Probably because you're an awful person. It wasn't Frowner, was it?
That the relationship eventually went sour means nothing. That you were hot for her physical Swedishness - and had an obvious thing for the other Swede - means a lot more. Swede-lover.
His Grant vs. Astaire post is actually a pretty good one.
Frowner claims not to be blonde. Her physical appearance is, in fact, not blonde. But I have the feeling that something else is going on.
All brown guys are drawn to Swedes like moths to an icicle. It's in their genes.
What's really amusing is that the most attractive and most stylish Swedes are by far the non-white women: the lovely black girl with the Afro, the older Indian(?) woman with the white hair, and those Arab(?) girls in the white jumpsuits.
If there had been Swedes on the veldt in the Pleistocene, they would have been very popular.
Being a bit perverse, I first thought, gee, did the Sartorialist only take pictures of thin people or is everyone in Sweden so beautiful, and then I came to the picture of the girl wearing her father's shirt as a skirt... the one with plump unfashionable people in the background.
How many brown guys are there? Half a billion?
There just aren't enough Swedes. Even throwing in the Finns, Danes, Faeroese, etc., there still would be enough.
Thank God for hair science.
When I was in Paris I was struck by how blandly, if nicely casual everyone was dressed. In Stockholm, young people tend to be more dressed up. They have a style. But you also see more wannabe stylish badly dressed people.
did the Sartorialist only take pictures of thin people
Yeah, he only does. And the women tend to be very thin. I've often considered a post complaining about that, but came to my senses each time.
The two guys in plaid looked weird to me.
I'm willing to believe that almost everyone in Stockholm is thin. It's true of Vilnius.
Leggings is pretty awful current trend.
It's not even all just thin. It's that all of his pictures of women seem to feature women of the same body type: thin, small-breasted, and leggy.
And as someone pointed out in his comments the other day, often not even dressed so fabulously. The 'would look good in a potato sack' type.
seem to feature women of the same body type
Yup. I basically stopped checking the site regularly because of this. It's a blog! Do something interesting!
I was just thinking that, Blume. Some of the clothes were great, but a lot I looked at and thought that it was pretty much a combination of short hemlines and stilettos.
When I was in Paris I was struck by how blandly, if nicely casual everyone was dressed.
IMLE, the Parisian reputation--is there still one? was there ever really one?--for fashion is undeserved. I'm not sure there's any place in America that I can't find at least one yuppie.
My E is also rather E, of course. Maybe they were casual, because it was so hot?
Yeah they're of a type. But what amazes me is being able to take pictures of total strangers. I don't have the gumption to do that. I feel uncomfortable taking pictures of crowds let alone individual strangers.
Well, I guess it's safe fro me to go to Paris now. But not Stockholm.
I think part of the reason the Stockholm posts are more interesting is that there seem to be more regular people from the street, and not hey look, it's Carine Roitfeld [/other big fashion person].
I'm not sure there's any place in America that I can't find at least one yuppie.
Unless this is one of those "Wherever you go, there you are" scenarios.
If there had been Swedes on the veldt in the Pleistocene, they would have been very popular.
And if there had been any sort of textile manufacturing on the veldt, those Swedish women would have dressed themselves in pink. (Women like pink lipstick because men used to hunt big game or, uh, something like that).
15, 17: I thought it was sort of a tenet of fashion that "couture" is actually designed to be wearable only by such body types.
Arg. "We put a thousand people growing up in our modern culture in a room and were surprised women gravitated towards pink so we'll talk about hunters not needing to see color." Wasn't it true about a hundred years or so ago that pink was a boy's color because it was so much more vibrant and too bold for baby girls?
27: There was a great Project Runway episode where they asked the designers to design for each others' mothers, and it was great to see their little designer faces crumple as they realized that they didn't know how to design for something that didn't have a 23" waist.
None of those people are wearing "couture." They're wearing regular clothes, and it seems that the subjects are selected for their sense of style, but often the women are selected because they're hot.
(Did I manage to make that sound like a complaint? Where's my cookie?)
Do people really argue that pink-and-blue are hard wired? I knew it as an iron law when growing up, but never thought its origin could be anything other than historical accident arbitrarily standardized.
