I will be dead in the cold, cold ground before I ever admit that you were right. Because you're not.
Thank you, Walt. Who else is ready to admit they were wrong?
#11 doesn't belong to the '90s. It belongs to every moment in history.
It's the hair (and jeans and shoes) more than the clothes, many of which looked ridiculous even then. So Heebie is -- unusually for her -- only mostly right.
many of which looked ridiculous even then
I bet you dollars to donuts that many people said this during the age of plaid suits and outrageous 70s wear, which was actually much sparser than people tend to remember, for reasons I can't fathom.
I (just) remember the 'high' 70s. They were pretty damn 70s. Not so much the plaid, and things, which I think were more a US thing (sparse or not), but ordinary conservative blokes with longish hair and big sideys, flares, bright colours, and so on. I even put a picture of me, from the 70s, looking 70s [and 5] in the sekrit Unfogged flickr pool.
A lot of those 90s photos really don't gel with my memories/experiences of the 90s at all. And that's not false memory, I think, but just that they are very US-focused, and teen focused, and I was in my 20s living in Glasgow at the time.
Huh. I thought the 90s was a decade when I was alive and aware of popular culture. Maybe not.
A lot of those 90s photos really don't gel with my memories/experiences of the 90s at all.
Not just an England/US thing. Most of the outrageous (clothes) ones are essentially 1980s holdovers from 1990-1992, and even then were totally unrepresentative and/or dated (the mullet had died out as cool long before). This show was maybe perhaps more representative of how people in the mid-1990s dressed. Note that now that flannel shirts are back, this looks more contemporary than it would have 5 years ago.
heebie, you're a virgin who can't drive.
heebie, you killed Christ. And elected Hubert Humphrey.
Most of the outrageous (clothes) ones are essentially 1980s holdovers from 1990-1992,
This was my reaction -- the spikey hairspray and animal prints were very 80s, rather than 90s.
the mullet had died out as cool long before
Did you just call me unserious, Halford?
Never. Never! But you weren't rocking the most awesome hairstyle in the world in 1996, I'm sure -- correct me if I'm wrong but I'd date it to about 1990 at which point we were already a few years past peak mullet.
From the old OP:
Finally: Specifically to the claim that 1992 is indistinguishable from 2012: First off, 1992 will actually look like the late 1980s to most people. Boxy silk shirts with shoulder pads. Hair bands were about to be replaced by grunge, and Kurt Cobain was well-known, but fashion-wise that hadn't quite happened. Hair was still often teased high. Nobody yet wore sagging pants....I think the author is actually trying to compare 1994-98 with today.
13: When it comes to Pittsburgh and mullets, it's hard to pin dates like those down.
Your dating is correct. And it was already pretty ridiculous at that point.
Well, that part was right, but if I'm remembering correctly the numerous ways in which Heebie was wrong in that thread, the thing people took issue to was the idea of the "constant rate of cultural change." Or, 1996-2012 vs. 1956-1972, say.
14: I'd forgotten that bit, but if your position is that 80s fashion extended a couple of years into the 90s, so the year when everyone started looking kind of normal was 1993 rather than 1990, that seems like less than the claim you were defending.
I had a sweet mullet in 1998 and suffered ridicule for it.
14: Every one of these pictures seems to be from 1992, so your point is made even if the slide show's isn't.
Mostly I just enjoy this topic. I'm wearing pleated shorts with a plaid shirt right this very moment, and I'm home today, which is awesome, because my school loves Baby Jesus.
Actually, "Maundy Thursday" sounds like a 1960s groupie/performance artist. I'm not asking if you get her off.
17: "rate of cultural change."
Measured in mean rate of redirected rat-orgasms per minute.
I just wish they'd bring back flannel shirts and ripped jeans. Way more comfortable than skinny jeans. And there's no way you'll catch me in leggings and a shirt dress, jeggings or any of those other nonsense trends. Also, get off my lawn.
the thing people took issue to was the idea of the "constant rate of cultural change."
That's was not what I'd asserted. I was saying that it's a lot more complex than that, with a half-dozen different camps of how people dress, each with its own acceleration and deceleration of change. But that the last 20 years haven't been uniquely stagnant or something.
