if you've managed to prove how resistant you are to the aging process, even if you still don't look as youthful as you did in your 20s, everyone nevertheless infers that you've got some powerful set of genes to have pulled it off.
There is less error behind this inference than a similar inference of good genes based on good looks in a 20 year-old. Thus, risk-averse females will be even more receptive to sleeping with a dreamy, youthful looking 40 year-old than his 20 year-old counterpart. A sex-only relationship is a strategy to just get the guy's good genes. If she were trying to get greater parental investment, she'd go after someone with more control over resources. If she were after someone with shared interests and a desire to go steady, she'd pick someone closer to her own age. So you probably won't develop a sustained relationship with any young girl when you're in your 40s -- but it's a nice consolation prize to still get wildly fucked by them.
Moving onto what builds and maintains healthy skin, most of the story is vitamin A. Vitamins C and E also help, and of course you need to eat plenty of fat since most cells in your body are fat-dependent and because vitamins A and E are fat-soluble (they need to be taken with fat in order to be absorbed). But as long as you focus on vitamin A, you'll pretty much be set. You may already know that it's involved in vision, but its more important role is in the epithelial cells -- any cell on the "surface" of your body. That includes all of your skin but also the "inner surfaces" like the lining of your respiratory tract and digestive tract. Get low on vitamin A, and you're more likely to get a respiratory infection or to not properly digest your food and absorb its nutrients.
Not getting the flu is nice, and strengthening your skin will also help to keep out pathogens that would enter that way. But we don't live in an environment where measles, leprosy, etc., are rampant, so this probably won't persuade too many people to start getting enough vitamin A. Rather, do it because you won't have disgusting Jabba the Hut skin that, being hard to conceal, will tend to turn away all sorts of people who see you -- not just total strangers, but also love interests and potential allies. ("I don't know how trustworthy he is -- just look at how much he's let himself go.") Well into middle age, Cary Grant and Bryan Ferry still had firm, bouncy, glowing skin, and continued to date beautiful women decades younger than they were.
Where do you get vitamin A from? Only one place -- liver. That is where it is overwhelmingly stored. It is also stored in far smaller amounts in other animal fats, so dairy products and even the fat on muscle meat has some in it, but not that much at all. Vitamin A does not exist in any non-animal food, although the building blocks called caretinoids do. However, the conversion of these building blocks into the real deal is not free and perfectly efficient -- it takes a lot of the building blocks to make a single unit of vitamin A. That's why grazing animals who make their own vitamin A from plant foods, rather than eat another animal's liver, must munch on the stuff all day long. It's like trying to squeeze blood from a stone. Predators like humans pursue a riskier strategy of killing another animal and eating the liver, although this risk is balanced by the far easier job of obtaining vitamin A once we've acquired the food source.
Fortunately, liver is available in all kinds of forms and at all price levels. You don't have to import pate de foie gras -- even Oscar Mayer makes a great liver cheese that only costs around $4 for 8 one-ounce slices. I just have one slice a day, and that alone gets me far more than the RDA. I take a slice of salami, then a slice of liver cheese, then a slice of pepperoni, a tiny bit of mustard, some hard-boiled egg, and a little fire-roasted tomato from the can on top. It tastes wonderful. Then there's liverwurst and braunschweiger, unprocessed liver from calves, chickens, etc., and cod liver oil. I don't find the taste of liver bad, but it's not great on its own. Still, given how many forms it comes in, and how simple it is to work it into the rest of your meal, there's no excuse to exclude it from your diet.