Haha, he put up a couple of new pictures; check out the woman at the top of the page now? Who's built like that, except for all the women on that site?
Uh, yes, without having read much of the thread, they are all very thin.
That does it.
I'll be commencing my rigourous diet and exercise (to coincide with cooler weather) in the fall.
30: Well, I can't see their labels, true, but most seem to be at minimum wearing heavily couture-inspired styles.
So when I wear a sport coat it's supposed to be much too small and have the top button buttoned, so the lines of the jacket accents my hourglass figure?
And as someone pointed out in his comments the other day, often not even dressed so fabulously. The 'would look good in a potato sack' type.
This is a funny example of that.
37: It's Cindy Crawford's daughter!
Wasn't it true about a hundred years or so ago that pink was a boy's color because it was so much more vibrant and too bold for baby girls?
Yes. Pink was seen as a youngish version of the vibrant colour red, while blue, seen as the colour of innocence and purity, was considered more appropriate for little girls.
But what's a hundred years or so in the grand sweep of things? These evo-psych researchers don't like to confine themselves to within the boundaries of actually known and knowable human history.
The labels seem to be more a NY/Italy/Paris thing. I don't recognize these things, but if you ever look at the comments, there are people who can name each piece of designer clothing.
This might be less idiosyncratic. 1, 2, 3, etc.
Idiosyncratic in a different way, at least.
Funny, David W, the first woman at your "2" is also on the Sartorialist's site, wearing the same dress.
41: That seems to be exactly the same, except with ads flashing back and forth in front of the photos.
I like the girl with the Pat Benatar hair and the old-fashioned dress, though.
Not the same; more than one female body type at Weman's links.
Huh, I didn't notice. The same phots are featured on Dagens Nyheter, our paper of record. Maybe he tracked her down?
http://www.dn.se/DNet/jsp/polopoly.jsp?d=2808
40: Yeah. So! I blame the Sartorialist for exercising his moral agency to become immersed in the corrupt no-real-women-please fashion industry, but not necessarily for picking his individual subjects. His picks I blame on the industry, for whose existence, then therefore, we mere mortal consumers are culpable.
In short: sorry for the skinny chicks. Totally my fault. But also yours.
Maybe he tracked her down?
His comments say that he shot her the last time he was in Stockholm as well. She's probably a model.
She's a model, though waering her own clothes. They normallyhave regular people, but show models b/c it's "Stockholm Fashion Week".
no-real-women-please fashion industry
Not to pick on you, because I almost used the same locution, but skinny chicks are real people, too, and some of them look great. It's the lack of variety that irks.
I don't see a dropoff in attractiveness when you get to "regular" people. Not sure I believe they find them on the street, which is the conceit.
You're insane, Ogged. With a few exceptions, the Swedes in those pics are much worse dressers than the Italians in the pics before.
I'm willing to believe that almost everyone in Stockholm is thin. It's true of Vilnius.
In the summer of 2001 I went from the Baltics, to Finland, to Stockholm in that order. People were noticeably larger in Stockholm.
There should be photos of people in Skansen.
49: I probably should have capitalized Real Women, since at this point it's basically a term of art. But then I would have sounded like a snot in the other direction, I fear.
The best dressers in Europe, are, in my experience, in London. Not necessarily the best looking people, but good dressers in London, dress really well.
I believe you, but Skansen's all tourists.
54: Last time I visited, London seemed a melange of chav scum, Barbour-clad Hooray Henries and people in suits that didn't look Boateng-fresh or Anderson & Sheppard-worn, but perhaps I was looking in the wrong places.
55. The majority at Skansen seemed to be Swedish tourists.
And, I'd say that on average the tourists in Stockholm were not as large as the tourists here in DC.
Which is to say that the Skansen part of the comment was to be separated from the larger people in Stockholm part of the comment, except I forgot to make that distinction.
46:
His picks I blame on the industry, for whose existence, then therefore, we mere mortal consumers are culpable.
In short: sorry for the skinny chicks. Totally my fault. But also yours.
