From Reddit's 100 Years Ago sub.
Related threads:
Last edition:
Note the remarkable change in clothing styles over the years.
The Sydney Sweeney jeans ad praising her genes is genius: How nice to have the Sydney Sweeney “great genes” controversy. It is happily of no consequence, which is . . .
Froma Harrop.
The massive overreaction to Sweeney being in an American Eagle ad while being white continues on, and is nicely addressed by Froma Harrop above. Harrop's article reminds us of a few other pretty women, which likely means that it's a good thing the article was written by a woman.
Coincidentally, Beyoncé Knowles ad campaign for Levis continues on as well. It predates Sweeney's ad for American Eagle. I don't know anything about American Eagle jeans at all, but I do about Levis as I wear them a lot.
Knowles is also hot.
He does like the Sweeney ad. I'll bet he likes the Knowles one too.
And all this comes up, sort of, due to denim, something that women didn't often appear in, and for that matter decently dressed men, until after World War Two. While women wearing jeans had taken off well before that, Levis didn't introduce 501s for women until 1981.
Related threads:
Genes are passed down from parents to offspring, often determining traits like hair color, personality and even eye color. My jeans are blue.
Sydney Sweeney in American Eagle ad.
Sydney Sweeney's American Eagle ad shows a cultural shift toward whiteness.
CNBC headline.
Q: Your administration has been very open about the fact that American women are not having enough babies. There was an ad this week. Sydney Sweeney, an actress, was in an ad for Blue Jeans. Does America need to see more ads like that? And maybe fewer ads with people like Dylan Mulvaney on the cover?
Rob Finnerty in an interview of Donald Trump.
First, let us state something plainly.
Sydney Sweeney is hot.
Way hot.
And she looks good in the American Eagle Jeans, which are sort of retro 1970s denim really.
Really good.
So why are people having a fit?
Well, it's a really interesting tour through the culture, really.
Using attractive women to sell clothing is nothing new. Shoot, using attractive women to sell anything, is in fact not new.
So what's the big deal.
Basically, when you get right down to it, the big deal is two things. First of all, Sweeney is white. Secondly, this is a return to an obvious sex sells approach to selling that we haven't seen since the early 1990s.
The peak of the sex sells approach was really the 1970s. Coincident with the rise of feminism was the absolute exploitation of women in advertising. Calvin Klein really went to town with Brooke Shields, who was sexualized so young in her career that her image, in the movie industry, was basically a near example of child pornography. But in advertising, he wasn't the only one. There were in fact advertisements that would outright shock most Americans now as they used young teenage girls in sexualized poses. It was repulsive.
That seemed to have run its course by the mid 1980s, but even then, in the 1990s, Playboy model Anna Nicole Smith modeled jeans, in her case Guess jeans.
The 90s, however, also saw the really fruity elements of the American come into cultural power, and a lot of that gave us, unfortunately, what we have today in terms of a massive right wing populist reaction. In modeling, left wing media masters insisted that models not be, if possible, smoking hot young women and that instead they should be culturally diverse, and in some cases, fat.
Now comes this, in the midst of a real swing to cultural conservatism, but not culturalism of the Patrick Dineen type, but of the Dukes of Hazzard fan type.
What Sweeney said, quite frankly, is actually completely true. Genes are passed down from parents to offspring. Genes in fact determine external traits like hair color and eye color. That is a fact.
And, more than we like to admit, they determine a massive amount of our personality traits. If you hang around a family gathering and don't find people who have the same deep interests as you do, the same sense of humor, etc., you might wish to check to see if you are in the right place. Sure, some of that might be due to environment, you are all from the same family, but some not. It's well known that many of the traits that impact our personalities are in fact genetic.
So what's up with the upset.
Well she's white, as are 60.5% of the American population. That is who you are trying to sell to much of the time. The liberal left just can't have that.
If the same clothing promotion was being done by Anok Yai, the left wouldn't be having a fit, the right would be, and for the exact same reason.
Which is exactly why, if I ran American Eagle, I'd have Anok Yai join in the campaign.
Of course, that isn't the only reason people are enjoying being upset. They're also upset as the ads openly focus on Sweeney's assets, including having the camera in the jean jacket ad focus on her boobs until she intervenes to instruct the viewer to look at her face.
