HNT: So shocking only a stripper would model it
Just so you know, 60 years ago yesterday (July 5th) the two-piece bikini bathing suit was introduced and was considered so scandalous the designer couldn't find a professional model willing to wear it. According to Julia Turner of Slate Magazine...
The swimsuit is now so ubiquitous--and, when compared with, say, the sight of Britney's pregnant, naked haunches on the cover of Bazaar, so demure--it's hard to comprehend how shocking people once found it. When the bikini first arrived, its revealing cut scandalized even the French fashion models who were supposed to wear it; they refused, and the original designer had to enlist a stripper instead. [emphasis mine --fl]
I bring this up neither to mock the prudery of bygone ages nor to claim that we're equally prudish for objecting to... whatever scandals the editors of the Abercrombie & Fitch catalogue (or the next Calvin Klein campaign, or the next xxxtreme porn production) will next cook up.
I bring it up instead to highlight the difference between that which is problematic because it's new... and that which is problematic because it's a final admission of that which has been happening for some time. And in the case of the bikini, while yes, it was a navel-baring two-piece bathing suit it wasn't the first such, nor were contemporary high-fashion one-piece bathing suites models of modesty -- the trend towards covering less and less while outdoors had been ongoing for quite some time. In that context the bikini wasn't scandalous so much for being the first daring bathing suit as for being a "last straw" that collapsed a Victorian-era tradition that began with men and women swimming in what amounted to full-length suits and gowns.
Something similar happened, by the way, with men's hats in the 1960's. As this article from the Greater Baton Rouge Business Report from March, 2005, says
Americans display parts of themselves in public that were rarely seen 40 or 50 years ago. Men's heads, for instance.
Even if you're not old enough to remember those days, you've seen the movies and the photos. Wherever adult males went, they were accompanied by hats--fedoras, derbys, bowlers, homburgs, porkpies, panamas.
A man without a hat in public, well, there was clearly something wrong with him. He was a drunk, a lunatic, an escaped convict. You might as well leave the house without your shoes. Imagine Bogart, Sinatra or Cagney, without their trademark lids.
How pervasive were hats on men? Enough so that the old expression "throw your hat in the ring" meant, literally, that
"It was this little representational you," Steinberg says. "You throw your hat in the ring. What does that mean? You're committing yourself because you have to follow it. Why do you have to follow it? Because it's your hat."
And then... seemingly overnight... men stopped wearing hats.
People (including me until I researched it this morning) believed the conventional story that John F. Kennedy a) refused to wear a hat at his Presidential inauguration, b) that this was basically the first time a fashionable man had appeared without a hat, and c) that he was so charismatic that men everywhere began going hatless from that day forth.
Interestingly enough, as abundant photos of the day show, Kennedy wore not just a hat but a silk top hat on his inauguration day. (And President Eisenhower, his predecessor, rarely wore them.) What *did* happen, though, is that Kennedy removed his hat to give his famous "ask not what your country can do for you" inauguration speech, and that was the last straw.
Says the Business Report
It seems the nation's hatters, faced with the prospect of extinction, were making a public issue over JFK's refusal to cover his famous coiffure. They took out full-page ads in the biggest newspapers urging American men to wear hats. Hatters sent carloads of free samples to the White House, hoping to wear the president down. Kennedy didn't budge.
In other words, the hat (and hat sales) had been in steep decline for at least a decade, just as two-piece bathing suits had been around for years.
Now! Why bring all this up now?
Well, I mentioned that last week I went to see Susan Mernit's Gnomedex presentation on Sex & longing & Web 2.0 and one item that audience members seemed most comfortable discussing was a (perceived) willingness on the part of "younger net users" to blog, Flickr, and/or MySpace about their sex lives in both text and
photos. I say "perceived" because everyone seemed to be saying the phenomenon is limited to those under age 25 when in fact, as Susan kept stressing, people of all ages are doing it.
Speculation ran high that since "Google has a long, long memory" these people will come to regret it when they grow up and try to get real jobs, or run for office, or whatever.
Personally I think the Half-Nekkid Thursday phenomenon (who knew Obasso was under 25?) is a milder version of a "scandal" that's been brewing since, roughly, the advent of the Polaroid camera and, more recently, the advent of the camcorder and digital camera: ordinary people take pictures of themselves naked.
And, just as no one has ever lost an election for "daring" to go hatless in the 1950s, and just as no one has been denied a job for "daring" to wear a bikini in the 1960s, so I suspect that within 10 years no one's going to be called on the carpet for "daring" to post naked photos of themselves online.
With that in mind I'd like to introduce a Half-nekkid Thursday photo that might have scandalized the general public prior to, say, 1960. Or at least my mom since it was raining. :-)
Happy HNT (or Half-nekkid Thursday!)