Aside from getting it through your food, you can also apply vitamin A topically. It's the basis for many acne treatments and for creams that are clinically shown to reduce the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles. Just as with your diet, though, you have to apply it every day to maintain the effect. In lotions and sunscreens, it will be listed under the inactive ingredients as "retinyl palmitate." I looked over every skin lotion at my mega-supermarket, and only one brand had vitamin A -- the Gold Bond "Ultimate" line (I prefer the "softening" variety). I've also found only one face moisturizer that has vitamin A -- Neutrogena "healthy skin anti-wrinkle cream" (they call it by its technical name retinol). I found three sunscreens with vitamin A -- the cheapest was Banana Boat "Sport Performance Active Dry Protect," and I recall Aveeno and Hawaiian Tropic having some as well. These products aren't very expensive considering how long they last, and they don't take long to apply either. After eating some liver to fight aging from the inside, take a minute to send in reinforcements from the outside.
Lastly, it goes without saying that sugar is poison to the skin, and so is anything that turns into sugar in your bloodstream, like high levels of carbohydrates in your diet. There are two proteins responsible for giving skin its elasticity (elastin) and bounciness (collagen), and as with any protein they can get screwed up by a sugar smacking into them. Some proteins and sugars are meant to join together to form a more complex object, but you have to have the right protein, the right sugar, and an enzyme that carefully orchestrates the process to make sure things join in the right place. With lots of sugar flowing around, a protein and sugar that aren't meant to join could very well join, and even a pair meant to be together may get stuck in the wrong configuration, like putting a car's wheel where the gearshift should be.
These freak protein-sugar combinations can't do the jobs they were meant to do, and even worse, they can became tangled (or cross-linked) with each other. (This whole process is called glycation if glucose is the culprit and fructation if fructose is. The freak combinations are called AGEs -- Advanced Glycation End-products.) That's bad news for all proteins in your body, but the ones that keep your skin firm and bouncy are especially susceptible to getting screwed up by sugar. That's why a sugary diet ruins your skin, and why vegans always look dessicated. They eat a ton more fruit than the average person (who already eats a lot of carbs to begin with), and fructose is a stronger and faster destroyer of proteins than is glucose. It's no good to work liver into your diet if you're just going to sabotage its effects by wolfing down carbs and sugars or starches in particular.
In the end, it's a very simple and cheap formula to follow -- eat a slice of liver every day, take a few minutes to apply vitamin A topically, and go easy on carbs. You'll thank me when young girls continue to smile at you when you're in your 40s, rather than get grossed out by "old guy skin."
Even if your genes don't predispose you to competing based on dreaminess, compare Berlusconi to other powerful men of the same age -- his skin looks like that of a man at least 20 years younger. The reason we find youthful looks attractive especially in middle or old age is that they are a signal of good genes. If you're 20 years old, male or female, you have to try to look repulsive. That's an easy task when you're 60, though. So if you've managed to prove how resistant you are to the aging process, even if you still don't look as youthful as you did in your 20s, everyone nevertheless infers that you've got some powerful set of genes to have pulled it off.
There is less error behind this inference than a similar inference of good genes based on good looks in a 20 year-old. Thus, risk-averse females will be even more receptive to sleeping with a dreamy, youthful looking 40 year-old than his 20 year-old counterpart. A sex-only relationship is a strategy to just get the guy's good genes. If she were trying to get greater parental investment, she'd go after someone with more control over resources. If she were after someone with shared interests and a desire to go steady, she'd pick someone closer to her own age. So you probably won't develop a sustained relationship with any young girl when you're in your 40s -- but it's a nice consolation prize to still get wildly fucked by them.
Moving onto what builds and maintains healthy skin, most of the story is vitamin A. Vitamins C and E also help, and of course you need to eat plenty of fat since most cells in your body are fat-dependent and because vitamins A and E are fat-soluble (they need to be taken with fat in order to be absorbed). But as long as you focus on vitamin A, you'll pretty much be set. You may already know that it's involved in vision, but its more important role is in the epithelial cells -- any cell on the "surface" of your body. That includes all of your skin but also the "inner surfaces" like the lining of your respiratory tract and digestive tract. Get low on vitamin A, and you're more likely to get a respiratory infection or to not properly digest your food and absorb its nutrients.
