As I mentioned on Saturday evening, I spent most of that day helping out at a Sons of Confederate Veterans booth at the Heart of Virginia Festival in Farmville.
After several hours of watching all the passersby (and talking to some of them), I suddenly realized that I was older than anyone else I saw. Yes, there were a few people in my age group, and a very few who were even older, but for all practical purposes, I was watching a parade of people who were younger than I.
I could look at all the men and boys and think, “I remember when I was that age.” Some of them, especially the ones with green hair and piercings and multiple tattoos, were hard to identify with. But with many of them, it was possible to put myself in their shoes, and imagine doing what they were doing. Especially if they were middle-aged or older.
As for the females — well, the ones who were young and comely would have been objects of my libidinous attentions fifty years ago. But now, from the vantage point of an old man who was married for forty years and then widowed for five, they’re just eye candy — lovely to look upon, but no longer provoking desperate, overwhelming lust. It’s like looking at a garden of beautiful, carefully-tended flowers. Poignant, because the blossoms must soon fade and succumb to the inevitable frost.
And, truth be told, only a small portion of those young females would actually fall into the “gorgeous flower” category. A depressingly large percentage of them were quite obese, with parti-colored chopped-off hair and tattoos all over. I’m too old to find that sort of thing attractive, no matter how hard I try. Besides, too many of them were paired up with each other and engaged in extravagant public displays of affection. So to heck with ’em.
When I was a kid, the only people who sported tattoos were men who had been in prison or the military. Outside of the circus, a tattooed woman was all but unheard of. When the first tattoos began to appear on women 35 or 40 years ago, the wearers of them were generally lower-class, or from a bohemian subculture. Over the next two decades the fad gradually moved up the class hierarchy, and they are now commonplace. For the last quarter-century I’ve tried to get used to them, but I just can’t manage to do it. Every time I see a tattooed woman I experience an involuntary jolt of distaste. I’m just too old — there’s nothing I can do about it.
However, although they were a minority, a surprisingly large number of those lovely young ladies in Farmville were without visible tattoos, which I found encouraging. Their sartorial tastes weren’t always the most refined, but some of them were dressed quite appropriately, with no bra straps exposed or butt cheeks showing, and no navel jewelry. So, from the point of view of a hidebound traditionalist such as myself, all is not lost.
And then there were the smart phones, which were all but ubiquitous, among both women and men. When it comes to phones, I’m an outsider looking in. I have a basic understanding of how they work, and have seen them often enough, but I don’t understand the deep immersion in them that so many people seem to have. On Saturday I saw lot of people walking down the street between the rows of booths, looking neither left nor right, just staring into their phones. There must me something really important and/or compelling on those little screens to keep them focused so tightly on them.
I don’t know if it’s phone-related, but I saw a fair amount of bad posture among the young people, a sort of hunch-shouldered condition, especially among the girls. They’re heading for a dowager’s hump in two or three decades if the process continues.
Despite all the freakish attire and oddities of appearance, the scene on the streets of Farmville last Saturday was an idyllic one. The day was warm and pleasant, with a gentle breeze. There were plenty of interesting sights to see, and lots of friendly, easygoing visitors to talk to. Delicious food smells wafted among the booths, and I could hear children shouting and laughing as the families went by.
It was a wonderful day, and I savored it, because I can’t shake the feeling that all this won’t last much longer. It feels like the calm before the storm.
I know, I know — I’m being a doomsayer. But I just can’t shake the feeling.
If nothing else, the fact that the interest on the national debt just exceeded a trillion dollars for the first time tells you that things cannot continue the same for much longer. Even if all the other craziness and violence doesn’t get us, the entire financial system is destined for inevitable collapse.
If I’m fortunate, the current system will continue to be patched together with duct tape and baling wire, and hold up until after I’m gone.
But I fear I may not be that lucky.
As a 75-year-old Australian, this resonates with me as well.
With regard to tattoos, I doubt if many women have had one because the man in her life told her it would make her more attractive. I have never met any man who expressed approval of a woman’s tattoos.
With regard to smart phones, I regard them as useful tools, but I really think the youngsters who immerse themselves in them should try to get a life.
You shouldn’t attribute your distaste for hideous fashion to being “old”- you’re just what used to be called”normal.” When I was a youngster I couldn’t stand the freakish clothes and hair of the 60s and 70s- still can’t, when I see it in old TV or movies. That generation wrecked everything- and it keeps getting worse.