Well, gentle reader, that portrays reality. All the feminist reactions in the world are never going to stop men from observing cleavage when its right there. We're wired that way, and for a reason.
Which brings us to the next point. In the right wing defense, Trump, in a friendly Fox interview, was asked the bizarre question "Does America need to see more ads like that? And maybe fewer ads with people like Dylan Mulvaney on the cover?" after the pronatalist views of the far right were referenced.
That was weird.
The US, and for that matter the entire Western World, does not have a demographic crisis like the far right pronatalist like to imagine. But the suggestion that men are going to look at Sydney Sweeney and suddenly feel aroused and go out and procreate is truly odd.
But even this does give us a glimpse into how modern Western society has really gone off the rails No man who wants to "transition" is ever going to look like Sydney Sweeney. Nor will any of them suffer from the Girl Flu every month. That's reality.
Anyhow. Givc the woman a break.
Last edition:
Occupational identity refers to the conscious awareness of oneself as a worker. The process of occupational identity formation in modern societies can be difficult and stressful. However, establishing a strong, self-chosen, positive, and flexible occupational identity appears to be an important contributor to occupational success, social adaptation, and psychological well-being. Whereas previous research has demonstrated that the strength and clarity of occupational identity are major determinants of career decision-making and psychosocial adjustment, more attention needs to be paid to its structure and contents. We describe the structure of occupational identity using an extended identity status model, which includes the traditional constructs of moratorium and foreclosure, but also differentiates between identity diffusion and identity confusion as well as between static and dynamic identity achievement. Dynamic identity achievement appears to be the most adaptive occupational identity status, whereas confusion may be particularly problematic. We represent the contents of occupational identity via a theoretical taxonomy of general orientations toward work (Job, Social Ladder, Calling, and Career) determined by the prevailing work motivation (extrinsic vs. intrinsic) and preferred career dynamics (stability vs. growth). There is evidence that perception of work as a calling is associated with positive mental health, whereas perception of work as a career can be highly beneficial in terms of occupational success and satisfaction. We conclude that further research is needed on the structure and contents of occupational identity and we note that there is also an urgent need to address the issues of cross-cultural differences and intervention that have not received sufficient attention in previous research. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)
Skorikov, V. B., & Vondracek, F. W. (2011). Occupational identity. In S. J. Schwartz, K. Luyckx, & V. L. Vignoles (Eds.), Handbook of identity theory and research.
A number of relatively recent experiences has lead me to post this thread.
Posted around town are some billboards by a lawyer who is apparently specializing in plaintiffs' cases and criminal defense. I don't know him well, but I do know him.
When I first met him, he came across, quite frankly, as a metrosexual. I was quite surprised later on when I learned that he'd grown up on a ranch, and that he had a brother who now ran it. Now, however, he appears on billboards with a huge mustache in Western attire and saddle and portrays himself as a cowboy.
And I guess, by cowboy, I mean both real cowboys and the movie image of a cowboy.
Cowboys, and that is of course a real occupation, have been a popular cultural image since the late 19th Century. It's really interesting to me, as somebody who is a stockman and who has, accordingly, done a fair amount of cowboying, how cowboys continue to have a sort of wild image that they acquired in that time period. I love working stock, but most of it isn't anything like what movies portray. Maybe none of is, which is why the popular Yellowstone television show tends to anger me.
Of course, being a lawyer isn't anything like portrayed on television either.
Anyhow, I never tell people that "I'm a cowboy", but I find that I"m referred to that way, in the working sense of the word, from time to time. Or, people will refer to me as a rancher the same way from time to time. I'm always a bit flattered when they do, as if I'd had my ruthers in the world, which I haven't, that's what I would have done full time. I can't say its my occupational identity, however, as I'm well aware that I don't do it full time.
Affecting the image, however, miffs me. It's fake. If you simply come across that way, as you are naturally that way, that's one thing. Using it to promote your legal career, however, is bullshit.
Indeed, on real cowboys, not all of which are men, today:
I guess this gets back in a way to this thread:
A Nation of Slobs. But then. . .
If you are going to be a lawyer, look like one, it's what you actually are.
And, by the way, there's at least one politician in the state that does the same thing, and I'd have the same criticism about. He's not a lawyer, but a commercial landlord.