Take a handful of students from any decade since 1920, and about half of them will look surprisingly modern, and about half of them will look very specific to their time-period. Fashion has some eternal styles which will look right at home in any decade - plaid flannel, slouchy v-neck sweater, certain washes and cuts of jeans - and other styles which seem horrendously ludicrous 5 years later.
Next: There has always been a version of grunge/grubby counter-culture clothes. There has always been a version of preppie. There has always been a version of bubble-gum pop. There has always been a version of extravagant nightclub garb (tends to look most ludicrous, most quickly). There has always been more timeless office wear. (And there has always been frumpy, or homemade, or unflattering clothes that are out of step with the times in every way.) These may vie for the top spot in any given decade, but there are always plenty of examples of everything. If you focus on the ludicrous nightclub wear from the 70s, the grunge of the 90s, and the hippies of the 60s, you'll get a very different picture than if you pick the officewear of the 60s, the punk scene of the 70s, and the nightclub garb of the 90s. Or whatever.
I just wish they'd bring back flannel shirts and ripped jeans
I still wear them, Liz! But then again I was sporting a mullet in 1990, so proceed at your own risk.
You get Maundy Thursday off?
We do!
23: She would never say what made her come
...
Goodbye, Maundy Thursday
Who could hang a name on you?
When you change with every new day
Still I'm going to miss you...
45. Rupaul holding Kurt Cobain's daughter with Dave Grohl
Kurt Cobain's daughter. Get over it.
The 90s were just these ten years, y'know.
Wow, Kirsten Dunst grew up fast.
I think I might have one of those laser portaits of myself. I know I remember the pattern, even if there isn't one of me in the bottom of a box somewhere at home.
The technology stuff is interesting. 3, 16, 21, 22, 27, 33, 34, 37. I know the statistics about how technology really took off enormously in the first half of the 20th century, but the evolution and proliferation of consumer electronics during the 1990s or so is also really striking.
Not that I really know, but based on my expeditions from the office to the food court at the world's fanciest mall, flannel shirts and ripped jeans are totally back, no? They're not baggy jeans though.
She would never say what made her come
Ash Wednesday.
Indeedy, sort of.
I would argue that there's actually nothing new today - that uniquely and for the first time, all we have is a mash-up of previous fashion trends.
I just wish they'd bring back flannel shirts and ripped jeans.
You see a lot of flannel shirts and ripped jeans at Last Chance Community College.
In general, I find the students here look a lot like the students at the community college I attended in 1986.
The truth is, stoner-dropouts really don't change much, which feeds into what HBGB said in 26, and originally.
because my school loves Baby Jesus.
Umm, wouldn't that be the Nearly Dead Jesus (and someone linked the relevant PB clip here just last night I think*)?
*Yep, kr in the Movie Trailer thread.
The gap ad in picture 25 looks normal to me. I feel like I could see someone dressed that way and similarly styled today.
Well, he'll be reborn on Sunday, or something. Isn't this fertility season?
32: I hope so! That fashion trend hasn't reached dear old Salt Lake City yet. Lately I've been noticing an uptick in sequined shirts that I find to be horrifying. Also leggings so thin that they might be tights.
Isn't 34.2 an admission of total defeat?
Lately I've been noticing an uptick in sequined shirts that I find to be horrifying. Also leggings so thin that they might be tights.
Good lord you literally are living in the past. Can you buy some stocks and place some sports bets for me please?
Well, he'll be reborn on Sunday, or something.
The quote in 26 seems correct but, on the other hand, I was in HS in 1992, I don't remember anybody looking like the pictures in the linked gallery.
Here's one for H-G.
Googling [my high school] 1992 I get a bunch of results, most of which are not from my HS or from 1992. But let's take two images from WA state HS's out of that set.
this one is clearly old, but I can't tell what year it's from. It could be 1992, for all I know, but if you can figure out how to identify the year I'm all ears. this one is contemporary. To my eyes the biggest "tell" in the second picture that marks it as recent is the style of makeup on the girl (though I couldn't tell you what, specifically, gives me that impression) but in lots of ways they aren't that different.
If you put anybody from the first picture into the second picture they would instantly look dated, yes, but looking at the two pictures side by side they both just read as, "HS kids that don't look that different than what I remember from HS."