Bonjour Baron,
I have 87 years. That article could have written by me. Last Saturday I visited a local town for an event. Most of the older French ladies were wearing trousers, the young ones were half dressed. Tattos galore – on both young and old. Most men and women were obest.
The well-dressed male, or female, was a rarity.
@ Baron
We – my spouse and I – have long-noticed the trend with regard to tattoos and piercings in ugly or inappropriate places. Maybe this marks me as some sort of troglodyte or misogynist, but why would any young woman want to despoil her physical appearance, her body, with such things?
You’re very right about tattoos; in the old days forty or more years ago, you only saw them on current/former members of the military, maybe certain blue-collar occupations and people in show business or a burlesque show. Even the men who had them took care not to let them show from beneath business attire or a casual short-sleeved shirt. Women were rarely seen with them at all, and teenaged and younger girls almost never.
Today, as you know, anything goes.
We call it the “re-primitivization” of our culture. We’re reverting back to paganism, now that so many Americans are secular and proud of it.
The people who are going to be laughing all the way to the bank are the plastic surgeons. They are going to be making a killing once all of these tattooed folks get old and change their minds and decide that maybe getting a tattoo (or a whole bunch of them) wasn’t that great of an idea after all.
Oh, and don’t forget the criminal & LE tie-in. Tattoos are group ID for many criminal gangs. MS-13, one of the most-vicious and violent gangs in Latin America, use them that way – to name one group.
Not to mention but it’s been discovered that the ink used for the tattoos causes cancer!
Thus far my grandkids have not expressed a desire for those horrible tats but I do have a teenage niece who wants to be a nephew if you get my drift.
Love your essay and totally relate.
Re absolutely EVERYTHING you said, BB, I couldn’t agree more.
Baron, we both know what will happen. The Book of Revelation sets it out in some detail. Its down hill all the way until Jesus returns.
I have two hopes for myself: that the rapture happens and I’m part of it and that there’s a place for me in Heaven.
In the meantime, while I am able, I see my job as trying to warn my family members so they get themselves right with God.
I hate tatoos! They signify that we no longer are a civilisation. We are back to being barbarians. There are plenty of obese women with tatoos and green hair in my country too. It’s absolutely awful. Some sort of mental illness, I’m sure. And yes, it is the calm before the storm. I feel it too. And it is all over the Western World. We are living at the end of an era. I don’t know what comes next, but I’m sure it’s nothing good. Our civilisation is collapsing. No nice way to put it, but that’s the truth of it.
I was at a ‘health food store’ in a recovering part of down-town in the nearest thing to a big-city we have here. Two separate women exited the store and walked towards me in the parkinglot to get to their cars. Both were young and in athletic shape, well tanned, and wearing appropriate but revealing sportswear outfits. Both would normally be considered quite pretty and attractive…. except for the stupid [derriere] ugly [excremental] tattoo’s they both wore up and down their legs and arms. I mean stupid [tush] ugly dump tattoos. Swirling shapes, women’s faces (is that your mother?), flowers and roses and butterfly’s… All scrawled in thick black ink (that was harder to discern due to the heavily tanned skin), no coloring or shading that might be considered competent tattoo-ing…
Why? What causes someone with that genetic advantage to desecrate their temple of a body like that? None of the tat’s I saw were particularly impressive, nor meaningful. Just scribbled ink, with no real apparent purpose.
And there it was, then it dawned on me.
Simply being hot, attractive, athletic, toned, tanned, and well proportioned and dressed isn’t enough. They were easy 9’s, but still weren’t satisfied that men were gawking at them enough. They had to jazz up the skin they were so keen on displaying. Why? Aren’t you beautiful enough as you are? I mean, I’d eat the corn out of your [solid waste], so what are the men your age treating you like? Is that why women are so interested in older men all of a sudden?
You’re right on your last points/paragraphs. This really is going to be remembered as ‘the last summer’… Most people don’t get that yet. And sadly, if WE THE PEOPLE were determined enough to do it, we’d only have to hang 50 or 100 of the worst of the lot, the rest would slither away back under the rock they belong to.
I’m with you on the smartphones. Coupled with the explosion in anti-social media, one gets the impression people are spending more time updating one another about their lives than living them. I love my family and friends, but don’t need to hear from them every five minutes, or five days.
