Why not politely suggest that granny should get a support bra?
1 Like
There’s also the point that the committed radicals stayed radical, and didn’t go into mainstream electoral politics.
The 1960’s figures who went into Congress were the relatively conservative wing of the activist left. John Kerry rather than Kwame Ture.
4 Likes
And if you do play:
Or really, even if you don’t play. As you might recall, I once googled ‘pink care bear’ (something like that) with Safe Search off. Oh, my poor inner sweet summer child. Dear god. I turned that back on pronto and haven’t touched it since.
9 Likes
That reminds me of something else. I was reading the blog of a young Muslim woman, who always wore a hijab and abaya, and considered herself a very modest and conservative dresser. Then she and her husband moved to a country where most women wore niqab - and she got harassed on the street and called names. Because however much we cover, whatever happens to be revealed will suddenly become sexualized. Her lips weren’t making her a slut until suddenly, they were.
11 Likes
There’s also the point that the committed radicals stayed radical, and didn’t go into mainstream electoral politics.
Tom Hayden went to the California Assembly I think. Bobby Rush wen to the US Congress Jerry Rubin went to Wall Street. Todd Gitlin became, well, Todd Gitlin.
Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn stayed committed.
ETA: This list not exhaustive for either side.
1 Like
It has taken me many years to learn that while the cleavage may be on view, I was not the intended audience.
So now I graciously avert my eyes. It seems not not all middle age men have come to this understanding yet.
1 Like
Its tough to say that politely. What exact wording were you thinking of?
Well, when she says that someone’s cleavage reaches the floor, it doesn’t have to try very hard to beat it.
(way off-topic)
Glenn Branca (who was a hippie) suggested that the punk era was a way bigger deal than the hippie era: there were way fewer psychedelic-era bands than punk or post-punk era bands; at Woodstock, after a while one spotted more wine glasses than j’s. (This was his explanation as to why he believed D. Boon was assassinated, but anyway…)
I’d suggest that Lawrence Welk may have had more US TV airtime than all the Beatles, Jefferson Airplanes, and Motown groups put together.
When I was really little, my boomer parents’ record collection had a lot of Henry Mancini, Ferrante & Teicher, Herb Alpert, Al Hirt, Enoch Light… No Beatles. Their late-60s/early-70s pop music consisted of this K-Tel collection. Mom had some early-60s 45s and a Chubby Checker LP. While still in their 20s they willfully attended a Lawrence Welk taping. (To their credit, that K-Tel album had Hugh Masakela’s “Grazing in the Grass,” one of the first songs I remember hearing and a lifelong favorite. They also brought home some Byron Lee and steel band records from a brief assignment in the Caribbean.) It wasn’t until Saturday Night Fever that the dam finally broke; we had that record, plus the Grease soundtrack, after which Dad finally bought himself 2 or 3 albums a year, e.g. _Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, but also this:
2 Likes
I’d say there was just far more connections and continuations than people generally realize. Punk wasn’t a sharp break, but a continuation of certain ideas, more in the cultural realm (independence, social interconnections, anti-corporate/state sentiment, a focus on authenticity). Punks took the idea of being mistrustful of authority, and used that to create new structures of an independent music industry that could exist and operate almost entirely outside of the mainstream industry (note I said almost). They mistrusted cultural corporations as much as the state and arms dealers.
I’d also say that the weird bands of the late 60s that don’t fit in with the whiter, maler second wave of rock were the ones that influenced punks more - the Detroit bands, the So Cal garage rock, Velvet Underground, as well as Bowie, Kraftwerk, etc, were all influential in the punk sound.
I think what we associate with the hippies (the music, anti-war movement, hippiedom, etc) was merely a small slice of boomer life and culture.
6 Likes
Offtopic: Sadly, I have to imagine the headbanging because the BB front page got so busy with animated ads that I had to shut off the giffage and video.
I guess I should have said that I think using her age as an excuse for this blame the victim attitude is inappropriate. In the 60s women’s rights, equal pay for equal work, etc became the norm. I agree everyone wasn’t a hippy or radical and am sort of baffled that they came up in this context. Everybody wasn’t a supporter of sexual predators either. It took time for law to catch up and most victims and observers had no idea how to respond.
I lived in that era and the excuse, “everybody was doing it” leaves me feeling insulted and enraged.
2 Likes
I wonder if she ever wears heels that show off her feet, at formal events and the like. Luckily as we all know there’s nobody who finds that erotic in society, right?
2 Likes
That’s not what I was doing, though. I’m not blaming anyone or thinking that her age is an excuse. Nor am I assuming that “everyone was doing it” was either true or made it okay. Of course it didn’t. I was more trying to explain that the idea that the entire generation of boomers was progressive and as the kids today say, “woke” just doesn’t fit with the historical reality of a large and amorphous demographic that in many ways is STILL dominating our cultural landscape.
Part of the reason the second wave feminist movement evolved was because hippie and progressive women were being told to embrace free love, but were still doing the majority of child rearing and house work, while expecting to be sexually available. Also, many women in the various movements ended up being secretaries and often not getting a voice publicly. Hence, it radicalized them. Their expectations of being treated as equal partners both at home and in the struggle was just not being met. Of course, second wave women had a huge race issue and they tended to dumb much of the still necessary unpaid labor on their Gen X daughters.
12 Likes
It’s never no pants day outside.
1 Like
2 Likes
They sound like they were Punk As Fuck, tho.
1 Like
4 Likes
:format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-2360668-1289410103.jpeg.jpg){kind=link}