I don't even see fashion. Apparently.
I do not however, owe Heebie $5, homemade rust colored down vests not being in fashion on the slopes these days.
47: I'd be surprised if the first picture is more than 5 years old. Those style backpacks (the grey one with the red bits) are fairly recent.
The make-up you're noticing is the black eyeliner all around the eyes which for some reason young girls now do (to make their eyes bigger? that only works for girls with huge eyes such as Egyptians). The guy has a very recent Bieber-esque floppy hair style.
The biggest difference between the pictures seems to be the people in the first are more nerdy/less fashion forward than the ones in the second picture.
I agree with hydrobatty. Look at the boys' haircuts in the first photo - those are not 90s haircuts. One of them has a mohawk which is growing out.
Every reaction in this thread is just reinforcing the ways I thought you all were wrong the last time! You just don't see things.
Like NickS's two pictures: the second one is immediately evident as being early mid-naughts or later because of the style of the girl's velour jacket. I can't pick anything out of the first one because everyone is sitting down. But though they look like 'regular' high school students, I'm sure if you could actually get a look at their clothes the cuts of the jeans and probably also at least some of the shirts would also place it.
Hydrobatidae is right. Look also at the leftmost girl's hair band. Those thin bands are pretty recent.
But the contrary position to Heebie's view wasn't that things haven't changed at all, just that the relative rate of change has, in the aggregate, slowed down since about 1992. So just going "hey I can notice subtle differences" isn't enough I still totally stand by that.
I'd be surprised if the first picture is more than 5 years old.
That makes sense, actually*. Thinking about it, if I looked back at my HS yearbook you would see a lot more volume in the hair in a way which probably would look distinctly *dated* in a way which neither of those pictures do.
* I didn't spend that much time looking at the photos, honestly.
Photos from 1944. The point is that actual photos from actual years look remarkably modern. We've got distorted memories, and I have no idea why, about which decades were wacky in which direction. I don't have one at my fingertips, but a similar photoshoot from 1974 would also look surprisingly modern.
In the second photo in 47, the dude is wearing a Hollister shirt, which basically dates it to post-2005.
Yes the headband! I kept looking at that but couldn't remember what was different.
Also the jeans are (mechanically) faded rather than pale blue which is what you would have seen in the 1990s.
Furthermore, that those photos would have looked modern in the 80s and in the 70s and in the 60s - but not in the 50s. It's not that the 70s and 80s didn't create anything new, it's just that a lot of 1944 fashion never went out of style. A lot of all fashion never goes out of style.
So just going "hey I can notice subtle differences" isn't enough I still totally stand by that.
But they don't seem particularly subtle to me, they seem pretty obvious. The looks are just different. Like, when I look at #25, I in fact do not think that it looks normal (as washerdreyer says in 38 that he does).
Those 1944 pictures are great. I would wear almost all of those outfits, less the shoes (which look like something my grandmother would (and did!) wear) and the hats (because you really can't get away with jaunty hats these days).
In #25, it is odd that she's wearing leggings as pants, because that wasn't really a big style in the 90s. But the choker and the make-up and the tendrils and the ribbed shirt all look terribly 90s to me.
All you need is this book to get a full picture of lower-middle class white fashion of 20 years ago.
Can we just admit here some people are more concerned about or interested in fashion than other people and when the uninterested people say there are no/few differences, they are wrong?
I can think of lots of areas where this is true. I don't go around saying there are no differences between, I don't know, death metal and black metal (are they even things?) but if someone who cared about those areas says there are differences, I'd take their word for it. And I wouldn't make a big deal about there being no differences because I'd admit that I probably hadn't thought about it enough.
Anyway, this is getting into a weird man/woman place for me. But I'll skip all that.
62: Exactly.
That there are some "classic" looks is true, but totally underestimates the sea change in fashion that you had between 1945-1995, and the relative slowing down since.
64: But no one is saying that there is no change. Just that you had many years in which you could expect more change than we've had in the past 15. It's not because no one here is paying attention to fashion. In the old thread I linked to Sears catalogs at different 20 year intervals.
That there are some "classic" looks is true
Well, of course.
Can we just admit here some people are more concerned about or interested in fashion than other people and when the uninterested people say there are no/few differences, they are wrong?
