On the occasion of the Supreme Court’s legal mainstreaming
of gay marriage, and the decision by US corporate, political, and media
arbiters that yes, maybe, the official presentation of the Confederate flag by
the State of South Carolina and its symbolism in the institutionalization and celebration
of racism and rebellion against the federal government (as well as good ol’
regional pride!) should no longer be condoned or overlooked, I was reminded how
malleable opinions can be.
Stuff that used to be OK is now abhorrent. And vice
versa.
If you’re as old as I am, you might remember this riddle:
“A boy is injured in a car accident. His father rushes him to the hospital. The doctor comes into the emergency room and
says, “I can’t operate on him. He’s my
son.”
Today, I imagine the reaction is WTF? What’s the riddle? It’s his mom, right?
Well, back in the
1970s, when we rode dinosaurs to school, that was a real puzzler for me and my teen
peers. The idea that “doctors” were “men”
was deeply ingrained, so that the “it’s his mother” reveal was a blinding
insight that converted me into a committed feminist!
Well, anyway, it convinced me my conscious and subconscious
were a grab-bag of tangled prejudices and received opinions.
And it’s made me more careful about regarding stuff that
jars me as “wrong”, “abnormal”, “ridiculous”, etc.
And more careful
about regarding stuff that pleases me as “right”, “normal”, “reasonable”, etc.
We all live in a world of manufactured attitudes, people.
Another example is attitudes toward female beauty, as I was
reminded by On With the Show: The First
Century of Show Business in America, by Robert C. Toll (New York, Oxford
University Press, 1976) and its chapter on the evolution of American burlesque. (I've already written about Toll's documentation of the 150-year run of minstrel shows as acceptable and indeed paradigmatic American entertainment).
Toll writes:
Toll writes:
“The first burlesque
star to be crowned a “Queen,” May Howard [headed her own revue in the 1880s which
was] “a leg show pure and simple,” explained the chunky star, who boasted that
she would employ no woman who weighed less than one hundred fifty pounds. The stocky woman with large thighs—some performers
were even charged with wearing hip and thigh padding under their tights—continued
to be the ideal until the turn of the century.
A sea change in popular attitudes was marked by the rage for
the “Floradora” girls in the early 1900s.
“Floradora” was a popular piece of musical comedy piffle
that racked up lengthy runs in London and New York. It featured a sextette of beauties dubbed “the
Floradora girls”, who had their own weight—and height—requirements, as Toll
tells us:
…Whereas May Howard in
the 1880s featured short, hefty women, the six Floradora Girls, who created a
public sensation in 1901 as ideal women, were each 5’4” and 130 pounds…”

Their type of lithe silhouette presented in various stages of dress
and undress became a staple of the American musical theater, thanks largely to
Florenz Ziegfeld & his “Ziegfeld Girls”, as documented in the public and
secret work of Ziegfeld’s contracted photographer, Alfred Cheney Johnston.
I suppose you can analyze American aesthetic choices in
aggregate and say “As the focus of work shifted from rural to urban, the sturdy
farm girl was supplanted by the [malnourished] seamstress”.
But I think it’s more accurate to say that different body
types and different body type preferences always existed and continue to exist,
and it’s more of a question of what gets emphasized, endorsed, and advertised.
On the issue of “chunky” women, Ohio State University had an
exhibit on burlesque and the curators had this to say about “beauty”:
The popular image of the burlesque performer was a large, tall
woman, so powerfully-built that she was practically Amazonian. Publicity
for burlesque shows took advantage of this association, with posters depicting
voluptuous, statuesque performers in the roles of military officers,
charioteers, or even literal Amazon warriors. This dominant female figure
was fascinating and tantalizing, but like most aspects of burlesque, also a bit
threatening. Men loved to watch burlesque performers, but at the same time,
they were afraid that her feminine power was too dynamic to stay safely
confined to the stage. In an era when women all over America were
actively agitating for increased freedoms and legal rights, this was a very
relevant concern.
Again, for Americans of a certain age, references to
Amazonian women automatically elicit images of the women depicted by R. Crumb,
the celebrated graphic artist and “underground comic” auteur:
R. Crumb’s sexual inclinations, indeed anybody’s, is too
unique to generalize about. But I don’t
think he’s alone in his preferences. As
a matter of personal practice and artistic necessity, he’s just more up front about them.
So I would say that there is a broad spectrum of preferences
and prejudices are innate both within individuals and society, and they are mutable
and malleable, indeed more malleable than we would care to acknowledge. They are shaped, expressed, and can apparently be changed permanently both by personal circumstance,
and as a result of what society and state characterize as “good” and “bad” and “acceptable”
and “unacceptable”. And that’s a good
thing…sometimes…and a bad thing…sometimes.
Just for the record, I think it's a good thing that the US population is apparently becoming more tolerant of gay marriage and less enamored of the Confederate flag. But...
Just for the record, I think it's a good thing that the US population is apparently becoming more tolerant of gay marriage and less enamored of the Confederate flag. But...
...as to whether any attitudes are intrinsically “bad” or “good”,
I guess I’ll leave that subject to the moral philosophers. As a matter of human behavior, I think I’ve
learned enough to be cautious about how and why I—and society—choose to label things…
Johnston's archive is on deposit at the Library of Congress. Portrait of Hazel Forbes.
R Crumb image from http://victorianvisualculture.com/2011/11/15/robert-crumb-the-modern-mundy/
R Crumb image from http://victorianvisualculture.com/2011/11/15/robert-crumb-the-modern-mundy/
10 comments:
Perceptions change. Culture can make us do strange things.
But nature is what it is.
Chinese used to bind women's feet, and that was deemed normal. But it went against the natural development of women's feet. Good thing that is gone forever.
Now, Americans are under the delusion that a homo man's fecal hole or anus is the sexual equivalent of a woman's vagina that produces life. Americans are under the illusion that if a man has his penis cut off and replaced with a fake vagina, it as good as real vagina. Real sexuality produced all the life in the world, whereas homosexuality never produced a single life form, but we are now to believe that they are equally valid. Even when homosexuals opt to have sex to produce kids, they must practice real sex than homo 'sex'. Even all the homosexuals were produced through real sex. Not a single life was created through homo 'sex'. Yet, homos want to fool us that there are such things as 'two daddies' or 'two mommies'.
I suppose imitation crab meat is same as crab meat, fool's gold is good as real gold, and a plastic flower is as good as real flower.
So, if you go to a flower shop and order dozen roses, don't complain if they give you plastic roses. Why, that would be plastic-rose-phobic.
And if a tranny wants go to on a dating site and claim to be a woman to attract men, he should have every right to do so. (Eyes rolling).
Though culture can warp our perceptions and even though fashions change over time, there are certain constants in nature, and true morality must be honest about the way of biology. After all, we can pretend that someone's finger is a penis and another person's belly button is a vagina. And if the finger is pushed into the belly button, we can pretend that 'sex' happened. But it didn't. It's just fake 'sex'.
Nature/biology is what it is. We can toy with it, but its core truth is what it is. It is not determined by culture or fantasy.
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