Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist, 99th edition. Sydney Sweeney has great jeans, and genes.

Sydney Sweeney in American Eagle denim, part of the ad campaign causing all the furor.  The outfit itself is very 1970s retro, which is more than a little ironic in context.  Given the commentary, this is posted with the fair use exception.

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:

The Madness of King Donald. The 25th Amendment Watch List, Third Edition and Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist, 98th edition. The Perverts and Fellow Travelers Issue.

Equality, Raven Peak mulled as names for Grand Teton summit with disgraced leader’s name

Equality, Raven Peak mulled as names for Grand Teton summit with disgraced leader’s name: Mount Grizzly 399, Mount Liberty ruled out by state naming board.

Going Feral: Scientist who recovered grizzlies warns Trump’s as...

Going Feral: Scientist who recovered grizzlies warns Trump’s as...:

Scientist who recovered grizzlies warns Trump’s assault on conservation risks irreversible losses

Scientist who recovered grizzlies warns Trump’s assault on conservation risks irreversible losses: As the president seeks to log, mine, drill and develop, Yellowstone researcher Chris Servheen calls the administration's proposed policy "management based on ignorance."

Blog Mirror: Mammoth featured heavily in Western Clovis diet

Mammoth featured heavily in Western Clovis diet

Mammoth, it's what was for dinner.

No vegans on the paleo steppes.

Going Feral: Is this a good idea? The Return of the Dire Wolf

Going Feral: Is this a good idea? The Return of the Dire Wolf:   

Is this a good idea? The Return of the Dire Wolf

 Apr 7, 2025 6:50 AM MT

The Return of the Dire Wolf

I'm all for rewilding, but Dire Wolves have been extinct for 10,000 years and preyed, in their day, on megafauna.  Presumably any return of the Ice Age species will be limited to captivity. .  at least for now.

I'm not so sure about this.

Notable, the company that cloned them back into existence says they have not, so far, shown any dog like behavior, which is perhaps not too surprising given their evolutionary history, which is debated.  Some classify the large canine as Canis dirus dirus, a species in the canine family that shares a distant canine ancestor, Canis chihliensis, with wolves and dogs, with the wolf, canis lupus, being the direct descendant of that species with the dire wolf has an intervening one.  Others proposed that dire wolf has essentially the same linage, but is sufficiently separate such that it deserves its own genus, and should be classified as aenocyon dirus.  Frankly the cloning effort would suggest that those who disfavor a separate genus are correct, as a domestic dog hosted the puppies as embryos.

Dire wolves, it should be noted, were absolutely huge, which makes sense as they killed megafauna.

So the question, I suppose, is now what?

Going Feral: Blog Mirror: On DOGE and Keystone XL and lost jobs

Going Feral: Blog Mirror: On DOGE and Keystone XL and lost jobs:   On DOGE and Keystone XL and lost jobs

Going Feral: Trump cuts may cost a trout-brooding, Wyoming toad...

Going Feral: Trump cuts may cost a trout-brooding, Wyoming toad...: 

Trump cuts may cost a trout-brooding, Wyoming toad-rearing federal hatchery its entire staff

Trump cuts may cost a trout-brooding, Wyoming toad-rearing federal hatchery its entire staff: A 110-year-old facility is still operating, but the federal government’s DOGE initiative has shrunk the staff to two and put the hatchery in a position that could overturn its workforce completely.

This is why we can't have nice things.

 

Going Feral: The nature themed tattoo

Going Feral: The nature themed tattoo: 

The nature themed tattoo

Let me note, in general, that I'm not a huge fan of tattoos.  That being said, some of them are striking works of art now days, something that really wasn't true of most tattoos back when I was a young adult, although I will note a fellow National Guardsman, a full timer, back when I was a Guardsman had a striking tattoo of a tiger.  He was a jerk, but that tattoo was very well done.

Anyhow, somehow within the last twenty or so years tattoo artistry has dramatically improved.  Included in that are some with some really striking natural themes, including the following.

 

Blog Mirror and Commentary: QC: Human Sexuality | January 17, 2024 and the destruction of reality.

Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.

Alexander Pope. An Essay on Criticism.

Evelyn Nesbit, model and archetypical Gibson Girl, 1903.

And indeed, I'm likely foolish for bringing up this topic.

Model in overalls . Photos by Alfred Eisenstaedt, 1944.  This is posted under the fair use and other exceptions.  Life, by 1943, was already posting some fairly revealing photographs on its cover, but there was a certain line that it did not really cross until 1953, when it photographed the full nudes of Marilyn Monroe prior to Playboy doing so, in an act calculated to save her career, as it was a respectable magazine.  The publication of nude Monroe's from the 1940s went, to use a modern term, "viral" both in Life and in Playboy showing something was afoot in the culture.  This photo above shows how much things were still viewed differently mid World War Two, with a very demure model demonstrating work pants.

