Speculations on why socially observable time has stopped

[marycarnival]

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.

I'm a little late to the party, but wanted to chime in...

As a gal who has eschewed shaving for a good many years now, I gotta say that when I first decided to stop shaving my legs, I got comments (from girls, mind you) that my hairy legs were, in fact, 'disgusting'. That very word was used. Also the word 'gross'. I have always been mystified by this....why did these ladies consider a female's body hair to be 'disgusting', but not hair in the same place on a man? Don't get me wrong, shave/wax/pluck or go natural, makes no difference to me, but why on Earth are my hairy legs (and possibly by extension, I) 'disgusting' because I prefer them being slightly hairy over looking like plucked chickens (I realize that not everyone looks like a plucked chicken after shaving, but I do)?

And, interestingly enough, I have never had a man say anything negative to me regarding my body hair...jus' sayin..

Hairy legs are unfeminine, and therefore make you look like a man. Therefore (assuming you like men, because your hairy legs might make you a dyke) any man who wants you is probably a fag. And male homosexuality is disgusting.

On the other hand, lesbians who shave their legs are hawt, especially when they have sex with men.

So those girls in high school thought I was a gay man? Rad! Honestly, I highly doubt that any of those gals had the mental capacity to even think it through that much....interesting theory, though...

[slomo]

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.

I'm a little late to the party, but wanted to chime in...

As a gal who has eschewed shaving for a good many years now, I gotta say that when I first decided to stop shaving my legs, I got comments (from girls, mind you) that my hairy legs were, in fact, 'disgusting'. That very word was used. Also the word 'gross'. I have always been mystified by this....why did these ladies consider a female's body hair to be 'disgusting', but not hair in the same place on a man? Don't get me wrong, shave/wax/pluck or go natural, makes no difference to me, but why on Earth are my hairy legs (and possibly by extension, I) 'disgusting' because I prefer them being slightly hairy over looking like plucked chickens (I realize that not everyone looks like a plucked chicken after shaving, but I do)?

And, interestingly enough, I have never had a man say anything negative to me regarding my body hair...jus' sayin..

Hairy legs are unfeminine, and therefore make you look like a man. Therefore (assuming you like men, because your hairy legs might make you a dyke) any man who wants you is probably a fag. And male homosexuality is disgusting.

On the other hand, lesbians who shave their legs are hawt, especially when they have sex with men.

So those girls in high school thought I was a gay man? Rad! Honestly, I highly doubt that any of those gals had the mental capacity to even think it through that much....interesting theory, though...

That's the point: the connection is made subliminally.

My personal theory is that homophobia is actually perpetuated by young straight women, who (in part) shape the behaviors of the men who court them. Most straight men, encountering a gay man one-on-one in person, seem to me to be relatively tolerant (if curious in an accidentally offensive way), unless they have been subjected to profound brainwashing via religion or sports culture. It's the group dynamic that creates the problem.

[JackRiddler]

!!!

Regardless of subject, I love it when that happens.

So women have hairy legs, as they always have had, but since in this culture it happens that women shave the leg-hair and men don't, it becomes a male attribute, so women who don't are therefore expressing a desire to be men.



Add me to the list who find the au naturel hawt. Hairy girls, yay.

Which, I've now learned, means I'm gay!

How do I make up for this unexpected turn? What does it mean if I shave mine in penance?

.

[slomo]

!!!

Regardless of subject, I love it when that happens.

So women have hairy legs, as they always have had, but since in this culture it happens that women shave the leg-hair and men don't, it becomes a male attribute, so women who don't are therefore expressing a desire to be men.



Add me to the list who find the au naturel hawt. Hairy girls, yay.

Which, I've now learned, means I'm gay!

How do I make up for this unexpected turn? What does it mean if I shave mine in penance?

.

Again, my point. All this stuff is socially constructed, but the social construction does have a discernable pattern.

The other meme that hair (whether on men or women) is bestial. ZOMG men with hairy backs are almost like apes!! EEWW!

[Nordic]

I was at my most homophobic in college after a guy made a pass at me in the sauna, getting an erection as he did so.
I felt pretty conned by this guy, seeing as how I couldn't go into the girl's sauna and hit on them.
he had tricked me.

I knew other guys who were very angry over having experienced sexual overtures being made at them by gay men (seems the men were always older in these cases including mine)

When I was in high school in a combination military/redneck town in Oklahoma, there was one flaming gay guy in my class and he was left completely alone, which surprised me except for the fact that all the high status females LOVED him. I seriously think gay boys are protected to a large extent by having good friendships with pretty and popular girls.

[slomo]

I was at my most homophobic in college after a guy made a pass at me in the sauna, getting an erection as he did so.
I felt pretty conned by this guy, seeing as how I couldn't go into the girl's sauna and hit on them.
he had tricked me.

I knew other guys who were very angry over having experienced sexual overtures being made at them by gay men (seems the men were always older in these cases including mine)

Well, there is that. I hate it when gay guys do that. Ruins it for the rest of us.

When I was in high school in a combination military/redneck town in Oklahoma, there was one flaming gay guy in my class and he was left completely alone, which surprised me except for the fact that all the high status females LOVED him. I seriously think gay boys are protected to a large extent by having good friendships with pretty and popular girls.