The problem with the fashion-blind is that they're claiming that the differences were so obvious to them between the 60s, 70s, and 80s, that the fact that the differences are more subtle now are evidence that fashion is slowing down.
Of course, they're wrong.
Or, the decisive argument: compare the change from 1956-1972 with the change from 1996-2012. If you can demonstrate that, in the aggregate, there wasn't more change in the first period, I will eat a slice of bread.
They're wrong because they're looking at fashion selectively. There are big obvious outfits from the 90s which would look entirely dated to them, just like the big obvious outfits that they've stereotyped for the 80s, 70s, and 60s.
(And there are plenty of outfits from the 60s-80s that are timeless, which they've conveniently forgotten about.)
59 -- I don't think you're sayng, though, that those pictures from the 40s would have looked modern between 1962 and 1982. In 1975, worn by models at a photo shoot, they would have looked like a conscious throwback. Wouldn't they?
66: But how are we measuring how fast clothes are changing? We can't rely on memories of what things were like.
Until we have some objective source (relink the Sears catalog?), we can't say one way or another.
Things you could potentially compare:
-hemlines
-rise or leg width in pants
-shoe shape and height
-fabric
-accessory number or material
How about what dancing girls wear in videos?
69: Yes, and if I could easily locate photos, here's what I would do to make you eat bread:
I'd pick a genre - women's office wear - and show outfits from every two years from '56-'72, and '96-'12. It would morph from 50s dresses to WKRP dresses, and from power suit-y things to things which look entirely innocuous, because we live in '12, and the two ranges would look about equal.
Then I'd pick another genre, say counter-culture. Beatniks and greasers to hippies, vs. grunge to hipsters. Again, about equal.
Pick, say, prom dresses. Or dresses that people wear to the Oscars. Same thing.
OTOH! Here's what people would do to prove me wrong: they would pick prim mothers from 1956 morphing into post-Woodstock excess. Then they would pick Party of Five shots and compare those with Gilmore Girls. (The latter being a totally valid comparison, mind you.)
Here were the links I'd dug up before, which include Sears catalogs from different periods.
I mean, 74 is just wrong. You have pretty similar samples from different eras, that pretty clearly demonstrate a slowing rate of change.
Which category strikes you as wrong? Which category is so much faster back when a coke was a coke?
Argument from whatever:
Looking back a few hundred years in a couple cultures I know anything about for a decade without significant fashion...I find none.
This to me is evidence that if I don't see the current change it is likely my problem.
Look, if there was nothing else but a repetition of previous styles that would in itself be a very radical rejection of modernism. I mean if all the kids suddenly started wearing powdered wigs and bustles I wouldn't exactly say "How boring."
Certainly the changes don't have to be good, from my perspective. But they are there, in a measure equal to other times.. Presumed. apriori. Kids are kids.
dammit
78.2:"...significant fashion changes"
2) Don't believe in progress or regress in fashion, but I am probably wrong. If so I deny regress.
Women's office wear, you'd have a ridiculous amount of change (mirroring women's changing role in the office) from 1950-1995, and a slowing rate of change after that.
Beatniks/Hippies isn't really a fair comparison, since the latter style was actually a popular style and the former a tiny niche fashion. But even there the change from one to the other is much more significant than that from the grunge kids to hipsters.
My guess (without looking, I'm less sure here) is that prom dresses and oscar dresses would both change more relatively slowly, since both are grounded in a kind of 1930s formal wear, but I would be shocked if you didn't notice more change in those between 1956 and 1972 and 1996 and today.
Colour is very important to fashion, and colour reproduction is notoriously impossible to get right. So photos from the 80s will often look 80s because of the colours, which are generally very 80s. And so-on; but that doesn't mean the clothes themselves are particularly 80s. (Mind you, that might just be me being easily suggestible.)
But yes, that first photo above is obviously from within the past eight years, and I'd guess maybe 07-09? Apart from any details, it just seems like that's when it is from.
you'd have a ridiculous amount of change (mirroring women's changing role in the office) from 1950-1995, and a slowing rate of change after that
Heebie, I think you will have to agree that there was more change in 45 years than there has been in the past 17.
Well, fair enough. But compare women's office wear from 1962-1982 to 1992-2012. Tell me that there's not more change in the former period.
