h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

...That's it. I've haven't got anything else useful to contribute.

B

Well spotted Master B!

More significantly, check out that researcher list and realise that if some of them folks had known that C. Hawke wanted some real and true historical data, and wasn't just having a wee chat, they wouldn't have been so casual in their observations.

Several of them would fondly remember 45 RPM records, vacuum tube radios and 8-track tapes cassettes. I am on record for suggesting the thread not stay so focused on 'technological' change. This may have cut short the lists of lost mid-20th century gadgets, gizmoes and methodologies prematurely. It certainly didn't encourage much discussion of 'social' or 'philospohical' changes. I had hoped it might because, to me these are much more dramatic and telling of the times.

Have you ever seen the thin ties they wore in the days of Kennedy's Camelot years? The high hair (a style Marge Simpson perpetuates and so few understand) and short skirts of the sixties had 'meaning' at the time. Meaning that will now be lost to historians, and it's all my fault.

oh well,
~jwf~

jwf - I was having a "wee chat" but it seemed that it would be a good thing to write up - well Ben and myself thought so - and as the starter of it I decided to filter the pure nostalgia - although if you read my contributions to the thread I wrote as much as any other, and I filtered that as well,

and indeed several cultural subjects did get included, my favorite being the "free love" one which aplies to the post Pill/pre-AIDS generation - I find that concept hard to believe happened myself and I was born in the 60s so am closer to it than some of todays children.

I'm not sure that certain fashoins you mention had any "meaning" other than fashion and therefore durely it is just as hard for the youth today to explain why they wear metal through every part of their body to the older generation as it is for their parent to explain beehive hairdo

Oh well

CH

>> ..my favorite being the "free love" one. <<

Mine too!

I was gonna suggest thin ties were 'in' because there was less chance of spilling soup on them.

And bee-hive hair was a 'safety feature', a kind of 'homegrown' crash helmet for the seat-beltless female 'passengers' of 60s 'soupercars'.

Then you'da known I was just 'goofing around', which more than anything else, was the dominant cultural mainstay of youth in those good old days. At least it was for my crowd. (No accounting for Californians though - eg: the Beach Boys et al)

Stickin' metal bits in the flesh seems to me just a self-destructive symptom of these modern times, when everyone takes the world, life and themselves far too seriously.

well,well,well..

peace,
~jwf~

Isn't it the case that body piercing, mini-skirts, punk rock, beehives etc are all in the same class. That of an attempt to shock. Every generation seems to have a need to claim something as their very own. It should preferably be something that all previous generations find incomprehensible and, if possible, abhorrent. This is the whole purpose of youth culture.

It is easy to work out my age if I say that I think beehives were just laughable, punk rock was original and exciting, and sticking spiky metal bits in delicate parts of your body is repulsive, unhealthy, and should probably be banned.

I wonder if the powdered wigs of 18th and 19th century were initially attempts to shock? That would be a totally separate but interesting article - Fashion statements that were intended to shock the older generation.



CH

>> wonder if the powdered wigs <<

The operative word there is 'powdered'.

Wigs were fashionable, functional and cosmetic through many generations from the Elizabethan era to the Victorian. Judges and barristers still wear them ceremonially in the UK.

Wigs covered a multitude of 'sins'. Remember that bathing was not a regular activity. Running water (hot or cold) was unheard of and no one had yet invented shampoo and conditioners.

Heads were often scarred from maladies like the pox and a variety of venereal diseases often passed on at childbirth. Elizabeth the first, who pretty much entrenched the fashion, was reportedly bald from an early age as a result of syphilis.

BUT MOST significantly, the 'POWDERED' wig was to control lice and fleas. Perhaps that's why judges and barristers, who continue to encounter the low-life, refuse to abandon them.

peace
jwf

The virgin queen with sypjilis Gosh, a top 10 Briton, I'm shocked

So I wonder iwhat were the regency "punks" then, or does the need to shock come only after teenagers were "invented" in the 50s?

Ho hum

CH

I believe that there was concern that top hats would scare the ladies at first.

Young people in about the 1920s seemed pretty keen not to conform. Revealing ankles, wearing binders, girls getting their hair cut.

It's interesting to wonder where youth culture and the desire to rebel began. Prior to the 1920s teenagers probably had all the independence and responsibility they could cope with. I imagine it began when life became easier.

ever checked this Researcher List A703126