Circling around a theory

[mrissa]

I had a brief but interesting conversation on e-mail this afternoon, and I'm circling around a theory, so I'd appreciate it if you could humor me here:

[Poll #519570]

Elaborate in the comments if you'd like, by all means.

Comments

[chance88088.livejournal.com]

I also don't care about any of the questions you asked, if that helps.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I had meant for "don't care" to subsume "don't know and don't care," but I can see where it could go either way if you could only pick one.

[chance88088.livejournal.com]

Ah - I actually assumed the opposite, if you selected "I don't care" it meant you had some knowledge to base that opinion on.

[kaseido.livejournal.com]

The only question I can really address substantively is the last. I'm very taken by the divergence in standards of appearance between the sexes over time. I work at a university, and a sizable minority of female students dress with thought and care, whereas very close to none of the men do. And, out and about, it's not at all unusual to see couples in nice restaurants, e.g., in which the woman is well-dressed and the man is in shorts and a t-shirt.

In workplaces in which suits aren't required, the standards for women still seem to be much higher than those for men. And beyond dress, general slovenliness is tolerated in men and still anathema from women, IMO -

[zalena.livejournal.com]

I'm curious as to what "social standards" of behavior you're asking about. The last few questions led me to think, "gender oriented," but the first question made me wonder if you were talking about manners generally, or manners in regard to diverse peoples. (Gender, class, race.) I think overall, manners have deteriorated, for the large part because a lot of our social codes are breaking down. At the same time, people no longer can get away with a lot of the overt discrimination that used to be acceptible.

I hope you'll explain what this is all about.

[angeyja.livejournal.com]

You may want me to answer later after I have unwound a bit. I was all bouncy about my three sf?f art books coming in today, and I paged through them on a break, and now I am confuzzled. I am not quite sure what to make of the fact that the closest I felt to real women where the squashed fairies.*

(There was one non-fae she did seem to actually have more likely arms for holding that sword and a really interesting face. Maybe all the rest had appearance and sword hefting super powers.)

[pameladean]

I was twelve in 1965, but frankly I haven't got a clue about any of this. I've spent most of my life strenuously avoiding having to know about or to meet expectations of that kind. My very vague impression is that geography has more to do with variations of that kind than chronology, but that's probably not accurate.

P.

[spaceoperadiva.livejournal.com]

I agree on the clothing issue, but there's a different standard for physical beauty for men that didn't exist in the 60's. Now guys dye their hair and and use face cream. Well, not normal guys, but the Ideal Movie Guy. ;-)

[ellameena.livejournal.com]

I said the standards for female beauty are the same: young, blond, blue eyed, tall, long legs, all of these things are timeless. What has changed is fashions. A lot of the fashions nowadays look "slovenly" or as if the person doesn't care about their appearance, but they do. There are also different fashions for body size and shape, but these move around a bit the same as hemlines. I saw a guy at a pizza place a couple of weeks ago working in the back, making pizza, who was wearing the waist band of his pants all the way beneath his buttocks. I was fascinated and found myself wondering intensely how they stay up! I don't think he was dressed that way because he didn't care how he looks or he has a low standard for male attractiveness. He just thinks he's cool. ;-)

However, having been born after the 60's, it's kind of tough for me to really know the answers to these questions.:-)

[loup_noir]

I was born in '60 in Las Vegas, NV. Not sure if that helps or not. I recall a rather paranoid feeling at the time that They were not to be trusted and everyone you didn't know was Them. I was taught not to talk to strangers. My father and mother both told me that women were supposed to be vain (I guess I'm a failure where physical vanity is concerned). The standards of beauty, to me at least, are different. A woman in the sixties was supposed to be soft and rounded, not too strong and small(ish). Men were supposed to be men - whatever that means.

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

I wonder if they're *all* timeless. Right now it seems to me that shorter legs are in. OK, not really short legs, but the current fashions are designed to show off a long waist, and unles you're very tall, longer torsos imply shorter legs.

[ellarien]

It occurs to me, thinking about this, that since I moved here I rarely meet anyone 'on the street' at all, if by that you mean while walking on the sidewalk. I live in a very car-oriented place -- survivable without, but only by acccepting second-class-citizen status. Or just plain second-class status, I suppose. And before that, the London years had conditioned me to minimal human interaction in crowds.

The thing about standards of appearance I suspect varies enormously by place and social milieu. Also, to whom is it supposed to matter?

