Thought for the Day

Odd post this. Please feel free to disregard ...

… anyway, the other day I was wandering around the newsagent’s waiting for a friend, and I found myself in front of what is usually coyly referred to as the “gentlemen’s interests” section.

Now normally I would glance at the covers only long enough to see where that section ended and the music magazines began, but on this occasion my attention was caught by a cover displaying (and I do mean displaying) a woman who was startlingly non-hirsute in a region traditionally endowed with at least the remnants of a triangular growth. The headline screamed that inside the covers there was more of the same because “we give our readers what they’ve asked for!”

OK, I’m curious. I flick through it. They’re as good as their word – there’s not so much as a suggestion of vegetation in sight. Looked at the next mag. Ditto. And the next. Same. All three of them. Pages and pages of glossy women totally devoid of anything resembling pubic hair.

Now I can understand that women who favour the g-string as being both comfortable and attractive (wrong on both counts in my book, but freedom to choose is all) find the Brazilian profile a practical option, but to remove all trace? Why? Is it for the woman’s own pleasure, or because she feels more attractive when as hairless in the nether regions as a six-year old? Aha - and there we have it – the source of my disturbance.

A woman is a woman. A girl is a girl. A pre-pubescent is a child. Each stage has its physical characteristics. Once you start blurring the edges (excuse) by removing some of them, is there not something a little questionable about the concept behind it? Is the quest for eternal youth now so extreme that we strive for a look that is pre-pubescent?

I noticed breast size was not diminished in any of the pictures; presumably the ideal woman according to their audience was a sort of fantasy hybrid. And speaking of fantasy, I’m not talking about the odd fun experiment, or what any couple may or may not choose to do to suit themselves. Not my business – each to his and her own and good luck to you. No, it was the mass depiction of this look as a sexual ideal that bothered me.

So am I imagining a cultural tendency to creepiness where only a sense of fun exists? Is this less about the cult of youth taken to disturbing extremes than simply the advent of the affordable laser treatment? Is it less of a social concern and more of a natty style trend?

Gentle reader, I ponder.

Smiley Smile

I've just come from Val's blog, (http://vereeniging.blogspot.com/) where she mentioned that one of her comments on another blog was misinterpreted as a negative comment; she wonders if she had used a "smiley" symbol to flag the fact that she was joking, the misunderstanding could have been avoided. I'm sure she's right.

I think this is rather sad. Val is absolutely right in saying that there's an inherent difficulty in that readers have no visual cues or tone of voice to interpret, but I suspect there's even more to it than that.

Blogs are great fun and give a voice to those who might otherwise not bother to write at all, but if you don't actually KNOW the person writing, or share their sense of humour or history, misunderstandings can occur.

I believe for instance that socially and culturally, some people have a better sense of irony than others, and that this affects their sense of humour and interpretation generally. This cultural difference can be geographically based or in microcosmic form between families and friends (for example, we all have our "in-jokes", which often seem very odd to others). Does that mean we should stop using them or seek to homogenise our sense of humour for fear of causing unwitting offense?

The beauty of blog commenting, if not posting, is that it's quick and off the cuff. I'd hate to have to start agonising about whether my comments might be misinterpreted by someone who just happened to stumble across them, but c'est la vie. The nature of the beast. I'm not about to start using smilies instead of language to deflect any potential criticism.

Maybe I'm in a minority here (or just in the wrong demographic), but I've always thought smilies and emoticons or whatever they're called are a tad twee. Actually, on the question of demographics, my seventeen year-old thinks they're a bit naff too, although her 15 and 13-year old sisters use them constantly.

Am I sounding like an unseasonal Scrooge? In a world where it has been ruled legitimate for a senior student to write an essay in phone text form (Mcbth ws a rotn wknd hst"?), perhaps I'm a literary Luddite, but I love language and hate to see it cheapened. I'm prepared to risk the odd fit of pique for bloggy freedom of speech without the decorations.

Later ...

OK, I've read through this now and I do sound like a bitter and twisted old dinosaur. I will point out in mitigation though that I'm also one of those people who have a liberal attitude to kids reading comics; perhaps we shouldn't care what they read, as long as they do read enough to form the habit. I'll work on stretching that concept to allow that I will now no longer care whether people write in truncated txt form, or using smilies, virtual hugs or winky bits, as long as they write.

Is that better?

Tagged!

Thanks to VallyP, I am about to transcribe the fifth, sixth and seventh sentences from page 123 of the book nearest to hand when I read her latest blog entry just now. (I wonder what would have happened if the nearest book had fewer than 123 pages? Fortunately, my Andy Pandy annuals were well out of reach).

So here we are: mine is a long out-of print book, which was on the computer desk because I was checking the publisher so we could search for more copies on e-Bay. It's a book my father Ronald Millar wrote in 1975, called "Civilized Magic - An Interpretive Guide to Australian Painting."

(Clears throat, deep breath, fingers ready ...)

"This gesture, this unrepeatable magic moment, is often seen as the most basic of all elements of painting. Whole schemes and schools of art have been based on this premise, notably the American abstract expressionists of the nineteen forties and fifties, but also some surrealists who wanted an uninhibited flow, a trance-like creativity that exposed the innermost images of the artist without any formal or technical hindrance.

The action of the moment, the actual event and adventure of attacking a blank surface, an encounter between the painter and the marks he makes ... all this suggests that the canvas is an arena where the artist mourns or celebrates as nakedly as possible his experiences and feelings, the private statements becoming public the moment he puts them down."

So what have I learnt from the experience? Two things; firstly that I still like listening to Dad on the subject of art, and secondly that I hate typing from copy. Think I'll stop typing at all now and give him a call.

Thanks for the tag Val!

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