I quote that for context. I'm not sure what's going on there: defensiveness about the fashion industry? about finding skinny women (some say "chicks" or "girls") attractive?
Huh.
I actually doubt that most guys look at super-skinny women and literally feel sexually attracted to them, but we all look at super-skinny women and think "How fashionable!" They look, quite literally, sharp, in everything they wear. I see super-skinnies on the train and immediately think, "Oh, she's a model on her day off," while I don't think that about the women I see on the train and think "Holy shit, she's hot."
If there had been Swedes on the veldt in the Pleistocene, they would have been very popular.
Little known fact: There sometimes were Swedes on the veldt. Veldt-people considered them very attractive mates, because veldt-people who mated with Swedes got to go back to Sweden and get universal healthcare (a commodity distinctly lacking in the veldt). So, you see, it's now in everyone's genes to want to sex the Swedes.
There sometimes were Swedes on the veldt
Who can forget ABBA's breakthrough hit, "Svelte on the Veldt"?
The fact of Sweden somehow makes me happy. I couldn't swear why, though.
62 contains probably two too many "literally"s, but I did mean them.
I'm not sure what's going on there: defensiveness about the fashion industry? about finding skinny women (some say "chicks" or "girls") attractive?
Huh.
Haven't you been around here for awhile, off and on? More heated talking past each other than any other topic area, with some consequent departures. Not that subject exactly, but a squeamishness about even approaching it for fear of starting something.
ABBA pickled herring is unrelated to the musical group. Fact.
IDP is right. I take back 62 altogether for fear of starting an actual discussion about it.
I actually doubt that most guys look at super-skinny women and literally feel sexually attracted to them, but we all look at super-skinny women and think "How fashionable!" They look, quite literally, sharp, in everything they wear.
Here's an allegory about those women, using the metaphor of condominiums.
Well, I reassert 62 then. It's a true fact.
67, 69,
I've been around here off and on, ayup.
Hey, IDP, I appreciate your voicing that in 67.
But I *like* fat chicks!
But *I* like fat chicks!
But I like *fat* chicks!
I just can't seem to get it right. I blame the something something.
But I like fat *chicks*! Why do all these bears keep sucking my cock?
And why can't I get the bear, my chicks and my cock across the river carrying only two animals at a time? Would it help if I got my ass involved?
Heh. And I like guys with paunches and sunken chests.
76: geez talk about an unattainable standard for the rest of us.
Just up your beer intake, ST. You'll get there soon enough.
Sunken chest is unlikely. I have the chest cavity of a, well, a bear. I certainly have a lot more fatness in me, though.
61: Whoop, missed the boat on a timely response. But I meant that the fact that the Sartorialist takes pictures of skinny women is a product of the industry he's chosen to immerse himself in, so I'd fault him more for choosing the industry than for the individual photos.
The rest of my comment was just me being circular. "But the industry wouldn't use images of skinny women if we weren't buying!" "But that's chicken-egg, the industry should move the market!" etc.
Did I misspeak? I meant to say: But I *like* guys with paunches! or, fat guys! We hetero types love slightly portly men! We look at pictures of them on the internets!
Seriously, though, Sifu, you linked to a picture of the back of your head once.
There's pictures of me all over the unfoggedernet.
I ain't no dang consumptive like ogged, that's for sure.
Dude, I still have a gut. It seems to be unlosable.
Dude, I still have a gut. It seems to be unlosable.
Less mayo and more weightlifting, twig boy.
I've never been close to losing my gut. I lost 55 pounds in a year, once: still had a gut.
Less mayo and more weightlifting, twig boy.
I fear you're right.
I still have a bit of a belly too. I was complaining to my mom about it recently; I can't get rid of it, what's up with that?
She thought the thing to say was, "Suck it up" -- or "in" -- something like that. Cute, mom, but my stomach muscles are already quite strong.
Dude, I still have a gut. It seems to be unlosable.
Finally, an explanation for why he keeps posting about a subject about which there is apparently so much squeamishness (#67) that it can only be approached, oh, every other week or so: Ogged is working through his body image issues.
I blame his mother.
