Do aesthetics map to politics?

[pattycakes]

Threads got me wondering how many here were sporting baggy pants and longer hair back in the 90s. I can see luka all baggy with a center parting.

Tension is a good shout. Today's style is all about it. Skinny fits n all that.

 

[luka]

Everyone wore baggy trousers in the early 90s. Even if your brain was able to conceive of tight trousers you'd have to get them handmade for you by a tailor cos shops didn't sell them. Things got more fitted a little later on in the garage era. Round your way everyone wore goatskin pantaloons handed down by their grandad and a scuffed Barbour jacket. Different world.

 

[Corpsey]

That's a good point.

I've read somewhere that the average length of hair grows and shortens according to the economic health of a culture. Under this theory the recession led to a cutback in hair and (I'm spitballing) a tightening of trousers.

 

[version]

I had long hair and tight trousers in the 2000s, now I have short hair and loose trousers.

 

[Corpsey]

The main fashion I have observed in the last half decade is for not wearing socks. Baring your ankles. Sort of a reverse Victorian table leg aesthetic.

Are these things just arbitrary? Or are they trying to tell us something, the yoot dem?

 

[luka]

Nothing more upsetting than seeing pale hairy English ankles

 

[luka]

Some people link short hair to militarisation. Muscles and buzz cuts. Reagan era. Trump era.

 

[version]

I don't wear socks when I'm on my own inside, but I always wear them when I go out. That loafers with no socks look is so bad.

 

[luka]

Fine if you're an Italian gigilo

 

[luka]

Not if you're some egg and chips man from Basingstoke

 

[version]

Is the 'gammon' thing an example of aesthetics mapping to politics?

 

[luka]

Not exactly. As I say, personalities come as package deals, right off the shelf and so any one aspect can stand in for the whole.

 

[luka]

With gammon it's the carvery as spiritual home, but it's also the big ham faces, red cheeks, broken veins and flinty eyes

 

[version]

The people who complain about "SJWs" online always seem to characterise them as having blue or purple hair and a nose ring.

 

[luka]

Lol yeah exactly. Or soy boys (another ugly phrase) which like gammon matches a food to an identity.

 

[pattycakes]

Everyone wore baggy trousers in the early 90s. Even if your brain was able to conceive of tight trousers you'd have to get them handmade for you by a tailor cos shops didn't sell them. Things got more fitted a little later on in the garage era. Round your way everyone wore goatskin pantaloons handed down by their grandad and a scuffed Barbour jacket. Different world.

Don't forget the wellies

 

[luka]

Tweed flat cap with some fly fishing lures pinned to the side of it

 

[DannyL]

There's a chapter in one of the post-Reich books (Man in the Trap - Elsworth Baker) about political identities and how that maps onto character types and bodies. I don't think it's the strongest chapter but there's something in it. There's something often very familiar when you meet a certain class of person (class as in ideological affiliation) - like they're another iteration of the same design you've met before. Tall, gangly, angry socialists for instance.

 

[luka]

When you've worked in public facing roles for a long time the whole world looks like tiny variations on a handful of basic templates. You also feel like you've met everyone before.

 

[luka]

"There are twelve people in the world, the rest are paste."