The Future is Here

I'm so tired of this idea (often presented on Jezebel, among other places) that because plastic surgery is a CHOICE women make about their bodies, it therefore is equal to abortion or something and therefore one cannot denigrate it, and to denigrate it is to tell women what to do with their bodies/criticizing their bodies, and therefore patriarchal. Well, isn't anorexia a choice? Isn't hating yourself a choice? Isn't abusing yourself and holding yourself up to a horrifying standard a choice? As Gaby so eloquently put it, "Feminism isn't about choices! No one ever said feminism was about choice!" Choices like these are not made in a vacuum. They are reflective of disturbing, patriarchal cultural practices in our society, which contribute to an eerily futuristic and homogenized idea of beauty, marketability, femininity, and value. It is women caving into these demands, and it's fucking scary and horrifying.

I understand that some cosmetic surgery is supposed to be more culturally acceptable- ie, having a nose job if you have a prominent nose, but we have to understand these surgeries also do not spring from nowhere. We must remember it was our culture that made you feel bad about your nose, not the nose itself. Before there were mirrors, people barely had any idea what they looked like.

How ridiculous that Jessica Simpson has that TV show "The Price of Beauty" where she is supposed to be pointing out how twisted and weird the world's beauty practices are, when she and others spend their time having massive amounts of unnecessary surgery, having plastic balloons and rubber pieces inserted in their bodies, having flesh carved or sucked out of them, having skin pulled back and sewn back into another place, and being injected with fluids and chemicals? Like, take a step back, people! It's not okay, it's not a stylistic choice like your haircut or anything like the choice to have an abortion, and it isn't equivalent to what plastic surgery was designed for, which is for people with actual deformities/disabilities/etc. We shouldn't encourage a society where this is the standard. It is wrong. Period.

Mary's Musings: The 00's Are Over

What have the 00's wrought? I've really wanted to write a post about the '00s for awhile, but it's pretty difficult to really say what I think the significance of the past ten years has been, because technology, the internet, and a the worldwide phenomena of globalization truly has made this past decade unlike any one before. What is weird to me is that technology has changed everything quickly and dramatically, yet it has also happened so quickly that people don't want to stop and take any time to examine it and its repercussions.

Technology itself is not "bad" or "good." There are great benefits to technology, as well as unrelated but obvious advancements politically and socially. There is a sense of ease-maybe even a sense of freedom- that we can enjoy. The internet and widely available knowledge snippets are useful not only for informational reasons, but because they can help free people from isolation, which might not mean much if you just want to find other people who like 40's dresses, but could be really helpful if you are the only gay kid in your small hometown or something. I also think "publishing" on the internet and having one's own space to promote yourself or your work or whatever (this blog is an example) can really give people a platform they otherwise wouldn't have and hopefully can help circumvent the typical and more hierarchical ways of getting yourself heard. And there are many other reasons to appreciate technology.

But with cultural awareness comes a huge shift in how things are created. I think art and culture have always had false pretense about them; the artist has always lied about who they were to sell their product. But now everyone is aware of everything- not just the history within their own culture or field, but everything- every subculture, every marketing scheme, every trend. I always read first-person accounts that were like, "Oh, growing up in the 70's, I loved Kiss, because they were the hardest thing around," but today, there is so much to choose from, and as a result, you doubt the authenticity of anyone's cultural experience. It's not so much that people seem like posers as much as everyone seems to be coming from the same place.

Besides the awareness of all different scenes and cultures, there is the awareness of irony, itself a real cultural hallmark of the past ten years. Everything has been rehashed and made fun of and then rehashed again- and the dominant pop culture scene is nothing if not an example of this. Remember the "garage rock revival" of the early 2000's? And everyone was like, "The Strokes are so great!" even though everyone realized they sucked like six weeks later even though I just read an interview with Julian Casablancas in New York in which "Is This It" was referred to as "masterful"? But The Strokes never seemed real. They seemed so self-consciously aware of what they were imitating, and of the history of these old New York bands even though New York didn't even exist in the same way anymore. It's like, sure Richard Hell was a poser in his own way too, but, back then, there just wasn't much to copy. You had to be sort of authentic in a way to start all these cultural movements because you weren't reviving anything. It was the first time. Punk hadn't been invented yet. But it's not like now you are ever like, "I've never, ever seen/heard/imagined anything like this before!" because most things are self-consciously ripping off something else.

Fashion is like this for sure. What did the 00's bring us that was new, besides cultural homogenization? The disparities between the high/low market really began to lessen, what with every designer's crappy collections for Target and the availability of cheap, trendy, disposable clothes from H&M and Forevs. I can certainly appreciate the fact that these stores are cheap and that many more people can afford to wear the newest and trendiest because of them, but they also contribute to an impending sense of overall uniformity. And it's not just because you saw 50 other people in that H&M coat (seriously, I had an H&M coat last winter and I thought about taking photos of every person wearing it besides me, which was a lot) but the fact that everyone's clothes were made in the same cheap, disposable way. I see the 90's being revived, and though they sucked sartorially, there was some new stuff there. But how will the 2000s be revived? There wasn't a strong enough perspective.