Not getting the flu is nice, and strengthening your skin will also help to keep out pathogens that would enter that way. But we don't live in an environment where measles, leprosy, etc., are rampant, so this probably won't persuade too many people to start getting enough vitamin A. Rather, do it because you won't have disgusting Jabba the Hut skin that, being hard to conceal, will tend to turn away all sorts of people who see you -- not just total strangers, but also love interests and potential allies. ("I don't know how trustworthy he is -- just look at how much he's let himself go.") Well into middle age, Cary Grant and Bryan Ferry still had firm, bouncy, glowing skin, and continued to date beautiful women decades younger than they were.
Where do you get vitamin A from? Only one place -- liver. That is where it is overwhelmingly stored. It is also stored in far smaller amounts in other animal fats, so dairy products and even the fat on muscle meat has some in it, but not that much at all. Vitamin A does not exist in any non-animal food, although the building blocks called caretinoids do. However, the conversion of these building blocks into the real deal is not free and perfectly efficient -- it takes a lot of the building blocks to make a single unit of vitamin A. That's why grazing animals who make their own vitamin A from plant foods, rather than eat another animal's liver, must munch on the stuff all day long. It's like trying to squeeze blood from a stone. Predators like humans pursue a riskier strategy of killing another animal and eating the liver, although this risk is balanced by the far easier job of obtaining vitamin A once we've acquired the food source.
Fortunately, liver is available in all kinds of forms and at all price levels. You don't have to import pate de foie gras -- even Oscar Mayer makes a great liver cheese that only costs around $4 for 8 one-ounce slices. I just have one slice a day, and that alone gets me far more than the RDA. I take a slice of salami, then a slice of liver cheese, then a slice of pepperoni, a tiny bit of mustard, some hard-boiled egg, and a little fire-roasted tomato from the can on top. It tastes wonderful. Then there's liverwurst and braunschweiger, unprocessed liver from calves, chickens, etc., and cod liver oil. I don't find the taste of liver bad, but it's not great on its own. Still, given how many forms it comes in, and how simple it is to work it into the rest of your meal, there's no excuse to exclude it from your diet.
Aside from getting it through your food, you can also apply vitamin A topically. It's the basis for many acne treatments and for creams that are clinically shown to reduce the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles. Just as with your diet, though, you have to apply it every day to maintain the effect. In lotions and sunscreens, it will be listed under the inactive ingredients as "retinyl palmitate." I looked over every skin lotion at my mega-supermarket, and only one brand had vitamin A -- the Gold Bond "Ultimate" line (I prefer the "softening" variety). I've also found only one face moisturizer that has vitamin A -- Neutrogena "healthy skin anti-wrinkle cream" (they call it by its technical name retinol). I found three sunscreens with vitamin A -- the cheapest was Banana Boat "Sport Performance Active Dry Protect," and I recall Aveeno and Hawaiian Tropic having some as well. These products aren't very expensive considering how long they last, and they don't take long to apply either. After eating some liver to fight aging from the inside, take a minute to send in reinforcements from the outside.
Lastly, it goes without saying that sugar is poison to the skin, and so is anything that turns into sugar in your bloodstream, like high levels of carbohydrates in your diet. There are two proteins responsible for giving skin its elasticity (elastin) and bounciness (collagen), and as with any protein they can get screwed up by a sugar smacking into them. Some proteins and sugars are meant to join together to form a more complex object, but you have to have the right protein, the right sugar, and an enzyme that carefully orchestrates the process to make sure things join in the right place. With lots of sugar flowing around, a protein and sugar that aren't meant to join could very well join, and even a pair meant to be together may get stuck in the wrong configuration, like putting a car's wheel where the gearshift should be.