This post actually serves to link in a video posted below, which probably isn't apparent due to all of the introductory photographs and text.  And that's because of all the commentary I've asserted along the way.  

If you do nothing else, watch or listen to the video.

This post might look like a surprising thing to have linked in here, but in actuality, it directly applies to the topic of this website, the same being changes over time.  Or, put another way, how did average people, more particularly average Americans, and more particularly still, average Wyomingites, look at things and experience things, as well as looked at things and experienced things.

This is an area in which views have changed radically, and Fr. Krupp's post really reveals that.

At some point, relatively early in this podcast, Fr. Krupp, quoting from Dr. Peter Craig, notes that what the Sexual Revolution did was subtract, not add, to sex, by taking out of it its fundamental reality, that being that it creates human beings.

That's a phenomenal observation.

And its correct. What the Sexual Revolution achieved was to completely divorce an elemental act from an existential reality, and in the process, it warped human understanding of it, and indeed infantilized it.  That in turn lead, ultimately, the childish individualist focus on our reproductive organs we have today, and a massive focus on sex that has nothing whatsoever to do with reproduction, or at least we think it doesn't.  It's been wholly destructive.

We've addressed that numerous times here in the past and if we have a quibble with the presentation, it would be a fairly minor one, maybe.  Fr. Krupp puts this in the context of artificial birth control, but the process, we feel, had started earlier in the last 1940s with the erroneous conclusions in the Kinsey treatise Sexual Behavior in the Human Mail, which was drawn from prisoners who were available as they had not been conscripted to fight in World War Two and who displayed a variety of deviances, including sexual, to start with. The report was a bit of a bomb thrown into society, which was followed up upon by Hugh Hefner's slick publication Playboy which portrayed all women as sterile and top heavy. Pharmaceuticals pushed things over the edge in the early 60s.

Lauren Bacall, 1943.

The point isn't that prurient interests didn't exist before that time. They very clearly did.  La Vie Parisienne was popular prior to World War Two for that very reason, and films, prior to the production code, were already experimenting with titillation by the 1920s.  But there was much, much less of this prior to 1948 than there was later, and going the other direction, prior to 1920, it would have been pretty rare to have been exposed to such things in average life at all.

Indeed, it's now well known, in spite of what the Kinsey report claimed, that men and women acted very conventionally through the 40s.  Most people, men and women, never had sex outside of marriage.   Things did occur, including "unplanned births" but they were treated much differently and not regarded as the norm.  Included in that, of course, was the knowledge that acting outside of marriage didn't keep things from occuring in the normal and conventional biological sense.

Given that, the normal male's view of the world, and for that matter the normal female's, was undoubtedly much different, and much less sexualized. Additionally, it would have been less deviant than even widely accepted deviances today, and much more grounded in biology.  That doesn't mean things didn't happen, but they happened a lot less, and people were more realistic about what the consequences of what they were doing were in every sense.

Something started to change in the 1940s, and perhaps the Kinsey book was a symptom of that rather than the cause, although its very hard to tell.  Indeed, as early as the 1920s the movie industry, before being reined in, made a very serious effort to sell through sex.  It was society that reacted at the time, showing how ingrained the moral culture was.  That really started to break down during the 1940s.  I've often wondered if the war itself was part of the reason why.

From Reddit, again posted under copyright exceptions.  This is definitely risque and its hard to imagine women doing in this in the 30s, and frankly its pretty hard to imagine them doing it in the 1940s, but here it is.   The Second World War was a massive bloodletting, even worse than the Frist, and to some extent to me it seems like it shattered moral conduct in all sorts of ways, although it took some time to play out.

Kinsey released his book in 1948, and like SLAM Marshall's book Men Under Fire, its conclusions were in fact flat out wrong.  Marshall's book impacted military training for decades and some still site it.  Kinsey's book is still respected even though it contains material that's demonstratively wrong.

By 1953 (in the midst of a new war in Korea) things had slipped far enough that Hugh Hefner was able to introduce a slick publication glorifying women who were portrayed as over endowed, oversexed, dumb, and sterile.  There were efforts to fight back, but they were losing efforts.

Cheesecake photograph of Marilyn Monroe (posted here under the fair use and commentary exceptions to copyright. This photograph must be from the late 1950s or the very early 1960s, which somewhat, but only somewhat, cuts against Fr. Krupp's argument, which is based on the works of Dr. Peter Craig and heavily tied to artificial birth control as the cause of the Sexual Revolution.  I think that's largely correct, but the breakdown had started earlier, as early in 1948 in my view, such that even before the introduction of contraceptive pharmaceuticals a divorce between the reality of sex and reproduction had set in, leading to the "toy" or plaything concept of women that we have today.