One British pub chain, Sam Smiths, has banned ‘phones altogether. A bit extreme; what if you want to tell somone you’re running late, or where you’re sitting in a crowded bar? But when I see a group of, presumably, friends paying attention to their devices instead of one another, I just find it rude, like the shop customer who expects you to serve them while they’re on the ‘phone (I make them wait till they’ve finished).
End of rant!
I agree with you.
The storm is coming.
Millions of “enrichers” are in the west and sooner or later they will strike at the orders of the WEF, Gates, etc.
I hope it happens while I can still fight.
But knowing our enemy, as soon as one dares to fight back you can bet that the police will arrive and you will be squashed like a bug and the press will tell everybody that you were a nazi.
“While I can still fight”
I hear you. I’ve said a thousand times, “Let’s get on with it, I ain’t getting any younger”.
The tats and piercings and gender bending are signs of a society under extreme pressure. Squeeze hard, the gaskets and seals fail, and all the goop oozes out. Lovely.
Excellent story mr. baron!
Farmville is near the college our son attended, but did not graduate from c. 30 yrs ago. All men;-) I wonder how they’re doing with all the tatted up grllz running around;-) A distant ancestor in my husband’s family was a post-Civil War grad. He was in the Confederate Army as a teenager from SW VA. He married Price sisters from the Farmville area, one dying young.
Having a tattoo is like wearing a T-shirt that says “LOOK AT ME! LOOK AT ME! LOOK AT ME! LOOK AT ME!”. Such people are narcissists, narcissists are crazy, and crazy people are to be avoided.
Same thing applies to piercings and weird hair colors/styles. It’s a cry for attention, and not in a good way.
I don’t think you are fully correct.
Though some seek attention, I know for a fact that people also understand the tattoos as “warning signs”.
In fact I know some men who had tattooed themselves because it does draw some respect, it shows you are a “fighter” and “don’t mess with me…”
Some say that tattoos and weird hair color are hallmark of toxic and poisonous creatures.
They are, primarily, a warning sign.
“I could look at all the men and boys and think, “I remember when I was that age.” Some of them, especially the ones with green hair and piercings and multiple tattoos, were hard to identify with…..When I was a kid, the only people who sported tattoos were men who had been in prison or the military. Outside of the circus, a tattooed woman was all but unheard of. When the first tattoos began to appear on women 35 or 40 years ago, the wearers of them were generally lower-class, or from a bohemian subculture. Over the next two decades the fad gradually moved up the class hierarchy, and they are now commonplace. For the last quarter-century I’ve tried to get used to them, but I just can’t manage to do it. Every time I see a tattooed woman I experience an involuntary jolt of distaste. I’m just too old — there’s nothing I can do about it.”
I concur and would add that as disturbing as tattoos are on young civilian/non-ex-cons, they pale in contrast to their embrace of [African-native-styled] body shrapnel/modification. Nose rings—historically used to chain feral bulls to fences, ear lobe expanders and other body modifications/mutilations intended to signify ones’ hipness, individuality and fashion-forward “thinking” suggest, to me, an acute mental pathology requiring immediate medical intervention to include 25mg of [oral] Thorazine daily.
“Oh Lydia, oh, Lydia, say have you met Lydia
Oh, Lydia, the tattooed lady
She has eyes that folks adore so
And a torso even more so
Lydia, oh, Lydia, that encyclopedia
Oh, Lydia, the queen of them all
On her back is the Battle of Waterloo
Beside it the Wreck of the Hesperus too
And proudly above the waves
The Red, White and Blue
You can learn a lot from Lydia”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4zRe_wvJw8
“Lydia hid her thoughts like a cat,
behind her cold eyes, buried deep in her fat…”
John Prine (RIP), Ballad of Donald and Lydia
I knew a. Person that got contaminated with hep C through tattoo
Very useless and dangerous scheme
Glad to see the strong reaction to your post. I just wanted to add that none of this would have happened if the despicable ACLU hadn’t made it their business to abolish “dress codes,” which still existed till relatively recently. Now the government is also following suit, actually passing laws against “hair discrimination” and such.
To add a nostalgic note- another thing I hated as a child were TV commercials (which were always ahead of the curve in depicting fashion and social trends) showing kids with huge mops of shaggy hair- something I never encountered in real life till high school (which was like going to an alien planet)!