These freak protein-sugar combinations can't do the jobs they were meant to do, and even worse, they can became tangled (or cross-linked) with each other. (This whole process is called glycation if glucose is the culprit and fructation if fructose is. The freak combinations are called AGEs -- Advanced Glycation End-products.) That's bad news for all proteins in your body, but the ones that keep your skin firm and bouncy are especially susceptible to getting screwed up by sugar. That's why a sugary diet ruins your skin, and why vegans always look dessicated. They eat a ton more fruit than the average person (who already eats a lot of carbs to begin with), and fructose is a stronger and faster destroyer of proteins than is glucose. It's no good to work liver into your diet if you're just going to sabotage its effects by wolfing down carbs and sugars or starches in particular.
In the end, it's a very simple and cheap formula to follow -- eat a slice of liver every day, take a few minutes to apply vitamin A topically, and go easy on carbs. You'll thank me when young girls continue to smile at you when you're in your 40s, rather than get grossed out by "old guy skin."
Even high culture not as wild anymore?
In the comments, Jason Malloy points to a great NYT essay on the decline of carnality in serious lit. I don't read much fiction, and the most recent authors I've read are probably Salinger or Kawabata, so I'll have to take her word for it. Despite being totally unfamiliar with the books she's talking about (mostly written from the '60s to the present), I still found the larger cultural shift she discusses entirely familiar:
If there's one word I keep using in my discussion of this shift, it is "self-conscious." I really like her use of "abandon" instead of my "wild," but it doesn't work as well as an adjective.
This doesn't look like a strictly generational thing, as the more puritanical writers come from the disco-punk generation of 1958 - 1964, Generation X, and probably whoever the hot authors of the '79 - '86 cohort are. Rather, what's common is when they started writing -- the very late '80s or early '90s and afterward. That of course coincides with the sexual counter-revolution of the past two decades and counting. Even the older writers who used to write more carnal scenes can no longer pull it off, which shows that everyone is susceptible to the larger changes. This is not an effect of aging since the young today are even more hostile to lust.
Where else in high culture does this show up? Art films perhaps? The trouble is that a lot of those are probably French, and France does not have a clear split between pre-'91 and post-'91 culture like America and Canada do, judging by crime rates. Italy saw a huge drop in crime during the '90s, though, so we could throw them in. The UK... kind of, but not as much. Are the artier movies made in those countries during the '60s through the '80s wilder than those from the '90s and 2000s? I'm not a film buff (and even less so for the artier flicks), but Woody Allen vs. Wes Anderson comes to mind.
The younger writers are so self-conscious, so steeped in a certain kind of liberal education, that their characters can’t condone even their own sexual impulses; they are, in short, too cool for sex. Even the mildest display of male aggression is a sign of being overly hopeful, overly earnest or politically untoward. For a character to feel himself, even fleetingly, a conquering hero is somehow passé. More precisely, for a character to attach too much importance to sex, or aspiration to it, to believe that it might be a force that could change things, and possibly for the better, would be hopelessly retrograde. Passivity, a paralyzed sweetness, a deep ambivalence about sexual appetite, are somehow taken as signs of a complex and admirable inner life. These are writers in love with irony, with the literary possibility of self-consciousness so extreme it almost precludes the minimal abandon necessary for the sexual act itself, and in direct rebellion against the Roth, Updike and Bellow their college girlfriends denounced. (Recounting one such denunciation, David Foster Wallace says a friend called Updike “just a penis with a thesaurus”).
If there's one word I keep using in my discussion of this shift, it is "self-conscious." I really like her use of "abandon" instead of my "wild," but it doesn't work as well as an adjective.
This doesn't look like a strictly generational thing, as the more puritanical writers come from the disco-punk generation of 1958 - 1964, Generation X, and probably whoever the hot authors of the '79 - '86 cohort are. Rather, what's common is when they started writing -- the very late '80s or early '90s and afterward. That of course coincides with the sexual counter-revolution of the past two decades and counting. Even the older writers who used to write more carnal scenes can no longer pull it off, which shows that everyone is susceptible to the larger changes. This is not an effect of aging since the young today are even more hostile to lust.