Friends! Comrades! Why do you quarrel amongst yourselves? We should be united against our common enemy: lacrosse players.
Aha! A Sears 1992-93 catalog.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Sears-Catalog-Fall-1992-Winter-1993-Vintage-Catalog-/250660327742
I'm going to ignore most of the men's fashions because they're 1800-style underwear and pleated front pants. Although, note the awesomely dated patterned dress shirts! If you do wear something similar today, don't.
For them women's looks, I draw your attention to the high waisted pants and light washed jeans in the third picture (they're in the earlier pictures too but better seen in the third). There are desert boots in the second picture that only this year or last have come back. The fourth picture is so 1980s looking that I can't even believe people were wearing stuff like that in the early 1990s. The suits in the 7th picture are also dated (what is that hem length for the skirt?). Eighth - more high waisted jeans in a faded blue. In the 9th picture we've again stepped into the 1980s. Are those stirrup pants and a mock neck turtleneck? The last picture I totally thought were men until I looked closely. Those pants. And that hair.
In conclusion, the 90s were a different time.
Halfway through collecting evidence but the kids just got home and then we're off to a Childish Gambino concert because we think we're hipsters and awesome like that.
Also, the rate of change is not really a very great analysis, because what I think you really have is a kind of punctuated equilibrium. Which means that if you can get three big jumps into a 20-year period, and then only one into another, that will look like a big difference, but it might be that changes occur between every 8-12 years consistently.
In conclusion, the 90s were a different time.
Sure, but to my eye the differences between that catalog (20 years difference and what you see today are significantly less pronounced than the differences between the 1972 and 1983 Sears catalogs (11 year difference).
It's occurred to me that there is no reason for pleated pants to ever come back. As someone (here?) pointed out, they make skinny people look fat, and fat people look fatter.
Then I started watching The Hour, and I instantly knew that they could come back, and I'd buy them.
Punctuated equilibrium might be right, but we certainly haven't had a very big rupture since about 1995, at least not compared with past post-war changes.
Women's office wear, you'd have a ridiculous amount of change (mirroring women's changing role in the office) from 1950-1995
Not good enough. Now compare that era to 1880-1925
Maundy Thursday, can't trust that day,
Maundy Thursday, sometimes it just seems like two days.
But Maundy Thursday, Maundy Thursday couldn't guarantee,
That Holy Friday you would still have fish to eat.
84: Did anyone else read that Rolling Stone article about hazing at Dartmouth frats? Man, that was pretty messed up.
For fun, Johnny Depp at the Oscars since 1992.
http://laineygossip.com/Articles/Details/22759/Johnny-Depp's-Oscar-History
Oscars dresses would be an interesting comparison. I'd actually expect there to be a lot less change in dresses from the 1930 through the 1950 (stretching maybe into the late 1960s) than from 1980 until 2000. The dresses seem to be more conservative in silhouette (either 1950s big skirt style or slinky 1930s bias cut) until recently. Don't even get me started on 'illusion netting'.
Punctuated equilibrium also makes sense to me. In addition to women's role in the workforce, the ability to make cheap polyester. Or the shifting of factories from making war-related fabrics to fabrics for every day wear. But then the change would take place over a much shorter period which makes the decadal differences an improper measure of the change.
Lacrosse players were summed up for me in high school by the somewhat meatheaded athlete who discovered the skin-staining property of silver nitrate during a chemistry lab, and used it to quasi-tattoo "LAX" on his arm. Of course, it blistered and scarred horribly over the subsequent few weeks.
There are virtually no poor people who play lacrosse
I can attest that on the high school level, at least around here, that statement is no longer true. Not all rich, not all white.
I think part of the problem is that while we can agree that there will be really fashion forward types whose look will change a lot every 10 years and some classic looks that change very little, no one can agree on what a representative sample of "average" folks would be.
Maybe what's needed are some photographs of a bunch of people walking down the street in NYC in 1946, 56, 76, 96 & etc.
I suspect the reason that the stoner/dropout look seems to be timeless is that clothes from almost any of the last few decades look the same when they've been grabbed from the bottom of a pile that's been sitting on the floor for 2 weeks.