And then the pill came, at the same time a society revolution of sorts, concentrated in young people, started to spread around the globe.

We've lost a lot here. A massive amount.  And principal among them are our groundings in the existential, and reality.   And we're still slippping.

QC: Human Sexuality | January 17, 2024.

Related threads:

We like everything to be all natural. . . . except for us.

Labels: Agrarianism, Agriculture, An hoc pertinet ad naturam?, Commentary, Daily Living, Food, Friday Farming, Medicine, Men, nature, The roles of men and women, transgenderism, trends, Women

The Four Things.

Because I've referenced it more than one time, but apparently never posted it (cowardice at work) I'm going to post here the topic of "the four sins God hates".  I'm also doing this as I'm getting to a political thread about this years elections and the candidates, in the context of the argument of "Christians must. . . " or "Christians can. . . "

First I'll note using the word "hate", in the context  of the Divine, is a truncation for a much larger concept.  "Condemns" might have been a better choice of words, but then making an effective delivery in about ten minutes or less is tough, and truncations probably hit home more than other things.

Additionally, and very importantly, sins and sinners are different.  In Christian theology, and certainly in Catholic theology, God loves everyone, including those who have committed any one of these sins, or all of them.

This topic references a remarkably short and effective sermon I heard some time ago. The way my 61 year old brain now works, that probably means it was a few years ago.  At any rate, it was a homily based on all three of the day's readings, which is remarkable in and of itself, and probably left every member of the parish squirming a bit.  It should have, as people entrenched in their views politically and/or economically would have had to found something to disagree with, or rather be hit by.

The first sin was an easy one that seemingly everyone agrees is horrific, but which in fact people excuse continually, murder.

Murder is of course the unjust taking of a life, and seemingly nobody could disagree with that being a horrific sin. But in fact, we hear people excuse the taking of innocent life all the time.  Abortion is the taking of an innocent life.  Even "conservatives", however, and liberals as a false flag, will being up "except in the case of rape and incest".

Rape and incest are horrific sins in and of itself, but compounding it with murder doesn't really make things go away, but rather makes one horror into two.  Yes, bearing a child in these circumstances would be a horrific burden.  Killing the child would be too.

The second sin the Priest noted was sodomy.  He noted it in the readings and in spite of what people might like to say, neither the Old or New Testaments excuse unnatural sex. They just don't.  St. Paul is particularly open about this, so much so that a local female lesbian minister stated that this was just "St. Paul's opinion", which pretty much undercuts the entire Canon of Scripture.  

A person can get into Natural Law from here, which used to be widely accepted, and which has been cited by a United States Supreme Court justice as recently as fifty or so years ago, and the Wyoming Supreme Court more recently than that, and both in this context, but we'll forgo that in depth here. Suffice it to say that people burdened with such desires carry a heavy burden to say the least, but that doesn't make it a natural inclination.  In the modern Western World we've come to excuse most such burdens, however, so that where we now draw lines is pretty arbitrary. 

Okay, those are two "conservative" items.

The next wasn't.

That was mistreating immigrants.  

This sort of speaks for itself, but there it is. Scripture condemns mistreating immigrants.  You can't go around, as a Christian, hating immigrants or abusing them because of their plight.  

Abusing immigrants, right now, seems to be part of the Conservative "must do" list.

And the final one was failing to pay workmen a just wage.  Not exactly taking the natural economy/free market approach in the homily.

Two conservatives, and two liberal.

That's because Christianity is neither liberal or conservative, but Christianity.  People claiming it for teir political battles this year might well think out their overall positions.

 

Going Feral: Destruction of the wild.

Going Feral: Destruction of the wild.:   

Destruction of the wild.

 

Not-so Muddy Mountain Road

Great.

Making a formerly pretty wild area an effective city park.

This is just the kind of bullshit that ruins everything.

I hope the 4x4s coming off the muddy roads rip this newly paved road to shreds as soon as possible.

Clearly a bitter post on my part.

I"ve gone up the existing Muddy Mountain Road since I was a child.  I've hiked up the one that preceded it as well numerous times when the current road was closed, something that's declined in enjoyment as the motorized ATV crowd goes up and down the same road getting to listen to the racket their vehicles make (you can literally hear them for miles).

There's a lot about this that's flat out wrong.  One of those things is the absolute hypocrisy of Wyomingites, or in this case Natrona County residents, who loudly proclaim that the government shouldn't spend money on this or that, and then turn right around and subsidize the paving of a road for no reason, other than to allow people to flood the back country more easily, and with less effort.  The road literally serves no purpose other than recreation, that's it, and makes it easier for people to get there with no real effort.

