What are some examples of styles, once popular, that vanished due to someone giving them a bad name?
A good example of what I mean is in the title: the Hitler mustache. I’ve seen a good number of Americans in old photos, pre-WWII, with Hitler-style mustaches. I mean, even Charlie Chaplin had one. (Yes, I know, he wasn’t American.) Then comes Hitler, and boom - no self-respecting American would be caught dead sporting one.
Same goes for the name “Adolf.” How many people do you see with that name? I don’t know about the name’s popularity in Germany, but I’d tend to think it also decreased.
Are there other examples of things - dress styles, names, haircuts, whatever - which disappeared due to their being associated with unsavory people?
Well, pretty much anything related to the Nazis applies. The swastika was once not uncommon as a decoration, as well as being a religious symbol for millions of people (which it still is). The “Nazi salute” goes back to Roman times, and used to be used in the US. Both are now indelibly associated with Nazism, at least in Western culture.
The Ayd’s Diet Plan was the first thing I thought of.
The governor in Texas 30 years ago was Dolph Briscoe. I assume Dolph was short for Adolph, and he’s probably the only one I’me aware of. Of course, he was born before that whole Hitler thing.
On a semi-serious note, I can honestly say I haven’t seen any “nipple ornaments” since the Janet Jackson thing at the Super Bowl. The link is actually SFW, seeing how it’s just a cupcake.
•Dirigible travel.
•The Space Shuttle.
•Psychosurgery. (Well, not entirely accurate—the lobotomy craze was in decline because of the availability of new psychiatric drugs. But still…today, if you bring up the subject of using brain surgery to treat psychiatric disorders, most people’d just think of deluded quacks jamming ice picks into people’s eyesockets.)
If you count words, there are many. “Occupy” went out of style for centuries because of the sexual connotation*. “Pussy” meaning “cat” is rarely used nowadays. Fewer men use the nickname “Dick.”
*If Shakespeare were flying in an airplane, and saw the “occupied” sign on the rest room, his first impression would be someone was joining the Mile High Club.