The only person I knew who played lacrosse in Canada was the only white guy on a Native team in a Native league. So my LAX stereotypes are not your LAX stereotypes.
The Simpsons arcade game was pretty awesome, as I recall. They had one at the skating rink my elementary school always went to. (Do schools still do that?)
100: SHAZAM!
I bring the blog back to life, with the combined power of Solomon, Hercules, Atlas, Zeus, Achilles, and Matilda.
You are all wrong about the thin hairband being recent, hydrobatty and Blume. That's just nuts.
Heebie those dresses don't look modern AT ALL, they look purposefully retro. Moreover you can't just disavow the hats. The hats are a huge huge difference.
93: I have not, but there was a guy in rob's and my class at SJC who had dropped out of Dartmouth in his first or second month there because, while pledging a frat, he pounded the ice-cold glass of piss he'd been handed in some kind of speed-drinking competition.
72: I will do this thing you ask of me. Next time I have a staycation.
One of my fellow first-years is absolutely livid at how that article besmirches Dartmouth's good name because, per her, hazing happens everywhere and whatever, plenty of people who played ultimate frisbee got into finance, too, it's not like it was just frat boys. She's a very nice person. But she comes from a very different world than I do.
What I found fascinating and confusing about the Dartmouth article was the apparent valorization of vomit. Why? I can understand the whole ritual humiliation thing, but seriously everything at those frats just sounds 100% vomit focused. Like some kind of puke cult. So baffling.
They must be from Missouri: the Puke State.
And as soon as I clicked Post I realized that it could be seen as directed at Blume. It isn't. Blame LGM.
I dropped out of a frat during the pledging process, but nothing too bad happened (I mostly just realized it was stupid and I could hang out with my friends without being required to show up for a lot of meetings and clean up their house and so forth). Most of the brothers didn't care and I stayed friendly with some, though there was a pissed off group of frat zealots. I didn't experience any real hazing at all, although apparently the worst stuff was right at the end. I suppose there was a thing where you were supposed to drink 12 beers/day every day for a week, but that was easy to cheat on and I was drinking close to that much at the time anyway.
Anyhow, I put Dartmouth on the unacceptable colleges list.
107: Again, I haven't read the article, but this was definitely part of the write-up in one of those breezy college guides (L/sa B/rnb@ch?). Something about a party where everyone pukes in some hallway and then takes turns sliding through it?
You are all wrong about the thin hairband being recent, hydrobatty and Blume. That's just nuts.
This is an impossible thing to argue, because how to prove anything? I say it is recent. (You do realize that it's an elastic all the way around her head and not a headband, right?)
109: No worries, I had seen the LGM thing, too!
Yeah my high school frenemy who went to Dartmouth and has since lived up to its evil ethos had something called a "boot suit" that was like a workman's jumper he would wear to parties so that he could vomit or be vomited upon and keep going. This kind of thing was regarded as totally fucking weird even in my pretty bro-typical fraternity at non-Dartmouth.
The frat basements have special concrete channels along the edges of the room to flush the vomit! I mean the fuck?
112: yes I do. My sister and most of her hs soccer team wore them with some frequency. In 1994. Not while playing, mostly.
I had a weird moment while teaching yesterday when I brought up "Dances With Wolves" as an example of a movie about the "going native" fantasy we were discussing. I stopped myself and said, "Oh God, that came out when you were, like, one." And then I realized at home that it came out in 1990 and my students were born between 1990 and 1994. So it makes sense that they know ALL ABOUT 90-95-era culture and feel retro about it, in the same way that I was going through a retro late-70's phase in my teens. Of course they've seen "Dances With Wolves" and listen to Nirvana and read 90's fiction.
47: The first picture has A Day in the Life of Africa in the background, and so is post 2002, probably from that year I wouldn't think they would put a non-contemporary book in such prominence.
115 brings to mind the phrase "power booting", but I can't recall if it was serious or ironic.
The Rolling Stone article (and the inspiration-for-animal-house article I read as a follow up) would certainly argue for it not being ironic. Boot, boot, boot, boot, boot, boot, boot, say those articles. Boot.
