Slouching Toward...

As far as my last Opendiary entry, I think I was just horny. The Internet will do that to you; it would seem the sex stuff seeps in no matter what sometimes. I'll try not to let it.

As a matter of fact, this bothers me about our society. It truly is becoming sex-saturated. I live in Capitol Hill, near downtown Seattle, so maybe it's not representative of America as a whole, but nonetheless, you don't need to be especially perceptive to see that the culture is saturated with it. I'm not going to get in to the reasons; I don't know why, for one thing.

I could go in-depth and write a term-paper: "Slouching Toward Gomorrah" type of thing, but societal/cultural trends are more inchoate and hard to pin down. And insidious.

I'm not an expert and not a woman, but I dare say that at least in its original form, feminism is dead. Or it has warped beyond recognition.

Fact is, women want to be sexy. They want to look like a "girl" and still be a "woman". Here in Seattle, walking on the city sidewalks, they want to be noticed. In and of itself this is no big thing, no surprise. It's just the extent of it; the intensity of it, that has in my view been on the up-tick.

It is a hard thing to pin down, because (honestly) I have to ask myself, how much of this is just me being horny? My own insecurities? Probably some of that, yes. So, I don't know. Maybe I require independent verification or something. A government commission. A longitudinal, million-dollar academic study. Maybe I need to be Maureen Dowd to state the same thing in print in the New York Times to for this notion to be believable.

I have always fancied myself observant. I think it comes in part from being a bit on the fringes earlier in life, in adolescence especially; socially disengaged. So I like to think I have that magic perspective where others trod ignorantly by. So whether it is true or not I don't know.

A good test, especially for those historically inclined and who think they can divine earlier time-periods, is to imagine this scenario:
You are an average American from a fairly small, middle-American town in the 1950s. You follow the cultural trends and you don't always like what you see. But you're broad-minded when it comes to your kids, and you let them do/wear/say pretty much what they want. After all, your town is pretty mundane, so you reckon it can't much hurt.

Now, fast-forward in the mind's eye a half-century to the present-day. Have this same character (maybe he is your grandfather/grandmother) go through a day on the streets of an average U.S. city. Have him read some of the day's newspapers. Then have him come home, watch T.V., surf the Web.
Is this individual going to be shocked at what they see?

I think the only rational answer is yes, very much so. Opinions might fall along a spectrum, but the general response would be one of anxious stupefaction, if not outright horror.
I like to imagine the poor soul's questions: "What have we done?"
Or maybe, "Have I died and gone to Hell?"

-d.g.w. 5/4/07