I don’t know the reason for the tattoo phenomenon. I suppose it has something to do with the crisis of individuality. The erasure of personality in postmodernism, young people compensate by applying drawings. And also pain. A person does not realize it, but the “divine spark” (as the ancients said) contained in him literally screams from emotional pain. (This is on the metaphysical plane). Also, this generation is overly emotional. They were literally wound up with emotions when they were growing up. And they release these emotions from themselves through the pain that occurs in the process of tattooing the body. My daughter is very beautiful. She has light brown hair and green-blue eyes. She has an athletic figure. But these tattoos… such horror… And on the other hand… lately many young Russian women have accepted Islam. But this is not an option for my daughter. Her fiancé is as tattooed as she is. And it is better than if he were a Tajik.
“I don’t know the reason for the tattoo phenomenon.”
I reckon it’s a combination of the mob following the latest fashion craze coupled with the natural evolution of kids’ first attempts at [collectivist] “individualism”—trying to stick out from the crowd (by marching in absolute lock-step with it).
At its core, it seems to be a psychotic regression to wearing dungarees to school (in the ’50s), guys growing their hair long (in the ’60s/’70s) and “punk” piercings (in the ’90s). When you combine human nature with commie-toddlerism, you get…..well, infantile Bolsheviks with blue hair, who know everything and LIE about it. Why? Because just about everything they learned came from The Party’s “experts”; and just about everything The Party’s “experts” know is WRONG.
The one thing that does confound me is the [growing] number of baby-boomers, my generation, who’re LEARNING this (and other ‘toddler nonsense) from their sophomoric kids.
A little about my family. My daughter has been very obstinate since her teenage years. And I can’t ask her direct questions so as not to spoil the relationship. I can only indirectly observe her on social networks (she lives in another city). She has never had blue hair. Her natural color is light brown. She only varies between blonde and brunette. And I noticed that when everything is going well in her life, she has her natural hair color.
I don’t know the reason for the tattoo phenomenon. I suppose it has something to do with the crisis of individuality.
Historically – it was the sailors who spent long time alone, or the prisoners who had spent long time alone, or the soldiers who had spent long time alone…
…long time alone in a highly stressful and dangerous environment.
These are the people who would apply tattoos.
I vividly remember an NBA star, Afro-A, being asked about getting a tattoo back in the ’70s. He answered along the lines of’I’ve got this God given body and you want me to put ink into it?!?’ He was sooo right!
I quit high school to join the Marines. When I got a “USMC” tattoo on my upper bicep, it was a minor source of familial shame. That is almost 43 years past, and I cannot reconcile what is happening either.
No one cares about your perverted thoughts on the females that didn’t even notice you. You heard that right? Those girls didn’t even look at you. 🙂
This is obviously a gay jewish site.
“This is obviously a gay jewish site.”
…that attracts only Mensa members. Obviously.
Totally agree with everything you’ve observed. My husband and I often comment that we are a handful of people from our generation (older Gen-X) who do not have tats or body piercings. Our 3 children have followed our example and abstained from this as well. I think people thought at one point that they were being avant- guard, or iconoclast, or counter-culture, whatever you want to call it by getting tattoos. At some point this crossed over into the mundane, conformist behavior which one of our Millennial sons calls “cookie-cutter”. To be tattoo-free is now the counter-culture. God gave us an amazing physical form to temporarily house our soul, why would I deliberately degrade this vessel?
Tattoos are disgusting. And they look bad on older men and horrid on old women. I work retail and it is sad, repulsive, and weird when both sexes come in with fading tattoos and rings in their noses. I almost have to clear my head when I see a clean, non-tatted, well dressed woman show up in appropriate jewelry. We have gone from Katherine Hepburn, Grace Kelly, and Annette Funicello. all of whom were classy and clean and engaging to a horror show. I miss the days when we all knew WHO we were and WHAT SEX we were.
“We have gone from Katherine Hepburn, Grace Kelly, and Annette Funicello. all of whom were classy and clean and engaging to a horror show. I miss the days when we all knew WHO we were and WHAT SEX we were.”
Exactly. And well stated.
Last year, I sent Baron a handful of graphics made for (or from) fb posts. One of these depicted a young college co-ed from the ’60s side-by-side with her [Kafkaesque] counterpart from today. A literal beauty versus the beast display.
Unfortunately, we’re unable to post images here, but, hopefully, Baron will someday find that graphic sufficiently relevant to post on Gates.