I'm happy to report that vomit, urine, feces, and semen played no role whatsoever in my fraternal experience (I mean, aside from the same roles they play in everybody else's life, of course). Though I did discover that drinking champagne way too fast can cause you to throw up an enormous volume with barely any mass to speak of, being mostly bubbles rather than liquid. It is a very strange and nearly effortless sensation, like watching a couch cushion magically emerge from the front of your head.
I mean, I have plenty of funny stories from my approximately-normal-college-age era about people vomiting, or having unfortunate run-ins with vomit, or getting naked and passing out on the ice sculpture at a party for their summer telemarketing job and then vomiting. But, like, the vomiting part was gross, and people tried to avoid it! At Dartmouth it appears to be, essentially, the whole point!
Right, I certainly saw plenty of people vomit but it was never a planned or desired outcome.
117: That is the problem with trying to point to any one thing. Sure, some people wore those ten years earlier! But that doesn't mean it's not of a piece with the rest of the period details in the picture.
Also there is maybe a different problem with claiming some one particular thing is recent when it isn't. I agree about the backpacks.
Yeah, a smarter person than me could figure out some clever critical theory explanation for the valorization of vomit at Dartmouth, but mostly it just seems like those guys are really not creative about humiliation. I mean, I guess they probably all come from families where any sort of gross bodily function is Never Discussed, and are still working through a lot of toilet training trauma in their late teens, but jeez, isn't there SOMEthing they could do to utterly destroy the pledges' sense of self and identification with parental norms that didn't involve yucky bodily fluids? Maybe that's just my middlebrow upbringing talking, but you can (literally) miss me with that shit.
Maybe there's some overlooked Freudian stage, oral expulsive or something.
I am hyper-squeamish about vom so I think I'll maybe skip that article but this is a funny sub-thread just the same. Every time I wake up from having passed out I laugh and laugh.
The Rolling Stone piece could be read as only ascribing that particular obsession to SAE - a much wider range of rituals is described when other frats come up. But it's so extreme there, and Dartmouth comes off as insular enough, that it's hard to imagine SAE being that much of an outlier.
131: Huh, I read it as being more general, especially where the author writes about all the basements having the same horrible smell.
Anyway, at Yale they teach you not to piss on your hands.
Hey, back to fashion and shit: Did everyone look at the new steampunk line at Restoration Hardware? There's some real gems. If by "real" you mean "resin with a rustic finish".
131: the animal house-inspiring piece, about a different frat, confirms the boot-centrality. (As seemingly does the college op-ed I linked above.)
It is a very strange and nearly effortless sensation, like watching a couch cushion magically emerge from the front of your head.
This is a magnificent sentence.
134: Not so much on the vomit, but this article on the Pinto/Animal stories and interview with Chris Miller give some broader context.
From a 1999 thesis "Development of an Assortment Planning Model for Fashion-Sensitive Products"
The time range of a fashion trend is getting shorter than in the past due to easy access to trend information through advanced media and easy access to fashionable clothing products in stores.I do suspect some of the confusion comes from there being an increase in the range of fashionable looks in the mainstream at any one point in time compared to earlier in the 20th century. Makes it harder for the non-cognoscenti to notice the changes.
|| I just watched A Very Long Engagement. Jesus. |>
Man, now I kinda don't want Kim to be head of the World Bank. How do I, I dunno, donate or wevs to one of the other candidates?
re: 128
And of course, NMM to Jim Marshall.
http://www.musicradar.com/news/guitars/jim-marshall-dies-aged-88-538243
I'd always thought that nobody in my family could ever have gone to Dartmouth, but then I found out that my 19th century ancestor (non- Mayflower) went there. I think he turned out all right even if he did go to Congress.
My grandfather went to Dartmouth. Got the Spanish Flu.
56: I am no textiles expert, but the thing that strikes me about all those clothes is that they might be made of synthetic fabrics, but they're not obviously all knits, which are pretty inescapable now for mass-produced, widely available clothes. (No idea of the situation with high-end stuff.) If I were to go for a week without wearing either knit fabrics or stretchy lycra/spandex/whatever blends, I have no idea how I'd pull it off with my current wardrobe. Actually, someone on the Internet has surely done this already.
But if any of you know more about this, I'd happily be contradicted, especially since I have a lot of non-knit fabric sitting around, waiting to be made into wearable clothes. Mostly, uh, cotton lawn? I am guessing. I'm completely fascinated by dress #3 in that set.
