In 1982, the video for the Pointer Sisters’ I’m So Excited showed one of them stepping out of a tub. She’s holding a towel over her top, but her pubic hair is clearly visible.
Remember that:
This was a long time ago in terms of TV (basic cable didn’t really even exist)
DVRs didn’t exist; VCRs barely did
We were in our early 20s
Yes, we all freaked out and then set our clocks to catch the repeat on MuchMusic six hours later (and argued until then about whether we’d really seen it).
Unrelated to that, but to the thread: am i the only one seeing ads for knives about every other post, and being somewhat disturbed by that on conjunction with the topic at hand?
I think people were skinny because they ate a lot less. My mother says that she and her friends were constantly dieting and counting calories. They didn’t exercise because ladies weren’t supposed to sweat. Things like potato chips and candy bars were occasional treats instead of stuff you had around all the time. Most food was made at home. Going to restaurants wasn’t common and the portions were way smaller. Like at McDonald’s all they had were the same sizes that are considered Happy Meals now so even an adult would eat one small burger and maybe small fries and a small soda. Think of those little glass Coke bottles. Those were a serving size instead of the 20 ounce bottles now. To keep slim you either have to have some major self-discipline or sweat your ass off to burn off the excess.
People I know who have been to Europe say the restaurant portions are much smaller than they are here. And it seems to me like they do a lot more walking/biking that would help keep you trimwithout being really buffed.
Years ago I read a book on language by a lexicographer who had worked in the Seventies, then taken a decade or so off to pursue other fields. He wrote that when he returned to lexicography, colleagues told him that there were no longer any taboo words, that profanities had become mainstream and anything went.
But of course, that wasn’t true at all, he discovered. Linguistic taboos hadn’t disappeared; they’d merely shifted. Profanities and obscenities had lost some of their force, but ethnic and racial slurs had become taboo.
Which accords with my experience. When I was a child in the Seventies, “damn” was pretty serious and rarely heard in the general media (and only in circumstances of high emotion). “Bitch”, “bastard”, and “asshole” were Bad Words, and using the “F-word” would get your mouth washed out with soap.
But we played a game called “Smear the Queer”, and called the tabs on the placket of dress shirts “fag tags”. And casually threw around words like “guinea” and “mick” and “coon”. We knew that the N-word and the anti-Semitic slur that begins with "k’ were more serious, but that didn’t mean we never heard them used.
Now, of course, I’m rightly horrified by our unconcious racism.
Oh, I remember. I can remember back when I was a kid and how the 32 oz “Big Gulp” (or the competing convenience store equivalent) was considered absolutely colossal and a bit absurd. And when a 44 oz drink was introduced, it was definitely considered ridiculous. Back then for soft drinks, a child drink was 4-6 oz, a “small” was maybe 8 oz, a “medium” was 12-16 oz, and a “Large” was 22 oz as best I can remember.
Now the 32 oz is a “medium”, with the 44 being a “large” at most fast food places and convenience stores. The kid size is probably 8 oz now if I had to guess by looking at it.
I don’t know about restaurant portions being noticeably smaller at most restaurants in Europe; from what I recall from several European trips is that they’re not giving you bird-sized portions by any means. What they aren’t doing is competing on portion size, like they do here. I think that for whatever reason (cheap food prices?) US restaurants started competing with each other on the portion size per dollar, because people are basically bargain shopping for food, which I gather is something not really done in Europe, or not to the same extent.
So as a result, we have super-huge soft drink sizes, absurdities like 1/2 lb hamburgers, the Cheesecake Factory, double and triple fast food hamburgers, and so on. None of which were the case in say… 1981. I remember when the Quarter Pounder or Big Mac at McDonalds or the Whopper at Burger King were the kind of thing that only someone’s Dad ate, if he was especially hungry, not the default sized burger for everyone.
If you can see it at a public swimming pool, I don’t see why it can’t be on TV.