I'm trying to help you morbidly obese Americans work through your body image issues. I blame Mother Teresa.
95 to 93 and 94. I really can't choose.
Ogged you want to arrange a trade? 10 pounds of Honkymass for the right to call people "honky" unironically?
I'm tired of all these Inkys, Iranians going around acting all white, calling each other Honky and shit. Where do they think they earned the right to do that?
If you drink enough beer, your belly will get big enough to make your chest look sunken in comparison.
My original joke was "for the right to say 'towelhead' in the shower", but I thought it insensitive. Fucking PC Nazis in my head.
"for the right to call people 'esé' without being tacky", perhaps?
Isn't it comparatively hard to lose fat through swimming?
Isn't it comparatively hard to lose fat through swimming?
That's why I ellipticize too.
Just take back the "Preggers" remark, will ya? For one thing, my little belly isn't nearly like that. This is utterly confusing me.
I have to say that the elliptical doesn't seem to do crap for me. I really need to lose some weight.
No one's got anything to say about the _latex_leggings_ on the young woman at the top of the page now? Sure, she's skinny and probably a model. But I'm more flabbergasted that latex is something you can wear on the street in Stockholm.
Sifu: esé
Teo: There's no accent mark on "ese."
I agree, sort of. I've never seen the slangly "ese" with an accent. But the word "ése" does exist. The difference between "ese" and "ése" is somewhat lost one me. I think with an accent it refers to an antecedent. Some "that" that we were already talking about.
Regardless, #1 over here is wrong-wrong-wrong. Someone'll rig up some bots to fix this, right?
Yeah, there is a word "ése," orthographically distinct from another word "ese" (though they are pronounced the same), but the accent is never on the second syllable.
the accent is never on the second syllable.
Standup comedians lie!
Standup comedians lie!
You better not be getting your information about Spanish pronunciation from Carlos Mencia.
The Sartorialist photographs a much greater range of male body types, and male clothing, than of female. There've been some positively stocky dudes, and sometimes they really are wearing just ordinary clothes well put together.
The women do tend to be samey, but I forgive him because sometimes they're stunning.
I find the Sartorialist kind of a bummer, in that it often seems like it would be useful for clothing inspiration if I were a guy, but isn't for me as a woman.
Heh. And I like guys with paunches and sunken chests.
Ooh! Pick me!
Of course it's useful for women. You just need to get up and decide to be a willowy blonde, and suddenly your wardrobe drops into place.
The actual clothes on the women are a problem too, often.
I think the trick, following 124, is to wake up with a different wardrobe, too.
123:
a. Why does it seem that people don't quite get that I was being sarcastic, rather acidly so? Or perhaps they do, and have already moved so far beyond me and my puerile sarcasm that ... uh.
b. Ben, I think I barely picked you out in the UnfoggedDcon photos.
c. What LB says in 124 is brilliant.
128a: Whatever makes you think people didn't get it?
Actually most of the women on that site are willowy brunettes.
I don't see any stocky guys, they're all skinny too. Except some of the elderly men in 3-piece suits. But that site is too boring for me to give it a thorough inspection anyway.
That site is too boring for me to look at it at all.
I have no thing for Swedes
And yet he would sing to her constantly, "Wooooooahh, oh, oh, oh, Swede child of mine." Which was awkward for everyone.
Well, Farhad likes a fair haired girl, much as he might try to deny it.
There is nothing, absolutely nothing, wrong with willowy brunettes.
134: Why thank you, ben. I'm blushing!
No way are you willowy, Mai Tai.
I find the Sartorialist useful. His photos actually show what people are wearing, unlike those in most fashion magasines, and his subjects are trying to be very current while just going about their business: again, most fashion magasines feel no need to make concessions to, say, commuting, or leering bystanders, or bicycle spokes.
I also like the geographic categories. I've already figured out how French fashion works (or not) on me, so I'm interested to see what the nanas in Paris are wearing these days. Italian women are working a very different aesthetic than I prefer, but I kind of dig looking at the overblown male Italian styles. The photos of NYC style remind me that however I'd like to dress, I've got to deal with people in this area (most of whom seem to have an irrational fixation on Marc Jacobs and his hip little girl style).