That was not my strategy. I was never very fabulous, and have been accused of being a lesbian. I survived by striving for authenticity and integrity.

[Stephen Morgan]

Hairy legs are unfeminine, and therefore make you look like a man.

Women shaving is a twentieth century plot by razor manufacturers. Hairy legs weren't unfeminine until after the Great War.

Women with moustachios are offputting, though.

[82_28]

Thank god for being a straight guy with a gay dad. . .I guess. . .

I flirt with everybody, but I do mean it. I just like bantering and friendliness. I wink at people no matter the sex or "orientation" of which all the time -- including army motherfuckers and such. I also enjoy arguing. But I do not know where I would be without all the gay people in my life. To flirt with an interesting gay man who knows there ain't no getting into your pants is next to heaven. To flirt with a straight girl who knows you're not trying to get into her pants is also heaven. You make a lot of friends and you extend the tolerance in your own way. But it also makes significant others wonder whether you're gay or whether you're cheating on them -- because we're all conditioned to do so.

To which you just give them a stern "fuck you, why the fuck would you think that?" It usually holds them off for a bit, but in the end there is always sadness as we all must lose loves and die eventually. But sometimes you gain a semblance of loves lost back a bit once you come to grips and the love grows stronger and aren't a creep.

[Hammer of Los]

...

I flirt with everybody, but I do mean it. I just like bantering and friendliness. I wink at people no matter the sex or "orientation" of which all the time.

You can flirt with me anytime, 82_28 man.

...

[justdrew]

been looking at old x-files (seasons 1-4), women's styles seem to have changed a bit more than mens. still very similar, but changes are evident.

[Infernal Optimist]

All personal computers were fancy stand-alone typewriters and calculators that showed only text

This isn't even true - which makes his point even more! In 92, the Apple Macintosh was on it's 2nd generation and Powerbooks (Apple laptops) came into existence. In the IBM world, OS/2 came out in 87, Windows 3.1 was out in 92, Windows NT was out in 93. In 90 the first commercial ISP made its appearance.

If we move ahead to 95, Alta Vista was available as an Internet search engine. MP3 players and encoders were out.

So, really, 18 years later and we added smart phones, Facebook, reality TV and.. ?

It kind of does seem like we've been shunted into a time warp where we just get more of the same.

[Saurian Tail]

Here is an interesting observation based on a current event ... the passing of the Soul Train host.

GinAndTacos.com Blog wrote:

http://www.ginandtacos.com/2012/02/03/npf-really/

Two things I was fairly certain I would never do: say "You should all read this thing in Marie Claire!" and comment on the death of Don Cornelius. Having already done the former this week, let's go ahead and knock out the latter.

The famous Soul Train host died on Wednesday, leading to many topical Facebook posts and shared video clips. I remember the show well from childhood – it followed Saturday morning cartoons and was also popular on Sunday evenings – but it is hardly an integral part of my life or memories. It has been a good 25 years since I watched or thought about it. But this clip, of the much-loved "line dance" portion of the show, caught my eye:



A lot of things have changed in 30-plus years, obviously, but it is striking how much different these people look than the ones we see on TV today (or would see if Soul Train was still on the air). They look like real people. No fake hair, fake boobs, fake nails, fake collagen-pumped lips, fake eyelashes, or fake smiles. The women don't look like porn stars and the men don't look like steroid addled He-Men with abs like cheese graters and zeppelin arms. They're all dressed loudly but quite differently. And they look like they're having actual fun rather than wearing fake, practiced personalities for the camera.

Nothing's easier than idealizing the past – usually unjustifiably – so I'm trying to tread lightly here. It's just surprising to me in a way that has probably already occurred to older readers to see how the idealized image of cool people listening to cool music has become so overwhelmingly fake and detached from reality in a relatively short period of time. Would any of these women make it on an MTV-type program today without a boob job and/or lipo? Would any of those guys be trying to make it in Hollywood today without hitting the gym until they looked like UFC fighters? And we wonder why kids transition to adulthood with such horribly distorted self images these days. I'm sure the pressure to be thin and pretty has been around forever, but it would be nice if Hollywood suggested that you could look like an actual human being and still be cool.

What I see in the video is mimetic copying of a style that relates to a way of being. What we see today is mimetic copying of a style that is related to products. Products change incrementally and superficially. Normal human identification patterning is broken. Art no longer moves. Time stops.

[Nordic]

On the same day that Whitney Houston died, I found myself in a soundstage with the pop trio Wilson Phillips, being forced to listen to their music over and over, while the ladies sang along, and acted all cute and perky for the promos that the TV Guide network were producing for a new reality show with said women.

I really felt like I was stuck in some kind of bizarre time loop.

Actually all this week I've felt this way, due to the jobs I was on and the people I met ......

But the Wilson Phillips thing was hard to take.

And I thought of this thread.

[Pierre d'Achoppement]

i think a lot of it has to do with being jaded by information both as an individual and as a society in general, if youve only got a small sample of information it can vary wildly but the larger the sample the more it''s gonna tend to a generic average until we end up like the star trek crew, all dressed the same

[Forgetting2]

edit for redundancy