Do aesthetics map to politics?

pattycakes_

Can turn naughty
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

Well-known member
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

bandz ahoy
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.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
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

Well-known member
Some people link short hair to militarisation. Muscles and buzz cuts. Reagan era. Trump era.
 

version

Well-known member
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

Well-known member
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

Well-known member
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

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

luka

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

pattycakes_

Can turn naughty
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
 

DannyL

Wild Horses
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

Well-known member
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.
 
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