Indeed, the existing road was a good one, and had I been around when it was put in, I probably would be p.o.ed as well.  

Meanwhile, in the winter, the same department that put in this road, if we have snow, won't be able to plow out the county roads that service the oilfield and ranches.

National Park Service Day.

 

Commorating the creation of the National Park Service in 1916, whereby the NPS relieved the United States Army, which was pretty busy with other things, of the duty of patrolling the parks (the Park Service campaign hat recalls the Army's M1911 campaign hat.

The Park Service and the parks themselves are one of the great things about the United States.  If you have nothing on the plate today, and have a park nearby, go check it out if you can, unless of course you live in Utah, in which case you can sit in side your hovel and imagine a future in your state in which all the lands have been sold to big money.

Related thread:

Today In Wyoming's History: August 25, 1916. National Park Service formed.

Labels: 1910s, 1916, Army, cavalry, Clothing, National Park Service, nature, Public Land, The Punitive Expedition, Yellowstone National Park

Painted Bricks: Alley mural, Cheyenne Wyoming.

Painted Bricks: Alley mural, Cheyenne Wyoming.:  

Alley mural, Cheyenne Wyoming.

 

What they dreamed, we live, and what they lived, we dream.

Our forefathers had civilization inside themselves, the wild outside. We live in the civilization they created, but within us the wilderness still lingers. What they dreamed, we live, and what they lived, we dream.

T. K. Whipple

i nolunt

Radical refusal to consent.

More specifically, radical refusal to consent to the spirit of the times.  It's part of what I admire in them, but it didn't strike me until recently.

John Pondoro Taylor, in his memoirs, recalled having seen Maasai walking through Nairobi as if it simply wasn't there, as they had always done, dressed in their traditional fashion, and carrying spears.  On their way from one place to another, refusing to consent that the development of the city meant anything in real terms.

I was recently waiting in the Church for the confession line to form.  One of the Mantilla Girls walked in.  I've seen this one once or twice before, but not at this Church.  She not only wears the mantilla, and is very pretty, but she carries herself with pride.

They don't all do that.  Some of the younger women who wear chapel veils do so very naturally.  Some sort of timidly, or uncomfortably.  With at least one, and I could be massively off the mark, it's almost sort of an affectation.  But here, you see something quite different.

Or so it seems.

I don't know her.  I could be wrong.  But it's clear she isn't timid and it's not an affectation.  

It is, it seems to me, a radical rejection of the modern secular world in favor of existential nature.

For those who believe in the modern world, in modernism, or the spirit of the times, or who are hostile to religion, that may seem like a shocking statement.  But the essence of our modern lives (or post-modern, if you insist) is a radical rejection of nature, most particularly our own natures.  Wearing a chapel veil indicates that the person deeply believes in a set of beliefs that are enormously grounded in nature.  The wearer is a woman, in radical alignment with biology in every sense, and accepting everything that means, including what the modern world, left and right, detest.  I nolunt.  She's accepting of the derision, and ironically, or in actuality not ironically, probably vastly happier than those who have accommodated modernity.

Moreover, those who think they're reaching out for a radical inclusion of the natural, who don't take the same approach, never can quite reach authenticity.  There can always be a slight feeling that something isn't authentic, and there isn't.  Reserving an element of modernity defeats it.

Related Thread:

We like everything to be all natural. . . . except for us.

Labels: Agrarianism, Agriculture, An hoc pertinet ad naturam?, Commentary, Daily Living, Food, Friday Farming, Medicine, Men, nature, The roles of men and women, transgenderism, trends, Women

Blog Mirror: 5 for Fathers

 

5 for Fathers

Going Feral: Bear

Going Feral: Bear: 

Bear

"Bear" is one of the oldest words in the Proto Indo European language group.  It's one of the hand full of words that comes down to us through the ages.

There's a reason for that.

Bears are dangerous.

Here's a recent headline:

Woman mauled by bear after her dog chased cub up a tree

Attack was in a Vermont condo complex near Stratton Mountain. Bears were also dining on pumpkins in the area.

Most of these articles go on to explain that black bear attacks, which is what the bear in question was, are "rare".

And they are.

Grizzly bear attacks, FWIW, are not.  We have a few in the state every year.  There's been at least three this year.

But attack a black bear will, and while rare, they do occur.

Wyoming Catholic Cowboys - raw and real: Native Grass

Wyoming Catholic Cowboys - raw and real: Native Grass: In the badlands of Wyoming, its not so much about the amount of moisture you get, but the timing of it. This has not been an exceptionally w...