Winston wrote: ↑April 8th, 2022, 11:47 am
Yeah but @publicduende. What I mean is that they looked wholesome compared to TODAY, not compared to the 1800s or something. lol. They also look more feminine and friendly and approachable. I'm sure if you went back in time to the 1930s, you could go out and meet women easily and start conversations easily, like I did in Russia right? Because people were open and direct and flirtation was normal and natural back then. So you could flirt to your heart's content without feeling any social anxiety, like I did in Russia, right? That's how the old world was, before the NWO where everyone is isolated and antisocial and it feels taboo to talk to strangers. You know what I mean?
I'm not talking about Christian morals. I'm talking about social connection and ease of dating life and no incels, etc. You know what I mean?
Well, we all know what happened to Western countries in the past few decades,
@Winston.
I guess, back in the 50s or 60s, people were simply brought up to place trust on other people: starting from their direct and extended families, their communities, the elder (therefore "wiser"), etc. Any "stranger" always had to carry a little burden of suspicion with them, but they could easily remove it by simply showing themselves well dressed/groomed, well-mannered and well-adjusted to whatever stereotypes that defined "a good person" back then. Ironically, as you know, racism towards black people persisted in US society well until the 70s, so a perfectly well-adjusted black person would elicit less trust that a less-than-well-adjusted white.
In particular, girls were brought up to always be polite with men, especially older men. The idea that a man approaching a young woman and throwing some flirtatious words at them would be "dangerous" or "unsafe" (as in today's woke society) was unimaginable. There was also a more accepted view that "boys will be boys", so things like catcalling or the typical aggressive approaches of sex-starved seamen or soldiers, were not considered pleasant but not pursued like a crime either, like we hear today.
It's just a matter of women being forced to show much more restraint or discipline, at least in public. I really don't think human nature has changed much since the 1800s or the 1930s. Sexual crimes used to happen then as they happen now. People used to be greedy, violent and narcissistic then as much as (if not more than) now.
What I think changed are two things:
- the relentless sexualisation of everything that sells, or needs to be sold, from chewing gum to cars, which pushed most men to a continuous state of sexual titillation, which might well serve as a trigger to buy the chewing gum or car, but over time keeps them in a constant state of (over)excitement
- the sense of paranoia that has permeated society, both men and women, and the view that, unless a man looks exactly like Henry Cavill or Chris Hemsworth, they are just creeps ready for unspeakable acts with whatever flesh they can get their hands on.
I remember reading a long scholarly article years ago, about a pillar of ancient Asian (Chinese, Japanese, Korean, etc.) culture that permeated literature down to common perception: the correspondence of good aesthetics to good ethics. These ancient cultures believed that everything that Nature or men create has to serve a purpose, and the more something serves its intended purpose, the more beautiful it looks. This fusion of function and form is still one of the key themes of industrial design, so in some areas that principle is very valid.
The problem happens when we try to apply this idea to human beings, who are always a marvellous expression of Mother Nature, yet not all comply to our latest aesthetic canons
At several junctions in history you would find scholars, scientists and politicians embracing
physiognomic theories, whereby someone who looked ugly (maybe because of birth defects or the consequences of diseases) was also considered evil or more prone to evil. In some cases, the corollary applied that societies had a right to protect themselves from these "defective goods", by marginalising them, shutting them out from the upper echelons of productive society, or even, as in case of eugenics, forbidding them to procreate.
We all know how fascinating, yet deeply wrong, these theories are. Yet, it so happens that our hyper-sexualised society where visual perfection is always a real-time Instagram filter away, nothing short of Hollywood perfect, nobody short of an underwear model is enough to the typical TikTok girl.