That look, that it seems like every male under the age of 35 is sporting these days, strikes me as pretentious because it’s well-off hipster douchebags trying to look like homeless people. We went to a pretty trendy brunch place a couple of weeks ago, and while the women were all dressed to the young hipster urban nines (which is a whole 'nother rant - it’s Sunday morning brunch, not the fucking opera), the men all looked vaguely greasy and smelly, as if there was a thin layer of grime all over them (including their clothes and hair).
So, I have officially hit the “get offa my lawn” stage of life, I guess.
The age of the sharp dressed man stopped sometime in the '80s (probably a while after ZZ Top wrote the song). The link between heterosexual masculinity and a well-tailored wardrobe took a serious hit during the hippie era, and the grunge style of the late '80s probably put it below ground for a good long time.
The result is that it’s a lot easier for a man to look vain, stuffy or even effeminate unless he basically dresses casually all the time outside the office. That’s obviously been translated by now into a kind of purposeful slobbiness if, in some circles, a man can’t even get away with being cleancut, never mind elegant.
It’s a bow to atavistic masculinity - maybe to make up for the softening of male behavior that is acceptable these days. Still, you have to wonder what kind of unspoken double standard still holds in our supposedly non-sexist era if a man and a woman can look that different in public and not have anyone notice it.
I get the slob aesthetic and the reaction against metrosexuality. What I don’t get is the apparent allergy to soap and water. Scruffy, sure, okay, not my thing, but whatev. Greasy, grimy, dirty? No. And I don’t get women who are okay with that.
Take a bath, gentlemen, and wash your hair and your beard while you’re at it. Young dudes, it is not a good look if someone glancing at your hair might think it’s dripping slightly with oil.
There’s definitely a kind of reverse snobbery found among many in my neck of the Rust Belt. Many shun stores and restaurants that might have a polished or scalable look about them, because they’re “sterile”, “plastic”, and so on. Hole-in-the-wall restaurants, dive bars, gritty neighborhoods and the like are praised for being “authentic”, “real”, “genuine”, and so on. Tourism campaigns from Detroit (Pure Michigan) and Buffalo (Buffalo For Real) take this to extremes. If you lived in the Midwest for any time, you probably heard a television or radio commercial like this:
“In our pasteurized and sanitized world, we’re crying out for something real.”
“When you need to feel something, come on down to Detroit, because the thrill of a real city is pure Michigan.”
“What’s the definition of a day out? Going to the mall, or a chain restaurant?”
“But what if there was a city that was different, where things were like night and day?”
“We all need to get away from the norm, and there’s no better city to experience a real city than Detroit”
You and me both, baby. Hey, it takes A LOT of time and effort to get my lawn looking like that!
I think the hipster douchebags do spend a lot of time and effort and money getting themselves looking like that, too. As Billy Joel said, you can’t dress trashy till you spend a lot of money.
Whoooooa I’m glad I stopped back by here. God damn y’all aren’t letting anyone get away with anything, are you? N’est-ce pas?
Why would anyone have any opinion to how I spend my money or what food I put in my body? Sushi? Organic vegetables? I’m just trying to beat obesity and diabetes statistics here, guy. I use chopsticks because that’s what they hand me. Better to throw them on the floor and tell the waiter to go fuck himself?
What’s wrong with owning a boat? Have you been on a boat? It’s pretty great. I can’t afford it, but if you can I hope you invite me over. The only judgment you’ll get from me is that you are an awesome boat host. I hope I don’t get drunk and sunburned.
So who wants to see a picture of me in my black thick frame glasses reading the New Yorker drinking Blue Bottle coffee that I just took with my iPhone?
Well I’m late for my new job in the wine industry where I will be talking about barrel aging in excrutiating detail. I find it extremely enjoyable and personally fulfilling to connect with my fellow man over a celebratory and social beverage that I find fascinating and delicious. I’M SUCH AN ASSHOLE.
What about IN n out Burger is pretentious? Sorry, I don’t know what In n out burger is, so I’ve not heard what people are pretentious about when it comes to it.
Actually, the point that you’re missing here is that names are a special sort of term — they refer to a set with a single member (i.e. your name refers to you, and you only.) Sure, people usually use names that other people do too, but that doesn’t change the underlying point. To demand otherwise is to demand that people just can’t call their children certain names if society’s common pronunciation disagrees with their own, and that would be pointless.
That said, no, it’s not a humongous deal when people’s names are mispronounced; but while they’re still alive, they have every right to correct the pronunciation to its proper way.
Don’t worry, we’re silently pronouncing the ‘r’ --a rich, resonant ‘r’ from the back of the throat–to ourselves.
Kidding aside, how else would English speakers, not fluent in French pronounce the ‘re’ ending? If we did try, it would come out “loov-rrruh” or “sart-rrrruh” which would be worse. The (Canadian) cast of SCTV even joked once about this. In a sketch about the famous French impressionists, one of them says to the other that his paintings will one day “hang in the Louv-rrrrrrrrrrrrah.”
a) People on the SDMB will always point out typos, misspellings, grammatical errors, common misconceptions, logical fallacies, and --speaking for myself-- improper use of the apostrophe. I hate that.
It’s the cornerstone of our social currency. It’s what separates the men from the boys, the women from the girls, the librarians from the slackers, and the Grammar Nazis from the … not. The time to worry is if we don’t.
b) No, they really are that intelligent. They know what “future plusperfect” and “labial fricative” are. Probably the etynology, first appearance in print, and accepted variants too.
c) All right now, what did you misspell?
Aw, crap. I didn’t notice that there are EIGHT pages of this thread. Probably long since been responded to artfully. Oh well.