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I suppose "on the street" is not very accurate for most people who don't walk dogs or toddlers, but, say, "in the grocery store." That, too, depends on where you live. When I tried exchanging pleasantries with people in line at Target in California, it became very clear to me that their standards for social interaction were widely divergent from each other's and from mine.

To whom is it supposed to matter: a summation, as it were, of ways and places it could matter. Getting a job, for example, or getting a date, or getting general politeness/respect. You can choose to avoid industries or social groups with standards you dislike, of course.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I am a bad person. In my head, the phrase "When the men were men" is always followed up with "and the sheep were nervous."

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I'm not convinced that blondness, for example, is as much the standard as it was. We have a lot more "hot" actresses who are non-white ethnicities -- though of course not as many as there could be in many genres.

I agree that the guy in the pizza place thought he was making a fashion statement, rather than, say, losing 100 pounds and wearing the same clothes. A lot of effort goes into apearing not to care. My mom didn't really understand that appearing to care too much about how you looked for someone's birthday party was a social faux pas as early as the third grade in my school -- it just wasn't "cool."

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I suspect geography has a great deal to do with it, but probably chronology also: no one would mistake Minneapolis for Atlanta in terms of social mores, but no one would mistake Atlanta 1965 for Atlanta 2005, or Minneapolis 1965 for Minneapolis 2005, either.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

One of the strange things about suddenly being able to see excessive thinness clearly, around 2001, was that I kept noticing how many models had the sort of arms they couldn't lean their own weight on for two minutes, much less holding up anything more. Why is this a good thing? I just don't get it.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I will, when I have a bit more energy to gather it together.

[angeyja.livejournal.com]

Sure. Let me suggest one thing that doesn't usually get mentioned? The clothes hang better. Discontented worried people buy more. (There's a place for clothes a good one I think I love fabric texture color the way things flow when I move etc. but I know the media is there to sell product.)

Now let me ask you the questions that are bothering me some? Here's the art that was chosen to go with the books I love, and what do I see there? And, while I accept the media as an influence, I don't accept it as the defining influence. I believe that to be peer groups.

So. It seems to me we have to look farther underground. That wanted to be a Labyrinth quote, and this wants to be a really long post, with footnotes; but, I should caffinate now. I was up 'til 4 am with Paladin of Souls and today is going to be a long one as Ben has a sweetie coming tomorrow, and he wants a hair cut, and a lot of house cleaning.

The topic, or topics, are ones I have been thinking about, a lot, especially since coming to LJ. And the questions here are very general which is why I was curious about intent.

[timprov.livejournal.com]

These questions are not well-formed.

[angeyja.livejournal.com]

I think the forms change, and what is acceptable, and also there is something that wants to come out here about how people feel in genral about their place in the culture that they are in, power, potence and caring. What I see in general are a lot of people struggling, and so what I think about this has a lot less to do with sexual freedom frex than worries about the present and the future, at the same time that people feel faceless.

Bear in mind too as you read that my age. A lot of people I know are my age or older. What really took me back was the job before my current one, a private high school where the strong sense I had from the teens was already that. Ben's generation strikes me as making progress at the same time they feel more hopeful, and I am really glad for that.

OK now coffee. And something fluffy to read I think.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

The clothes hanging better on stick arms doesn't answer for swimsuits, and it doesn't answer for why they made the clothes that way in the first place. Clothes do not grow on trees; people have to choose how to make them. And as most customers do not have tiny stick arms, it seems possibly suboptimal to make the clothes optimal for them.

So how do you think SF/fantasy cover art influences you? and has it changed? It seems to me that they're much less likely to put out covers like the ones we have on The Gate of Ivrel, where a book with people wearing furs and heavy cloaks in the snow got translated into a metal bikini cover, but I could be wrong there.

I have a great deal to say about my peer group and appearance -- probably this week -- but again, not until I have more energy.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Along these lines, I would like to see a good deal more pointless futurism in clothing (though I dislike it in fiction) and somewhat less retro (though I like some of the specific garments very much). I would like the Golden Age to be ahead of us still.

[almeda.livejournal.com]

CNN had a story today about how to pick the right sort of swimsuit to accent your particular body type ... and then put no model on display who weighed more than about 120 (an estimate on my part), and only one who had a trace of soft pudge at the belly-line. They showed one girl, and said, "If you're pear-shaped, like J.Lo ...", and I'm thinking, man, she looks the exact same shape as the last girl, who was supposedly 'slightly built'. The only one that was truth-in-advertising was the 'small-busted' girl, who was a legitimate A-cup, and the 'busty' girl, who was either a C or a D. But they all had exactly the same waist and hips and ribcage. Grr.