He's a professional fashion editor, not a documentarian: we probably shouldn't expect him to validate our own bodies or clothing choices.
137.1 I find eerily reminiscent of Vice's "Dos"
I always find the people he photographs ridiculously attractive, especially the men, while I would think nothing of a model paid to wear the same clothes.
I find the Sartorialist useful. His photos actually show what people are wearing, unlike those in most fashion magasines, and his subjects are trying to be very current while just going about their business
This is what struck me as not particularly true. Most of the pictures I scanned seemed to be (from comments) of not what people actually wear, but of a few thin people wearing very trendy, high-end clothing and a surprising amount of makeup. The picture with the girl wearing her dad's shirt as a skirt was pretty interesting.
It's not that I need my own body validated as much as it is that if the subject is pictures of what people actually wear, I'd like to see a little more variety. If he just wants to find couturish clothing in the wild, that's fine, but to me, a bit dull.
I'll concede that these people are probably not en route to non-fashiony jobs. But couture prêt-à-porter in-the-wild photos are really not so common as all that.
The Sartorialist only take pictures outside Berns were Stockholm Fashion Shows was held and the people there was models or fashion editors.
Holy shit, a real Swede! Hello Anders. Thanks for the information.
Anders is actually the second real Swede to comment in this thread.
Weman doesn't have that authentic "man in the street" feel.
(Ogged, on his ill-advised quest to find the "authentic", just means that Weman's English is better.)
That's not "just" what I mean, disparaging Ben. He's also named David, and not Anders.
Ah, right, how silly of me; my apologies.
If there's one place to which I would have thought exoticizing orientalist fantasies wouldn't apply, it's Sweden.
How come? Sweden meets the most important criterion: Everyone over there looks the same to me.
re: 56
Glasgow is more like that, in my experience. Although there are good dressers there too. If you like 'indie kid' fashion, it's cool, but if you're looking for more 'high concept' street fashion, definitely London.
Not that I can talk, I am not remotely fashionable, and not in a conscious way, either.
Cool! A word I never even heard of.
...[I]n step with Orientalism the West was busy elaborating another discourse that we might call Septentrionalism: a discourse of the West about the North embracing such exotics as Siberian shamans, Odinic berserkers, and Celtic bards (the latter notoriously including Ossian, who barely exists outside of Septentrionalism's textual universe).
I have a photograph of an excellent pseudo-trotskyist cafe in Stockholm where I bought a pornographic detective story and David Weman tried to chat up the waitress. Was this the lost historic Stockholm unfogged meetup?
in re fatness: over the last (ulp) thirty years, I have watched the tide move steadily East and North, overwhelming me on the way. Gothenburg was full of slim people in 1977; now it is much fuller, becasue everyone is so much larger. Stockholm has also inflated, if not quite so much. In Karelia, people are actually getting thinner. The Finns all used to have torsos shaped like lightbulbs, with a lot of storage space low down for all that beer. Now they are healthier.
Septentrionalism at great length, citing Homi Bhaba.
156 is rather disappointing; the "South" is London. However, it does explains ttaM, the exotic Northerner.
I once met a very-middle-class very-English guy who explained that the Danelaw still had not caught up with the real England, and probably never would. He also said of the Irish, "They've been successful everywhere in the world except their homeland". (This was 15-20 years ago; definitely no longer true.) He said nothing about the Scots or the Welsh, but I doubt that it would have been good.
re: 157
Yeah, of course the guy was clearly an idiot. Since every single innovation in British history, bar almost none, has come from north of the Danelaw and in many important respects it's the southern bit that was backward.
I was about to mock Ogged for reading the Sartorialist, then I remembered that I read it sometimes.
a. Why does it seem that people don't quite get that I was being sarcastic, rather acidly so? Or perhaps they do, and have already moved so far beyond me and my puerile sarcasm that ... uh.
Well, there's also that not so many months ago a couple of the Women of Unfogged spoke in favor of bellies on men, found to be stimulating, if I remember correctly.