Anyhow, it also gets to the weird association that the law picked up at some point with cowboys around here. I don't know when this occurred, but it might have been about the time that Gerry Spence's book Gunning for Justice came out. Spence didn't try to portray himself as a cowboy, but he did take on a Western influenced style, wearing a fringed jacket and a cowboy hat as a matter of course. Spence being sui generis has been able to consistently pull that off whereas those copying him tend to look absurd.
Anyhow, "Gunning for Justice" is actually a phrase that's been around for awhile and he didn't introduce it, as t his movie poster from 1948 demonstrates:
.jpg)
He's not the only one I know of who is alleged to be in this category. Frankly a fairly well known person in the region is claimed by some insiders to fit this as well. In that case, it's more notable for his public opinions on things, which would be generally contrary to this inclination, assuming its true.
Now, I'll note that I have the typically misunderstood Catholic views on homosexuality. I'll also note that one of these individuals is a co-religious, and the other was. My only real point in noting all of this is to note that it must be a strain to live an entire life with a sort of false identity, assuming that its true in either case, which I can't really say for sure.
I'll also note that homosexuals of that vintage who did not present themselves as "gay", which is different, may have had a better understanding of marriage than many. Catholic Answers Hugh Barbour defined marriage as a union between a man and a woman to produce children for the worship of God, which while it may be more than that, that captures a lot of it. People like to say that before Obergefell homosexuals couldn't marry, but that's simply false, if we consider that marriage is a unique institution between two people capable of reproducing and bound to care for those they create.
Going on to occupations, I've also run across recently a situation in which I've been dealing with somebody whom, once again, I don't know that well but who is still working fulltime and whose clearly suffering from some compression loss in the psychological cylinders. I'm not their pal or anything but it's sad to watch. It's also sad to watch, however, somebody whose psychological identify is so closely identified with the practice of law, they can't leave it.
I've known more than one lawyer who practiced into advanced old age with no mental detriment. But it's also the case quite frankly that a person's physical clockworks, and often their mental ones, start to slip a bit after the hands hit 60 or so. I'm frankly not convinced at all that allowing people to practice a profession after some point in their 60s is a good thing, and I don't think people should carry on into their 70s. For one thing, it's just sad. Surely there was something else that interested them once.
Back to occupational identities.
One of the really minor features of this blog is the M65 Field Jackets in the wild. page. Minor.
I like M65 field jackets. When I was in the Guard I had at least six of them due to having bought two and having been issued four more. The reason I was issued four is that at Ft. Sill the switch from OG-107 to BDU was going on and we were issued OD field jackets. As soon as I got back, we were issued BDU field jackets, and told to keep the old ones.
I gave one of the OD ones to a girlfriend who had need of a jacket while I was in university, and then eventually I just got to big, i.e,. gained weight, or filled out, whatever, and couldn't wear the size I'd been issued. But I still had the next larger size, Large Regular.
Well, time, etc.
A surplus store here had a whole bunch of uniform items here before they went out of business and I bought several BDU ones. I just really like them. I picked up a OD one for my son, as they're a nice coat, but naively didn't for myself. The OD ones you can wear for daily wear really.
Well, here recently I found a Greek Lizard pattern one for sale and I bought it for hunting. Which meant that I had three woodland pattern ones, one desert pattern one (a gift of an old soldier) and a Lizard pattern one. Then I saw the current multicam pattern one for sale on Ebay, which I ordered. Finally, I decided I needed an OD one and bought one of those off of ebay.
Some of these have the US Army tape on them. One, the multicam one, came with paratrooper wings from the former and his name tape. I took the name tape off and the paratrooper wings. I'm not a paratrooper. The OD one came with a name tape, the U.S. Army tape, and two unit patches. I took everything off but the US Army tape.
For reasons that are silly, and I can't explain, I ended up ordering name tapes. I can now sew those on.
Why? I'm not sure. I don't need name tapes on old uniform items for any rational reason. Rather, I was required to do it back in the day, and I still feel like am now. Indeed, it would make a lot more sense to take the US Army patch off the OD one so I can use it for its intended purpose of regular daily wear.
Odd
Well, I found a M1943 replica on sale and ordered it. It won't have any patches.
I need to stop buying them.