I will say I’m opposed to glandscaping in all its forms. When I go to Disneyland I’m looking for the skyline, not the plumbing. Let’s normalize all natural body hair while we’re at it.
But Ivan was a bad guy. He got his brains blown out. It balanaces.
(I agree with you - it really sticks out these days. I’d like to think if I were Bo Svenson, I would have balked at saying that. Make me evil some other way. (like shooting Cookie’s femoral artery wasn’t bad enough.))
As I noted above WeTV edits anything even remotely offensive out of L&O, except - the other day an episode that had the unbleeped usage of the K-word, the N-word(!) and one other slur. Now that was shocking!
I remember an episode on Mission: Impossible where upon being led away in hand cuffs, the baddie doesn’t realize Cinnamon Carter is an agent but thinks she’s just some woman who betrayed him. He pauses a moment and asks her, “What is it that hath no fury like a woman scorned?”
Scarcely a year later Captain Kirk says on Star Trek, “Let’s get the hell out of here.” I was surprised.
What the H-E-Double-Hockey-Sticks has gone wrong with this thread? It started out as a perfectly respectable celebration of natural feminine beauty hidden in a commercial and you people have dragged it through the mud of blasphemy! I don’t want to hear Captain Kirk talking dirty; I want to see Yeoman Rand naked!
I get it: I’m old fashioned & out of date because I never want to ever hear the N-word in my house; not by accident, not Ever.
Time for me to buy a walker and raise cats because that word strongly offends me.
Well, I’ll admit that I’m just not a part of the AR carrying Meal-Team-Six 10 double-X sized plate-carrier Elite… so maybe I just don’t have an AMEX white-hood card for 2021.
( There go all my plans to retire to Florida! And I’d just gotten a brochure today from Matt Gaetz extoling just how much fun kids could have at Disney World… )
And the people throwing a fit about not being able to use certain words as if that were a new thing are willfully ignoring the fact that in their magical Days of Yore there were a whole lot of words that couldn’t be used in public. Not only could you not say “asshole” on TV, you couldn’t say “penis” or “vagina”.
Me, I strongly prefer not being able to use racist terms.
Cozi TV was showing Quantum Leap in broadcast order. When they got to the episode Justice they completely omitted it. The episode had Sam leaping into a Klansman in Mississippi in 1965, and the N word was used liberally. It was originally broadcast on NBC in 1991, yet the rerun is considered absolutely taboo today.
Instead of ranting about whatever the hell that gobbledygook is supposed to mean, just don’t watch channels that specifically exist to show uncut & uncensored movies if you don’t want to hear bad language. It’s very simple.
Neither nudity nor profanity nor racial slurs bother me greatly merely by their broadcast. There are times when all of the above are not only fine, but their abscence would be more bothersome to me than their inclusion.
the backlash from the film “super size me” sort of slowed the size wars down for a bit but its starting to return tho… when I was a teen AP/PM (arcos brand of convenience store) had a 64 oz soda I never realized it was the equivalent a 2 liter bottle of soda and when it was 115 here i drank about 2-3 a day (they were refillable for 3/4s price
But after the movie and the mcd kerfuffle they moved it back down to a 48 oz but its climbed back up to 52… I think a 7-11 double gulp is 48 again also
Now What happened is they got rid of small and in someplace medium sizes of drinks so the large is medium and supersize is large and quarantine delivery made it worse because when people ate inside they bought smaller drinks because of the refill And then they didn’t and became annoyed when they realized they were paying 2 bucks plus for a drink with no refills so the drink size went back to being bigger in some places
is it possible in your area to get a 4 stacked whopper like it is in mine ?
One thing is some of the outrageous stuff were on unposted “secret menus” ie you had to know to ask about it like the above whopper
and when door dash and its ilk started posting menus that sort of thing was added and now jack in the box has something similiar and in some mdc’s you can get a “half pounder” with cheese if you ask …
