Speculations on why socially observable time has stopped

[BrandonD]

The ants had always believed their mound was moving up the hill. Of course, gravity knew better and insisted that it was in fact going down the hill.

As individual ants slowly awakened to the fact that their observable reality did not fit their ingrained belief that the mound was moving uphill, the general social impression was that the mound was "slowing down" in its climb up the hill.

But in fact it was never moving up the hill at all.

[Avalon]

On the body-sculpting front, it's gotten very hard to stand out - most everyone still comes with the same set of limbs and organs, so what's left to wear or not to wear, to pierce or tattoo, to enhance or extend, train or bloat or amputate? (Ha, I remember my shock when I saw someone in my high school had three earrings on one ear! And these were just on the lower lobe, mind you.)

The natural, unadorned/unaugmented body is starting to become kind of freaky. Take a look at a fifties nudist magazine, and realize how long it's been since you saw a range of breasts and body shapes like that. Or even nipples -- have puffy nipples been reduced to fetish, rather than being common? I haven't seen any depicted in years. From what I hear, Brazilian waxes are starting to be the norm for a wide range of women (and increasingly men too), with an active distaste and condemnation for pubic hair expressed. One of my daughters says she's the only person she knows in her artsy college crowd who doesn't have any piercings, not even earlobes. It makes her pretty damn avant garde (or at least so derriere garde that it's radical).

[JackRiddler]

From what I hear, Brazilian waxes are starting to be the norm for a wide range of women (and increasingly men too), with an active distaste and condemnation for pubic hair expressed.

Yes to all you say. A few times I've wanted to note the war on pubic hair in particular, except it felt awkward to talk about here. I think it's a kind of unconscious mass self-hatred, also paradoxical: Stripping away one's sexual characteristics (and individuality) so as to be more sexy? Makes me want to puke. It's a kind of social anti-sexual conformity marketed as sexual. Or else a way to keep everyone disgusted with their own bodies. And let's not even get into the long-ago over war on armpits.

[barracuda]

Well, with New Years coming up there's no time like the present to weigh in on the supposed end of socially observable time. Gotta get it said before it's no longer relevant. I'd like to disagree with the idea the there's some 20 year turnover period in history during which style or fashion can be easily identified a having turned a significant corner. Consider the suit of clothes: the basic style of a man's suit has gone unchanged for, what, over one hundred years now? Yes, there have been changes, but in the larger scheme of things none of any astonishing note. Look at the suit worn by Italian Premier Vittorio Orlando, second from left, at the Paris peace conference in 1919:



He would look perfectly at home in any contemporay urban setting today. Surface changes have given rise to innumerous little variations such as OMG! wider or narrower collars, or more or less numbers of buttons, but the style remains the same.

Think of a ubiquitous contemporary look like the t-shirt and jeans or khakis combo:



T-shirts were developed in the early 1920's, jeans in the 1850's. But for the last eighty years or so, this style has persisted. All that has changed is the wideness of acceptable venues for wearing it. Now you can wear it to virtually any ocassion, from church to meeting heads of state to high powered business meetings. Anywhere, really.

If you're going to take, for example, bell-bottom trousers as characteristic of how people dressed in the early 1970's, you have to ignore that these were common in the 1920's, and that the vast majority of individuals in American society and the world at large didn't wear them at all in the 1970's. Most people in the 1960's and '70's wore straight legged slacks, and even "hip" individuals had abandoned bells by 1974 or so. But they, like most modish styles, make for an easy bookmark in the visual history of an era. People like to "brand" time periods this way without much regard for the habits and styles of most of the public. You might as well consider the blogging hipster with a hat, black glasses, a scarf and a Starbucks as representative of the last eight years. If it's your desire to brand the '00's with a typical look, that would be close enough. But would that look represent most people you know?

If anything stands out to me, it's the general prevalence of socially observable neoteny, as the totalitarian state renders us all back to infancy. We play little games, drive toy cars around and wear clothing appropriate to the sandbox as we wait for Daddy to tell us what we can do. Children of any era share a great commonality.


^^He's wearing the same outfit he wore just out of diapers.

But it generally seems that clothing styles change along far more glacial lines than casual retrospection seems to suggest. Give it another forty years and see what happens.

To me, it's obvious that cars, clothing, music and lifestyles in this country are quite a bit different and uniquely identifiable (in a small, branded sort of way) from twenty years ago. But in a wider sense, people still use telephones, drive cars, wear similar clothing, and even listen to similar music as they did 100 years ago. Major changes seem to enter history in two ways: verrrrry, very gradually or all-at-once.

My question would be, why is it that so many millenialist articles like this one are popular now? Is it simply a trend of the early twenty-teens?

[Simulist]

From what I hear, Brazilian waxes are starting to be the norm for a wide range of women (and increasingly men too), with an active distaste and condemnation for pubic hair expressed.

Yes to all you say. A few times I've wanted to note the war on pubic hair in particular, except it felt awkward to talk about here. I think it's a kind of unconscious mass self-hatred, also paradoxical: Stripping away one's sexual characteristics (and individuality) so as to be more sexy? Makes me want to puke. It's a kind of social anti-sexual conformity marketed as sexual. Or else a way to keep everyone disgusted with their own bodies. And let's not even get into the long-ago over war on armpits.

Here's an alternate opinion: ridding ones self of body hair can also be for the purposes of showing off ones body more completely -- without extraneous hair to block the view.

Viewed from that perspective, this wouldn't be due to a "disgust" with ones body at all, rather admiration.

[JackRiddler]

Here's an alternate opinion: ridding ones self of body hair can also be for the purposes of showing off ones body more completely -- without extraneous hair to block the view.

Viewed from that perspective, this wouldn't be due to a "disgust" with ones body at all, rather admiration.