As a further aside, a Carhartt coat is much warmer. My old one is pretty much blown out now. It was a gift from my wife and I've been resisting getting a new one, even though I need to. Guess I'm hoping for another one as a gift so that I don't have to buy it.
Back to occupational identities for a moment. It occured to me how, when I was young, men had much less of one. They genuinely seemed more well rounded than men do today
People always like to claim things were different, if not outright perfect, when they were young. But it does seem to me that genuinely men were quite family oriented. That meant that their professions and occupations were focused on providing for their families, but it also meant that their professions tended not to be all that they were, including to themselves. I can vaguely recall some men who were very career oriented being criticized for it.
Every man that I knew when I was young tended to almost be identified by a collection of interests. Medical professionals were often hunters and fishermen. Indeed, I don't know one who wasn't. Some were dramatically so. Men who had come into professions from farms and ranches tended to still be identified with their origin and retain some contacts with that life. I knew a fireman who was a pretty good amature geologist, another who was a car restorer, and another who was the first long distance runner I ever knew. More recently professionals, or at least lawyers, have almost become cartoons of themselves in some instances, only engaging in the law or perhaps one activity that's sort of socially approved for lawyers.
It isn't good.
Last Sunday I ran this item:
I knew that the Bundesheer has a mountain infantry brigade.
I've sometimes thought that if I had been born in Germany, which I'm very much glad I was not, I'd have opted for a career with this unit. Outdoors. . . animals, etc. By the same token, if I had been born French, there's the Chasseurs Alpins.
Hmmm. . .
Well, I didn't opt for a career with the Wyoming Game & Fish, so I'm probably just fooling myself.
Have a nice day at work.
Mehr Mensch sein,
Petroleum: $61.78/bbl (Wyoming crude become unecomic at $59.00/bbl).
Coal: Coal 99.40/ton
Coffee (USd/Lbs) 372.60.
Levis at Penny's: $55.65.
April 7, 2025
Petroleum: 60.80/bbl.
One of Trump's minions cited this, fwiw, as evidence that inflation isn't kicking in and things are fine. On the contrary, the price of petroleum is dropping on fears of a recession. A recession reduces oil consumption.
Indeed, because of the bizarre nature of tariffs, trading prices on some things in general may go down, while the price rises for Americans.
April 8, 2025
From the Wall Street Journal yesterday:
It's about $61/bbl this mooring.
cont:
$58.10. Below marketability in Wyoming.
April 9, 2025
Oil opening this morning:
56.03
April 10, 2025
Despite the strong relief rally on Wednesday, following President Trump’s 90-day pause of tariff hikes on most countries except China, the U.S. benchmark oil price is now lower than the breakeven for the shale industry to profitably drill a new well.
OilPrice.com
West Texas is $59.16/bbl.
April 11, 2025
U.S. reached a new record-high of $6.23 per dozen.
Oil is opening at 60.10/bbl.
May 2, 2025
Oil and Natural Gas.
WTI Crude 58.57 -0.67 -1.13%
Brent Crude 61.49 -0.64 -1.03%
Murban Crude 61.41 -0.93 -1.49%
Natural Gas 3.502 +0.023 +0.66%
A note, below $59.00, US crude doesn't move.
The inflation rate right now is 2.39% with the tariffs about to hit.
May 6, 2025
WTI Crude • 58.28 +1.15 +2.01%
Brent Crude • 61.39 +1.16 +1.93%
Murban Crude • 62.20 +2.24 +3.74%
Natural Gas • 3.594 +0.044 +1.24%
Coal: 98.50/ton
Coffee: 388.45
Levis: $55.65.
May 16, 2025
WTI Crude 61.95 +0.33 +0.54%
Brent Crude 64.88 +0.35 +0.54%
Natural Gas 3.345 -0.017 -0.51%
Coal: 99.00/ton
Coffee (USd/Lbs) 373.79
Eh?
Allow me to explain.
I posted this yesterday:
Lex Anteinternet: A Nation of Slobs. But then. . .: Cary Grant and Myrna Loy from Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House. O.W. Root @NecktieSalvage · 1h People think I am exaggerating when I ...
Last night, I tried to watch the Thomas Crown Affair.
I'm generally a fan of older movies, and often watch ones older than this. But I couldn't make my way through it. The appearance of the characters and the urban settings were just too much for me. The thing is, I"m pretty sure it was accurate.