[almeda.livejournal.com]

I will note that the 'baggy pants worn very low' trope grew out of the fact that clothes in prison do not, generally, fit well.

I wonder if all the suburban kids co-opting the style and slang realize they're attempting to dress like convicts, only with a bigger budget.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Oh dear.

I got a catalog yesterday that had its swimsuits classified by what you wanted to hide. Maybe I'm too much of a perky optimist, but it seems to me it would have served at least as well -- and felt better -- if they'd had them classified on what you wanted to accentuate. Maybe they sell more swimsuits saying, "hide your pudgy waist" than "show off your great legs!" or "draw attention away from your weirdly-shaped butt" than "draw the eye to your awesome chest," but if so, it would be depressing to me.

[angeyja.livejournal.com]

I will look forward to hearing more when you feel like it.

I would not say that the covers influence me. The books very definitely.

I am OK about the covers now. The sales bit farmed that for me. It is where this intersects w/ Art, and then how that realtes or doesn't to the books and also the people in the reading community that I am still mulling. It is bothering me; I wrote a poem yesterday and there was at least one ref to the handless maiden in it (that could be in part from reading Carey and Bujold also.)

Remember the place in Paladin where Ista tells Arhys about his father's death? Later in the book she boils it down to bones, and gets apiece of insight. That first is where I am at with it? It comes out too long, and that insight piece isn't there yet.

Are the covers realistic? I cannet say that perse, nor that is what is wanted. I have seen some that are and really work if you get the story. I liked Ms Walton's last one frex, and actually I liked her first one very much also. Are you familiar wiith those?

[angeyja.livejournal.com]

*grin* When the theory part works best, what you are doing is creating the best match, between reader wants and what you have. I would read this as a mis match.. if you see a lot of it, and it is working, I think you can read it as a sign of where things may be at.

In terms of your feelings when you got it, it was a mismatch, and also a piece of negative marketing. Some companies are selling fantasies of attainment, some work more of the fear component. I am thinking of things like tire ads here. They can swing either way.

In terms of models, it is because of the fantasy part. I personally would much rather see someone a little more like me. I am not interested at all in the fantasy element except for tracking the trends, which is a personal hobby. I do seem to be required to wear clothes to frex leave the house, so I can't not buy at all. But when I look at the catalogues I have to do a lot of mental translation.

In terms of logic, eyes roll. Lots of co do really stupid things. No one with any kind of eye, or sensibility would put florescents in shops. Yet they are everywhere.

[angeyja.livejournal.com]

I amy have written this in the emails, apologies in advance if so. You are going to be able to see different things in three places, top of the chain, street level and niches, and we have more of that last than we used to for cultural reasons, part of why the magazines are foundering.

I am not really fond of retro as a whole either; but I also have a lot of individual things I like. But I like costumes in general.

Most stuff is assimilative. I would place counter trends or rebellions there, also. They are reacting to something. I think this true in other fields also. The true creative leaps are much more rare, and even there I would be hard put to say they occur in a vacuum.

Conceptually, and also for other reasons I like clothes as comfortable. I also like the idea of clothes as play and expression. But then I am a person who also sews, like the theatre, and paints on clothes (and anything that isn't tied down :-)

Midori Snyder was doing some research on body art a while back, and close in there was a neat image from Buffy of one of (I think) Sappho's poems painted on Tara's back. I had the strongest urge right in that moment to instead of doing a picture of soemone, do a picture on someone.* It is a sort of variant of what you say about some people jewelry or clothes but not entirely.

*I actually could have done this. I mentioned it to Robbie and he volunteered.

[toolittletime.livejournal.com]

pointless futurism - What a neat concept! Thinking of Buck Roger-ey metallic fabric with cooling fins or zoomy diagonal lapels. If I thought I could get away with it...

[toolittletime.livejournal.com]

BTW - As for the original poll, I'd be interested to know if your results indicated any differences (as far as you know or judge your respondents age groups) between those of us who lived through the late 60's and you young whippersnappers.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I haven't been able to spot such a difference, no, but I don't know the ages of all participants.

Part of my theory is that people are answering different questions when someone uses generalities that broad, which seems supported in the way people answered.