Obviously it doesn't bother most people, but to me the fact that everything got super, super ugly in the past decades is a real downer. It's depressing that my generation will leave so much (plastic, cube shaped) crap in its wake. People can say that it's stupid to collect records when you can have an ipod full of mp3s, but ipods are ugly and records are beautiful and make sense because they have aesthetic value, and aesthetics are an important part of the culture of music, and I would argue, an important part of the world at large because we use our eyes every day and all.

This is not to say that everything sucks and things are over and art is over, or that the rise and fall of The Strokes is an unparalleled and profound metaphor for our times, just that, if you view these large, sweeping worldwide movements, they certainly point to vast shift in our culture. Which is all a little futuristic for me. Why do movies set in the future always assume everything is going to look like a punk rock desert or something when clearly they should take place inside a Best Buy, man?

PS: Probably the biggest argument for technology run amok: plastic surgery face (and body.) It's not exactly a reflection of healthy times, you know? For all our advancements, our standards of beauty and what is valued are as rigid and terrible as ever, perhaps more. It's definitely a little dystopian for me.

Pixar: #1 on My Enemies List

I'm really having trouble getting it together lately to write a post. It's hard to discuss clothes that I'm wearing since most of them burned, and I don't have time in the mornings to dress up really because of my (temporary) office job. The clothes on the Urban Outfitters website are so completely boring I can't even muster up a post about how ugly they are. (Though their innovative new look, with the American Apparel/Terry Richardson style seedy photos with flash, must really be taking the catalogue world by storm. It's like, if you're going to attach yourself to a trend so late in the game, shouldn't you just stick with your original look because it's probably going to appear newer eventually?)

And what's new on the gossip front? NOTHING. There's only so many times you can hear that Britney is/isn't getting help and Amy Winehouse's face is falling off and did you know everyone is just mad for those British female musicians? They're just so ballsy and cute and irreverent! Have you heard? Have I mentioned how cute they are? Because they are just so cute, which is probably the most important part of making good music. Except Amy Winehouse, but we all know she has soul.

So I just thought I'd post about things I hate. My mother has always had very strong likes and dislikes, and because of this I grew up thinking that certain things were just unacceptable. Stand up comedians, for instance. She hates those. Also clowns. Not in a pez way, but clowns really are awful. Actually, she hates circuses in general. She also thinks Ken Burns is a "fruit."

1. Pixar films. For some reason, people my age are always talking about how they loved The Incredibles or whatever. I hate these movies because they're always full of pop culture reference and have this horrendous "fun for the whole family" concept that mom and dad (I also hate when people refer to other people's parents as "Mom" or "Dad" as in, "What does Mom think?") are also supposed to enjoy because it's all so hip and zany.

But why I hate them the most is that computer animation is ugly and soulless. Everything looks plastic and overly smooth, like it's been airbrushed fifty times. All the kids look like little big-eyed moppets with spiky hair. Everything is too animated, too bouncy, like it was made out of rubber. Besides that, there is an obsession with making everything look real and 3-D and perfectly shaded- as evidenced in the two photos above. You can tell the "artists" are really obsessed with what computers can do, but mostly what computers can do is ugly.

By contrast, below are some old animated Disney film stills (Cinderella, Snow White, and Alice in Wonderland), which have an attention to detail without making everything shiny and obvious, and use contrast to draw attention to things instead of shoving the overall bouncy glossiness of CGI in your face.

I was going to make #2 Best Buy, but whatever. I don't need to explain why I hate Best Buy.

Aesthetics, or Why Is Everything So Ugly?

Today, there are few things uglier, or more wasteful, than the appliance. Everything is encased in dull gray plastic, and even when brand-new can't be expected to last very long. Things are made to break, to be disposable, and once they are disposed of, they sit in a landfill, never decomposing and looking ugly and plastic and leeching into groundwater forever. However, this wasn't always the case!

Until not so very long ago, things like household appliances were made not only to be beautiful and well-designed, but to last. Instead of making something that would break and then be replaced, it was assumed that things would wear well and be repaired if broken. (Today, it's the opposite- it's almost never worth it to get something fixed, when you can just buy a new one.)

This is the case with numerous old things- clothing, automobiles, furniture, and more. But it particularly struck me in regards to appliances simply because today they really are so cheaply made and unbearable to look at. Look at the hearing aid to the left, as streamlined as a 1930's tuxedo- or the wooden radio up top, with its cleverly designed deco-esque speakers and warm wooden finish, or the truly gorgeous green portable typewriter- today I try to hide my radio out of sight, but these things were designed to sit on a shelf and look just as beautiful as anything purely decorative. It looks like someone put time and care into creating then, not as if they just came out of the same mold as everything else.

More than anything, I find this disposable phenomenon depressing. One might hope, with the current "green" fad and new focus on environmentalism, things might change. Personally, I just feel sad that this attention to detail and aesthetics has gone by the wayside, creating a throwaway economy that will leave behind a pile of ugly plastic garbage.