Also, you have a "mature" vibe and expressing much variance from a narrow band of age-appropriateness in sexual attraction, even speculatively , never goes unremarked here unless you're an established character in that regard. So it can be presumed you're talking about mature men, Carters back to Roosevelts.
That's where another supposition kicks in: a mature man without a belly or sunken chest, with a slim waste or, God forbid, visibly-articulated abdominals, operates against an all-but-conclusive presumption he is either vain and narcissistic, or ghey, or both.
So, not only would it be completely possible to read that comment straight, here, but I'm a little surprised at your claim that you were entirely kidding.
That's where another supposition kicks in: a mature man without a belly or sunken chest, with a slim waste or, God forbid, visibly-articulated abdominals, operates against an all-but-conclusive presumption he is either vain and narcissistic, or ghey, or both.
Shorter IDP: Don't hate me because I'm beautiful.
Here is a slightly more alt. view on Scandinavian street style.
160:
Good lord, IDP, a straight answer! Well, thank you.
Also, you have a "mature" vibe and expressing much variance from a narrow band of age-appropriateness in sexual attraction, even speculatively , never goes unremarked here unless you're an established character in that regard.
I'm not sure what "mature" is code for here, though it seems somehow reminiscent of, say, "full-figured" to describe some women.
I'm tickled. A mature vibe, huh?
I will say that men of any type (mature or not) who have slim waists or hips and so on and so forth really shouldn't worry about people thinking they're vain. It's alright. We love you anyway.
i actually like that the sartorialist focuses on non-models who are nonetheless attractive by those standards and often working in the fashion industry. they're the ones who are more likely to take things that seem at first utterly ridiculous (bubble silhouettes, high-waisted jeans) and play around with them until something works for regular, off-runway life. if i wanted to see what normal people wore, i'd look out my window.
I said a narrow band. Mature is code for "Mature."
The first time I ever heard "full-figured," it was out of the mouth of Jane Russell selling bras on tv. Positive associations here.
I said a narrow band. Mature is code for "Mature."
That doesn't really help.
Those narrow band of age-appropriateness people are booooring.
"Full-figured" is usually rendered "full-figured gals."
Full-figured gals, you make the rockin' world go 'round.
Russell actually said "full-figured gals" in that ad. Maybe the origin?
No doubt the origin.
I seem to remember that the Jane Russell ads were considered ground-breaking. Cross-your-heart bras, wasn't it? And television ads openly acknowledging that women wear bras, and that support could be an issue, were theretofore unheard of.
I took it that the "gals" language was meant to mitigate any threat men might feel from the airing of these ads: it lends the sense that this might as well be your mother, talking with the gals. Mature women are generally desexualized, unthreatening.
A woman iconic for breast projection, and as a sexpot. Anybody know if Macao is any good?
Russell could sell sex knowledge and experience, and make it believable.
I refrained in the early inning, since people were being all squirrelly, but I think that most heterosexual men are most attracted to women more full-bodied than the fashion industry designs for. The exceptions would be fashionistas and certain kinds of preppy social climbers, and a lot of them are mostly interested in how their girlfriend looks when the two of them walk into the room.
This doesn't mean that we're not sexist or that we're not stereotyping women. We just have a different stereotype than the fashion industry. Someone like Sophia Loren. Even if Sophia was 10 lbs or so over her ideal, most guys would still like her best.
They say that gay designers and the camera are what require skinny models, but people also tell me that women dress mostly for other women, not for guys. except tramps, I mean.
Trivia: Jane Russell (real name: Jane Russell) was born about a year before Frances Gumm (real name: Judy Garland) and 50 miles away.
62: i think its that skinny people look neater. its less sloppy. i mean boobs are really awesome but sometimes i look at them and they just sort of are hanging. fat look sloppy. and for women it matters because anything one wears displays the body to a much greater degree than men's fashion.
oh oops i read farther and i probably retract that so there are no fights.
Good lord, yoyo, how long have you been reading Unfogged, and you had to read farther in this thread to realize that 173 might be contentious?
my natural instict is to be honest and say whats on my mind. disagreeing with people doesn't set off any alarms for me.
Neither does being a jackass, apparently.
