The Moon Garden Lounge

Thanks melliemom

TBH I started to write much more about hair itself but decided not to as that was not the REAL focus of the discussion... :D There is a lot written out there on hair and the ways it has been used, and is used, to make statements about who we are and what we think is important. Most religions and cultures have plenty to say about hair...particularly women's hair. It is seen as a source of strength [think Samson, First Nations Peoples]; as sexual [again, particularly on women] and therefore often requiring covering up [Islam, fundamentalist Judaism and Christianity [most variations of Amish adherents---and I grew up having to wear a hat to church just as the men had to remove their hats}] and culturally significant.

African-American hair carries enormous significance...for years, nappy hair being defined as 'bad' hair and straighter caucasion-like hair as
'good' hair. There is a whole library of cultural work just on that alone.

Hair is used to show rebellion and identification. The whole Afro movement of the late 60's and 70's was a civil rights statement and a repudiation of the fore-mentioned 'bad/good' hair associations. The musical Hair is self explanatory re the long hair hippie importance. But much earlier than that, the short BOB of the 1920's was a feminist statement [albeit the word and official movement was not present...it was part of an uprising of young women trying to find their place in a patriarchal world]. Remember this is the era when women got the vote! The short hair was seen as women trying to displace men and there was a huge debate in the public sphere on that act of defiance. Put it on top of a short skirt and you had near pandemonium as society tried to put a lid on the whole equalization of society..prohibition...the lot. Hair was a way of aligning yourself with a POV.

Blond-ness is the mother of all signifiers when looking at the dichotomies of good/bad, natural/fake, chaste/sexual, old/young, grooming/artiface.. Grant McCracken actually breaks blonde's into what he terms as the "periodic table" of blondes [and this is just women] and he noted that, "repudiated by the feminists, the 'dumb blonde' is the last target [note the odd blonde joke still circulates though thank goodness the era is mostly passed on...there was a day when I received multiples of those daily :
Types/classes of Blond[e]s: Bombshell Mae West, Marilan Monroe, Brittany Spears Sunny Doris Day, Goldie Hawn Brassy Cybill Shepherd, Candice Bergan, Kate Winslet Dangerous Sharon Stone Society/Platinum Ivana HeWhoCannot amed Cool Diane Sawyer, Grace Kelly, Marlene Dietrich, Cate Blanchette. But he actually then declared Marilan Monroe as the mother of all blondes, and gave Madonna a special place too.

My brain was not coming up with current equivalencies but you get the picture...

re the long grey hair...it is your call but be aware of the image that presents and do not try and say someone is 'wrong' for making a connection you don't like. The fact is, the meaning of any given message is ultimately determined by the receiver...not the sender who is simply successful or not successful in getting their intentional meaning across.

Interesting discussion.

It makes me think of my late grandmother whom I posted about at the old ATOP. I think I am drawn to ATOP because the atmosphere and many of the people remind me of her. She embodied so many facets "woman."

She was born into a strict Mormon community, yet was raised by a strong, independent single mother. She also raised her family on her own and was a fierce advocate for issues of women and children throughout her lifetime. She marched in the ERA movement in her late 50's/early 60's. She was adventuresome, artistic, and risk taking. She was a mother, caretaker, seeker, business woman, nurse, world traveler, author (of an unpublished history of the women of the Mormon Trail--I clearly remember her sending her book to Shameless Hussy Press for consideration ;D). She would have loved the Moon Garden.

But she was also very conscious of her desire to be pretty, sexy, and appealing. She was aware of a need to reconcile these 2 sides of her womanhood. Because her generation had to fight so hard for new rights and freedoms, I think she often felt that her more "traditional" desires were less than or something that should be abandoned.

I grew up among feminists and progressive ideas and have taken many of them for granted. But I am grateful that I grew up being exposed to many examples of womanhood. It has given me and much of my generation freedoms to be more. The recent backlash against women has been disheartening, but it has opened my eyes to things that I had naively believed were behind us.

Each generation seems to take the work of previous generations for granted until it is time for their work to be done. I am ready now.

sugaree -- LOVED the Clapton quotation!

I'm not a big fan of tattoos either, but I see that times have changed since I internalized my attitudes about them. Back in my day , only motorcycle mamas wore tattoos. Now, I work at a research library where I have a lot of co-workers just out of school. There is no putting the genie back in the bottle of ink when sweet little librarians with big glasses have giant flowers and other designs snaking across their arms and legs. Some of the tattoos look really cool, actually ... I do still wish they weren't so permanent.

Mszue! Thank you again for your detailed and interesting posts about Adam's "transformation." I confess that despite my "revelation" about the cingulate gyrus last Friday ... accepting that noticing and caring about hair is deeply embedded in our natures ... I still find it wearing just how much people care.

It seems that as biological creatures we are all scanning, scanning, scanning all the time, seeing what's different and new and wondering about it. On top of this are the psychological and cultural implications of being human that you wrote about.

Adam changed his hair! But the emotional reaction in each person is different ... some are pleased with the change; some dismayed. For some, it is almost as if Adam has become a different person altogether. But for me, it's just the opposite. Brain detected the change; analyzed it; thought, "Still the same baby chick," and tucked him back in the nest. LOL.