I've always thought a man's head was one of the sexiest parts of the male body. I think it has something to do with running my fingers through (or pulling) their hair when their head is between my legs. :)
HHNT!!!
Rey
[Eek! That sounds like fun, Rey. Thanks for the lovely though. --fl]
HHNT indeed!
I'm hoping that you're right and in ten years sexblogging won't be a big deal. Tattoos are another example of this phenomenon. Something like 20% of the population now has them (IIRC) and they're widely accepted, as long as you can pretty much cover them up.
Now, when my grandfather found out I'd gotten a tattoo - I swear I thought he was going to keel over right there. He couldn't imagine that it wasn't going to be a problem with my school/job/etc. But it hasn't been at all, and it obviously hasn't for you either, FL.
[Yeah, everyone thought I was a little weird for getting a tattoo way back when. Art tattoos were almost unknown, actually illegal in a lot of places, and largely confined to bikers and military types. Now they're so popular my real concern is they'll go out of style as too common. :-) Thanks, A. oh, p.s. I haven't been able to confirm this but evidently the early Victorians were really into tattoos, and one of the reasons they allegedly started wearing those long, high-necked clothes was to cover them up after Victorianism went all prudish. Who knew,eh? --fl]
Awesome commentary!! Lovely photo..you have gorgeous hair!
[Thanks, Becca. --fl]
Very interesting! HHNT :)
[Thanks, Crimson. Happy HNT to you too. --fl]
Men with hats are sexy, especially with just the right tilt. Its somewhat mysterious. The look you achieved with the hat and the shades.
[I know the photo you mean, WH. Yeah, I liked that one too -- especially with my real-life Indiana Jones hat, especially since it was taken at a real-life-mysterious half-millenia-old ruins in the American southwest. Thanks. --fl]
Not being a haberdasher I cannot comment on men's hats or lack thereof... but I do live in a world where I am trying to define the line between appropriate and not, made more difficult by the presence in my house of a pre-teen who believes that what works for her must be what is acceptable for me. I walk a fine line every day.
[Oh don't even let me get started on the pull of conformity we carry with us from our teenage years! OMG! Getting beyond that is a huge part of Real Adult Sex. Thank you, Lushlyme! --fl]
HHNT! "In olden days a glimpse of stocking/ was looked on as something shocking..." So sang Sinatra.
I had read something about the Victorians and their tattoos, and their piercings, too! Both were empirical trends, fads brought back to "civilization" from the conquest of India and various South Pacific islands. Interesting.
Thank you for the congratulations on the twins!
[Piercings too? I guess they're a reason they call those male urethra piercings "Prince Alberts." Hmm. Thanks, WH. --fl]
Awwww.....and I thought you were going to model a bikini. *snicker*
[Heh. And here I didn't even model a hat. :-) Thanks, Boo. --fl]
I love hats... and bikinis... and now it seems, posting nekkid pix of myself. LOL!
Oh, the horror! ;)
GREAT post!
~*HHN4*~ & Farewell...
[Thank you, Lil Bit. And oh for heaven's sakes those are wonderful pictures. I'm not always a fan of body painting but a) you did a good job, b) the photos are very sexy, and c) I totally, totally appreciate the sentiment. Sorry you're done with your blog so soon after I finally began reading it but that's not exactly your fault. Take care. --fl]
Excellent post, FL.
The sense of propriety and decorum that required certain types of apparel in public was a means by which people expressed their self-worth and their place in society. For many of the immigrants who settled in the U.S. prior to World War I, it was very important that they and their children appear groomed and respectable. Since they had little hope of being more than stableboys and kitchenmaids in the old country, my grandparents were especially proud when their four children were dressed in fashionable suits and dresses, with hats, gloves and fine accessories, to go to the theater or dancing. So to dress carelessly and go without a hat, like "someone who just got off the boat," was baffling to people of that generation.
By the 1960's this need for respectability was weakening, except in the most conservative settings. Male employees of Arthur Andersen were expected to wear hats, especially when they visited the offices of clients on company business. Since most female employees were relegated to the office as administrative personnel, (there were few female auditors in the profession in the 1960's), hats may not have been de rigueur for the ladies as in prior years.
In the late 1980's, one male employee of Arthur Andersen, who was "on the partner track," was cutting the grass on his front lawn, and since the temperature was in the 90's, he went about the task without a shirt. The next morning the employee was called down to the office of the managing partner, who happened to drive past while this bare chested fellow mowed the lawn. The employee was told that, if he ever appeared bare chested in public again, he could forget about any promotions and should consider changing jobs. From that day forward the neighbors never saw this employee sans shirt while he was employed at Andersen, but I would not be surprised if today he is a devotee of HNT.
[Yikes! That's a heck of a story, Kochanie. Thanks. --fl]