The hair is the view, it should be shown off (and otherwise sensed!) and is as admirable as any other part. And lush. And thrilling. In my discussions on this unfortunate practice with (generally female) armpit exfoliators and their (generally male) supporters, their emphasis is always on how the hair is disgusting, not how the resulting bare view is prettier.

Anyway, at times I felt I needed spiritual purging, I've shaved everything off. (If you're as hairy as me you really regret it about an hour in and still more than half to go.)

[JackRiddler]

My question would be, why is it that so many millenialist articles like this one are popular now? Is it simply a trend of the early twenty-teens?

I think part of it is we're approaching the media singularity and/or past a threshold of accumulated instantly available recorded artifacts (and fictionalizations thereof) that make it seem like all eras of the last century are simultaneous. Fact is, more people globally are exposed to fewer of the same celebrities and the same fakey-news stories than ever (this is the global electronic agora), so that Indian peasants know about some murder or b-list Hollywood whore story; even as the easily available niche cultures/cults/media sources/hobbies/lifestyles multiply but all acquire something of the same form due to coming via the same digitized media. (One point made in "Hauntology I" thread, I think by Patton Oswalt, was that subcults you once had to work to acquire and made for genuinely esoteric communities can now be absorbed instantly online.) Increasingly the variety of stuff all comes via the same screen machine. Also, as I said, we're getting closer to the end, to the collapse of the show, or have enough of this end foreshadowed, even if it turns out to be more distant than we usually think.

[Simulist]

Here's an alternate opinion: ridding ones self of body hair can also be for the purposes of showing off ones body more completely -- without extraneous hair to block the view.

Viewed from that perspective, this wouldn't be due to a "disgust" with ones body at all, rather admiration.

The hair is the view, it should be shown off (and otherwise sensed!) and is as admirable as any other part. And lush. And thrilling. In my discussions on this unfortunate practice with (generally female) armpit exfoliators and their (generally male) supporters, their emphasis is always on how the hair is disgusting, not how the resulting bare view is prettier.

Anyway, at times I felt I needed spiritual purging, I've shaved everything off. (If you're as hairy as me you really regret it about an hour in and still more than half to go.)

Well, if people want their body hair to show, then I'm all for it. Preferences vary.

Whatever someone chooses though, I don't think that choice can necessarily be seen as indicative of "disgust" with ones body either way; in fact, it might be exactly the opposite.

[Gnomad]

JackRiddler,
just one thing I take issue with.. Body hair grooming.
There are at least some simply practical reasons for trimming the hair -
on my part, since I ride bikes every day, almost everywhere I go, it is imperative I have as little hair as possible, in order to not smell like a hobo all the time.

I shave my legs, armpits, head and the private parts and ass, all simply to be more comfortable in my skin tight riding gear. Its really not cool or fun at all to have your leg hair push through your lycra pants, or your sweaty armpits smelling like an elephants ass after a day of riding. My clothes keep way more fresh too that way. My head I shave so it dries instantly after a shower, and so my helmet wont smell of hell after a few days - I need to use head garments too to keep warm in the northern climate.

And I feel sexy with my balls shaved, and the bonus of not having all that hair chafe down there, or show through the said thermo lycras.

Cyclists are gay, yeah, don't mention it.

But its not all down to fashion, you know..

[Simulist]

Oh and by the way...

In my discussions on this unfortunate practice with (generally female) armpit exfoliators and their (generally male) supporters, their emphasis is always on how the hair is disgusting, not how the resulting bare view is prettier.

After this, it won't be "always" anymore.

[JackRiddler]

Oh and by the way...

In my discussions on this unfortunate practice with (generally female) armpit exfoliators and their (generally male) supporters, their emphasis is always on how the hair is disgusting, not how the resulting bare view is prettier.

After this, it won't be "always" anymore.

Bah.

Hair is pretty!









Yeah, that's right: Sophia Loren and Julia Roberts!



Yum, moustache! The best!



And Gnomad, you yourself are saying hair is gross. (Did your balls ever complain about being hairy before you made all that stubble down there?)

But alright, you wax fiends: it's yours to strip away!



.

[Simulist]

"Bah" right back at you.

Hair can be pretty -- on the right guy (as the second guy demonstrates). But that first guy looks... well, nasty.

But if you think that looks nice, then by all means... enjoy.

[JackRiddler]

"Bah" right back at you.

Hair can be pretty -- on the right guy (as the second guy demonstrates). But that first guy looks... well, nasty.

But if you think that looks nice, then by all means... enjoy.

I'm just a nature boy, you know!

[slomo]

"Bah" right back at you.

Hair can be pretty -- on the right guy (as the second guy demonstrates). But that first guy looks... well, nasty.

But if you think that looks nice, then by all means... enjoy.

I'm just a nature boy, you know!

As one of the resident gay guys who likes middle-aged men, I feel I must interject. The problem with guy #1 isn't the hair, it's the fact that he's out-of-shape. An in-shape guy with hair on his back is quite all right with me (assuming handsome face, etc.) The boyfriend isn't quite to that level of, well, naturality, but he's on his way... though very in-shape. Alas, he does have piercings (which I totally eschew) but I'm used to it now.

[Forgetting2]

I made some comment and was agreed with by others here awhile back, that you cannot see any "progress" in fashion any longer. For the life of me, I cannot remember what thread it was. Anyways, enjoy. Good and poignant article here.

I think your comments were in a thread about the release of a collection of some thousands of hours of 9/11 news footage. Someone commented there how the people on the street in 2001 don't look at all dated. (of course the hauntology thread is all over this topic)

I'm trying to think of how denial of future realities might be a cause for the phenomenon, perceived or real, of a culture stuck in time. A collective hesitation to move forward, or in any real sense assess the present not solely as a function of the past - even an imagined past.