What you wrote about the public self and the private self was really interesting. I have read that until the Industrial Revolution, there was very little language dealing with this idea because it basically didn't exist and wouldn't have made any sense to anyone. You lived your life in, say, a farming community, in full view of everyone else from birth to death. You only had one self. As society changed it became possible to have multiple selves in different contexts. (Historically, "gay" became one of these selves -- before this, gay was a behavior, not an identity.)

Now our "selves" are so fractured that I have read that some people are testing "Sybil" levels for multiple personalities! It is interesting and somewhat disturbing to wonder what effects on the brain are produced by online virtual community.

I was also very interested in what you wrote about people confusing "natural" with "real," not considering that an image that appears natural may be carefully crafted.

When Willie Nelson couldn't make it looking like this:



He made it looking like this:



It is well-known that Willie felt the Emotional Labor of the first approach. He explicitly considered Nashville as a "game" and then he went "outlaw." HE feels more real with the second way of presenting himself. Adam is still trying to figure it out and so are we. I don't think we'll be moving on from this for a long time ... I think it will be embedded in our discussions of Adam for years to come.

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On something of a related note, this morning I was reading about gut reactions on the Internet. This blogger writes that often when we are members of an online community, we feel that we must have an opinion about something that happens -- and even push back hard if someone disagrees. Opinions quickly become polarized because we invest in them emotionally right away.

Give It Five Minutes: 37signals.com/svn/posts/3124-give-it-five-minutes

This blogger suggests waiting at least five minutes to let an opinion marinate before wading into a discussion, because his gut reaction is often wrong, or at least, not well conceived. Five minutes doesn't seem like very long to me, but it ought to be better than five seconds.

I have seen other articles suggesting that if you see something you disagree with, to go form some questions about that opinion, rather than firing back at it. Often just forming the questions makes you start to develop a more nuanced position yourself.

ETA: I had no idea about the Gabby Douglas thing. >:( What an impoverished life her critics must lead.

Mszue! Thank you again for your detailed and interesting posts about Adam's "transformation." I confess that despite my "revelation" about the cingulate gyrus last Friday ... accepting that noticing and caring about hair is deeply embedded in our natures ... I still find it wearing just how much people care.
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No...people don't care because they 'care' about hair, per se, they care because that is a major signifier from which we can extrapolate information to tell us who this person is and what they consider important and most importantly, how this information lets us know how to treat them and how we can expect them to treat us!

It seems that as biological creatures we are all scanning, scanning, scanning all the time, seeing what's different and new and wondering about it.
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We have to do this because the signifiers we use to make our decisions about a person change so often...we have to decide if this particular change is important to who this person is [and therefore how this person may impact how others think of us and how they may treat us]. How many people will not admit to being a fan of Adam because of how they feel others will 'judge' them....because he is so feminine, wears make-up, dresses so edgy, kisses boys [and would we care if he did not have pictorial proof of this scattered through out the internet]. WHY DO ALMOST ALL OF US HAVE NAMES AND AVI'S THAT HIDE OUR IDENTITY and why do so many of us hesitate to 'come out' as Adam fans to most of our family and friends...

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What you wrote about the public self and the private self was really interesting. I have read that until the Industrial Revolution, there was very little language dealing with this idea because it basically didn't exist and wouldn't have made any sense to anyone. You lived your life in, say, a farming community, in full view of everyone else from birth to death. You only had one self. As society changed it became possible to have multiple selves in different contexts. (Historically, "gay" became one of these selves -- before this, gay was a behavior, not an identity.)
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The whole concept of individuation did not exist prior to the industrial revolution...you are right...but be careful what you ask for....the reason it was not an issue is that you were immediately classed and evaluated by the conditions of your birth...there were no real options to escape these conditions. There was no need to be able to come to a decision re who you were as there was little access to moving from where you existed...travel was extremely limited... There was also little cultural/appeariential difference between you and your neighbors or community... you were often related to pretty much all of them until the beginning of the industrial revolution.
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Now our "selves" are so fractured that I have read that some people are testing "Sybil" levels for multiple personalities! It is interesting and somewhat disturbing to wonder what effects on the brain are produced by online virtual community.
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This is the very essence of post-modernism...and you can never go back...you can only adapt or evolve... albeit there are strong movements on almost every front... political, religious, social...to 'go back' [which is the definition of CONSERVATISM]
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I was also very interested in what you wrote about people confusing "natural" with "real," not considering that an image that appears natural may be carefully crafted.

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Precisely....this is Goffman's whole stance...all appearances are staged in some way....to be human is to be reflexive...that means, to be human is to know that others recognize people other than themselves as separate entities that may have opinions about who we are...therefore we feel it necessary to make sure they have the 'right' or 'desirable' or 'good' opinions of us...
THIS IS THE HUMAN CONDITION....dogs snarl to scare away a feared predator/stranger--operant conditioning has shown them this works, humans snarl to make a fierce impression.... perhaps to instill fear but not necessarily ....
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When Willie Nelson couldn't make it looking like this:



He made it looking like this:



It is well-known that Willie felt the Emotional Labor of the first approach. He explicitly considered Nashville as a "game" and then he went "outlaw." HE feels more real with the second way of presenting himself. Adam is still trying to figure it out and so are we. I don't think we'll be moving on from this for a long time ... I think it will be embedded in our discussions of Adam for years to come.

EXACTLY!!