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Doggie fuckers rejoice! Though apparently in Kansas oral sex is equivalent to screwing Rover, which is unfortunate.
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144: it's like they were trying to criminalize being a teenaged girl.
But the choker and the make-up and the tendrils and the ribbed shirt all look terribly 90sfantastic to me.
I'd always thought that nobody in my family could ever have gone to Dartmouth
I suspect it's because I'm not from the right kind of family, but I have no idea what this means. Couldn't have gone to Dartmouth because... ?
In my continuing quest to resolve the question in the OP through Science, I cam across this paper that may be worth a read to some (.pdf): "Why the Devil Wears Prada : The Fashion Formation Process in a Simultaneous Disclosure Game Between Designers and Media" Gick (Dartmouth!) and Gick (Dartmouth and Harvard), 2006. Not directly relevant itself, but it includes the following quote from Svendson, Lars. Fashion. A philosophy. London: Reaktion Books, 2006:
The problem is that it is notoriously difficult to define accurately the 'spirit of the age', especially when fashions change as quickly as they have over the last few decades, and when a fashion cycle may be so brief that it hardly lasts a season. [...] One could possibly claim that today's 'spirit of the age' is an unrestricted pluralism with extremely fast changes, and that this is reflected in present-day fashion.The elided sentence turns out be: The reference to a spirit of the age would have sounded more plausible if fashion cycles lasted as long as they used to.
So my hypothesis (which is fucking right) is that people who are knowledgeable about fashion see "fashion", while the rest of us putzers can merely discern the "spirit of the age".
147: Not their sort, dear-ish reasons?
Not their sort, dear-ish reasons?
One assumes. But do such reasons ever have further content? "They're not our sort, they're _____." If so in this case, what's the _____?
Only a Nixon could have gone to Dartmouth.
"They're not our sort, they're DOWN TO BOOT ."
Only a Nixon could have gone to Dartmouth Duke.
147: Cause nobody's ever been into that sort of frat boy culture.
My mom's family was always kind of brainy and intellectual.
153: A quaker from Whittier to Duke? He's like a suburban supervillain.
156: Jesus Fucking Christ, BG, unlike anyone at fucking Dartmouth I guess. Sorry for the hostile reaction, but that may one of the more ignorant things I've seen on this blog. Think about it for a bit.
Sir, you may destroy this little institution, it is weak, it is in your hands! I know it is one of the lesser lights in the literary horizon of our country. You may put it out! But if you do so, you must carry through your work! You must extinguish, one after another, all those great lights of science which for more than a century have thrown their radiance over our land! It is, Sir, as I have said, a small college. And yet there are those who love it!
And yet there are those conservatives boot suit wearers cockfaces who love it
BG might be a member of the Woodward family.
158: I was joking. Also everyone else in that family who was born in the 17th and 18th centuries went to Harvard.
I would be surprised to learn anyone in my family had gone to Dartmouth for completely different reasons.
162: Yes, that was stupidly harsh of me.
Honestly, fuck Daniel Webster and that case. Dartmouth should have been UNH a long time ago.
Now that I've sallied forth and returned with Robitussin and NyQuil I'll be asleep better.
Robitussin and NyQuil? Maybe you can be hallucinating too!
Only taking the former now. The latter to keep me from waking up at 2 or 3 and not being able to get back to sleep (but it comforts me just to own it). Possibly going to a Pens game last night when my cold was finally turning the corner was not the wisest thing to have done.
Got a Seder to get through before getting to the NyQuil.
Yes, I'd also be surprised if anyone in my family attended Dartmouth. Probably for very similar reasons that essaer would be. Theoretically it is possible on my Mom's side, but in all likelihood they went straight from one bad situation to another without any time at New Hampshire universities. Most of their vomiting likely accompanied methanol contamination rather than just ethanol poisoning.
163: My Dad and his brothers are basically 1st generation college grads. I think my great grandfather on that side went to Ag School, but his son didn't go to college. My Grandpa was offered a scholarship to Cornell for cross country, but the family needed his wages during the Depression. He did well enough without one; he wound up as a VP for contracts and a controller, although he did feel that there was a certain level beyond which he couldn't rise.
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