From: rstevew@deeptht.armory.com (Richard Steven Walz)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.arabic,soc.culture.misc,soc.misc,alt.sex
Subject: Re: Ear Rings
Date: 21 Dec 92 04:03:05 GMT
Distribution: na
Organization: The Armory

In article <27324@sybase.sybase.com> chrisl@sancho.sybase.com (Xian the Drive) writes:
>In article <nabeel.724197495@oracle.sce.carleton.ca>, nabeel@sce.carleton.ca (Nabeel Ghuzlaan) writes:
>| In <Bz4vot.Hz3@acsu.buffalo.edu> v117pdg8@ubvmsb.cc.buffalo.edu (DEMIAN) writes:
>| 
>| " "faggot, homo, gay, queer, etc....", but just turned the other cheek.  I did
>| " it because I wanted to, because I wanted to be different and it didn't matter
>| " what other people thought of me.  I thought it was cool and just didn't give a
>
>|>    Do you think it is OK to do something to be different? Now, everybody is
>|> different, so you are no longer different. I prefer that people be _better,_
>|> _not_ different.
>|> 
>|>    What is wrong in being like everybody else? Or do we like to be queer but
>|> in different senses? It is possible that someone be so good that they are
>|> different where it counts, not in their accessories where it hints that
>|> someone's original design was inferior that he had to modify it or improve
>|> on it, but it stays that it originally sucked.
>
>
> I don't think there is a problem with being like everyone else.
>
> I think there's a problem with feeling _forced_ to be like everyone
>else. With being labeled "freak" for exercising personal freedom,
>even in something as trivial as fashion. 
>
> When I used to attend classes in my black cotton skirt, I got plenty
>of those labels. Same thing when I put on makeup. Not drag makeup. Not
>garish Halloween crap. Just highlighting my own features.
>
> I did these things because _I_ wanted to, yes. But I also thought about
>people who were reluctant to stand out, but who weren't comfortable
>with the homogenization of their society. When I do something "to be
>different", I feel I am expressing the fact that there are options
>available to everyone. It is not an attack on the "norms of society".
>What I am doing is telling the more hesitant that some people like
>to dress or look differently. And that that's ok. Often the reason
>people remain in peer groups that make them unhappy is that they don't
>realize there is an alternative.
>
> I have 3 holes in my left ear and 2 in my right. I didn't modify them
>because I thought Man should have had these to begin with. I modified 
>them because I like the way they look now. So does my wife.
>
> "Being different" today leads to tomorrow's "fitting in". Now, everyone
>"cool" has an earring. Years ago, only the freaks did. Punk Rock, in the
>60s and 70s, was unbearable. Now those songs are "classics" and can't
>stand up against what is playing now, volumewise.
> Be what you want.
> Look how you want.
> Dress how you want.
> Just don't force me to follow you.
>Xian.
-------------------------------
Poke as many holes in your ears as you want, Xian, but get the history
of rock right. Actually the piercing of male ears is much more recent
than the sixties, when only bikers, not freaks, and gays did it. Punk
rock didn't have roots in the sixties but in the late seventies. The
songs that became classics are still being played, leaving trash from
the sixties in the dust. That's what a classic means. It means that
every generation in the current paradigm can enjoy it. Modern stuff
being played today sucks a big one, mostly, and little of it will be
regarded as classic. The sixties, '65 to '75 was a period of
unprecedented quality to music that has not been rivaled since. Ask
any modern DJ who has seen it all come and go what will survive and
you will be amazed at their answer. Another golden age may be coming
soon. More crap has started to fall by the wayside. I can bet rap
doesn't survive another two years. It's not music and takes no talent.
Some of the new age and post modern will make it, and some stuff you
don't hear very often, but which most people know and take for
granted. But there will come again a time when the music jumps yet
another step in development and it will be another classic age. That
seems to be coming along now as the attitude swings back. You never
see classics until the attitude swings back to outright cultural
rebellion en masse. It's a mere shadow of itself now.
- Steve
-- 
* Richard STEVEn Walz   rstevew@deeptht.armory.com   (408) 429-1200  *
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