All the office workers and businessmen are dressed in contempoary suits, some of which were quite nice and still would be today. The hats really stood out, with every man wearing a Trilby, something really identifiable with teh 1960s, but which when we look back on the 60s, is easy to forget.
The 1960s may have been the era of Haight Ashbury and hippies, but it was also the era of men still wearing suits and ties in the office. It isn't really into the 1970s that this began to change. The wide lapel loud color suit came out of the 60s, but it didn't show up until the early 1970s, which is really, culturally, part of the 1960s. Even so, men were wearing coat and tie in the office.
The other thing I encountered leading to this thread was a link from something on Pininterest, which lead to a set of photos that a high school teacher/photographer, took of high school students in his school in the 1970s. I'm not going to linke them in, as some of the photos he took were, in my view, a bit lacking in modesty (not anything illegal, but just something I wouldn't really think a person should photograph), but maybe that was his point.
It wasn't that I didn't recogize the photographs. I really did. That's the thing. All the boys and girls in tight fitting t-shirts.
I have my father's high school annual from 1947, and I've written on the appearance of the studends that appear in it before:
Standards of Dress. Attending school
This is a 9th Grade (Freshman) Class in high school, 1946. Specifically, is the Freshman class at NCHS in 1946 (the Class of 1949).Now, some will know NCHS who might read this, others will not. But in 1946 this class attended school in a city that had under 30,000 residents. It was a city, but it was a city vastly surrounded by the country, as it still somewhat is. This class of boys (there were more in it than those just in this photograph) were from the town and the country. None of them were big city kids. Some were ranch kids. I recognize one of them who was.. Some came from families that were doing okay, some from families that were poor.So how do we see them dressed? One is wearing a striped t-shirt. Exactly one. Every other boy here is wearing a button up long sleeved shirt. Of those, all but one are wearing ties.One of the ones wearing a tie is one of my uncles.Did they turn out with ties just for their photographs that day? Probably they did. I suspect so, but even at that, they all actually could come up with ties. And somebody knew hot to tie them. None of these boys appears to be enormously uncomfortable wearing a tie.
NCHS Juniors in 1946, this is therefore the Class of 1947.Here's a few of the boys in the Junior class that year. Here too, this is probably a bit different depiction of high school aged boys than we'd see today. For one thing, a lot of them are in uniform. As already mentioned in the thread on JrROTC, it was mandatory at the school. Based upon the appearances of the boys at the time the photograph was taken, this probably reflects relatively common daily male dress at NC. Most of the boys are in uniform. Of those who are not, most are wearing button up shirts, but no ties. A couple have t-shirts. Nobody's appearance is outlandish in any fashion, and nobody is seeking to make a statement with their appearance.NCHS girls, Class of 1947, as Juniors in 1946.Here are the Junior girls that year. As can be seen, NCHS had a uniform for girls at that time, which appears to have been some sort of wool skirt and a white button up shirt. They appear to have worn their uniform everyday, as opposed to the boys who must not have.Uniforms at schools are a popular thing to debate in some circles, and I'm not intending to do that. Rather, this simply points out the huge evolution in the standards of youth dress over the years. This is s cross section of students from a Western town. The people depicted in it had fathers who were lawyers, doctors, packing house employees, ranchers and refinery workers. They're all dress in a pretty similar fashion, and the dress is relatively plan really. No t-shirts declaring anything, as t-shirts of that type weren't really around. And no effort to really make a personal statement through dress, or even to really stand out by appearance.
I don't know that things had changed enormously by the mid 1950s.
Kids still new how to dress fairly formally, by contemporary standards, and girls are always shown wearing relatively long skirts and blouses. Boy nearly are always wearing button up shirts, not t-shirts. For something more formal boys still appear quite often in jacket and tie, or suit and tie. Consider the school dance here from the 1950s:
Not ties in a quick review, but still pretty cleanly dressed for the boys and very well dressed for the girls.
By the 60s, things were evolving.
And by the 1970s, they had really changed.
And not really for the good.
In the 70s, men still wore coat and tie to the office, but the trend line is pretty obvious.
If anything, youth dress hit rock bottom in the 1970s. It's intersting that office dress has hit rock bottom, right now.
And, like Atticus Finch noted, dress does matter.