Where else in high culture does this show up? Art films perhaps? The trouble is that a lot of those are probably French, and France does not have a clear split between pre-'91 and post-'91 culture like America and Canada do, judging by crime rates. Italy saw a huge drop in crime during the '90s, though, so we could throw them in. The UK... kind of, but not as much. Are the artier movies made in those countries during the '60s through the '80s wilder than those from the '90s and 2000s? I'm not a film buff (and even less so for the artier flicks), but Woody Allen vs. Wes Anderson comes to mind.
April 19, 2010
Paleo hair
Whenever I go out dancing, my hair usually ends up saturated in sweat from all of the high-intensity activity. I've noticed that this makes it fuller once it dries, even into the next day before I shower. So why not just skip the shampoo altogether the day after and rinse with water only? I've tried that the past two times I've gone out, and it looks a lot better than when I shampoo out all of that oil and sweat. Apparently I'm not the only one who's hit on this idea, although it is marketed as "beach hair" rather than "sweaty hair."
But as you can see from this recipe, they add not just sea salt to water but some kind of essential oil too. Sure, you get salt from going to the beach, but not oil -- unless there's been a spill or something. Water, salt, and oil -- that's what your skin is pumping out when you reach a high level of physical intensity. As far as hair goes, our minds evolved to prefer signals of health and vigor, not the flat-against-the-scalp signals of inactivity or of only low-intensity exertion that would characterize the sick, the poorly fed, and the elderly. (Do sprinters have better hair than marathoners?)
As with other aspects of human appearance, fashion often works against what is truly attractive. You don't even have to look through National Geographic with its exotic tribes whose women scar up their flesh to show group membership. Like fashion in clothing, the new look for girls in the '90s and 2000s was minimalist, razorslim hair. One of my former tutorees, brimming over with excitement about making herself up and how intimidating it would look, said that then we're gonna go straighten our hair -- like Mean Girls straighttt.
It seems like this fashion cycle is particularly long, as the '60s through the '80s all had comparatively voluminous hairstyles for both men and women. (Wild times call for wild hair.) The adoption of polyester probably helped out with the sweaty hair look during the '70s. Similarly, for the past two decades it's mostly been the super-straight and tightly manicured look that's been in for men and women. Hopefully the recent obsession with beach hair is more than a passing fad, something that hints at a coming return to wildness in the culture. There are always bad examples of any fashionable look, but if you look at how high the peaks are, for my money the '60s - '80s hair looked the best. They don't make 'em like Jean Shrimpton or Kelly Kapowski anymore.
But as you can see from this recipe, they add not just sea salt to water but some kind of essential oil too. Sure, you get salt from going to the beach, but not oil -- unless there's been a spill or something. Water, salt, and oil -- that's what your skin is pumping out when you reach a high level of physical intensity. As far as hair goes, our minds evolved to prefer signals of health and vigor, not the flat-against-the-scalp signals of inactivity or of only low-intensity exertion that would characterize the sick, the poorly fed, and the elderly. (Do sprinters have better hair than marathoners?)
As with other aspects of human appearance, fashion often works against what is truly attractive. You don't even have to look through National Geographic with its exotic tribes whose women scar up their flesh to show group membership. Like fashion in clothing, the new look for girls in the '90s and 2000s was minimalist, razorslim hair. One of my former tutorees, brimming over with excitement about making herself up and how intimidating it would look, said that then we're gonna go straighten our hair -- like Mean Girls straighttt.
It seems like this fashion cycle is particularly long, as the '60s through the '80s all had comparatively voluminous hairstyles for both men and women. (Wild times call for wild hair.) The adoption of polyester probably helped out with the sweaty hair look during the '70s. Similarly, for the past two decades it's mostly been the super-straight and tightly manicured look that's been in for men and women. Hopefully the recent obsession with beach hair is more than a passing fad, something that hints at a coming return to wildness in the culture. There are always bad examples of any fashionable look, but if you look at how high the peaks are, for my money the '60s - '80s hair looked the best. They don't make 'em like Jean Shrimpton or Kelly Kapowski anymore.
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