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The Humans and I, Part 2
Jul. 12th, 2011 05:59 pmOn the walk from the stadium to the car, my shirt was soaked through from sitting in the sun watching baseball. I took it off.
"You just signaled that you're not from around here."
"Why?"
"Locals never take their shirts off in public. Even on a hot day, and even if doing manual labor, a gentleman may strip down to his undershirt, but that's as far as he'll go."
"Why?"
"It's gauche." <<slightly abbreviated version So... let me get this straight. An action based in the pursuit of tangible physical comfort is to be forgone by fiat of a pointless construct based on what other people think. Am I close? I don't know what really is behind the Anglo-American abhorrence of visible skin. Is it really nothing more than the millennia-old offspring of the 'nakedness' shame attributed to Adam and Eve in the very first Bible story? (And where did THAT come from?) Is it a remnant of pride as old as the first wanderers into the frozen North? "Haha, you Mediterranean types, look where WE can live because we can make these lovely, warm clothes!" Is it a random evolutionary adaptation, the search for human meaning behind which is de facto nonsensical? Whatever. Fuck unnecessary clothing and fuck humans who prescribe the wearing thereof. (BTW, that goes equally for women. I remember Anne Hairston saying, one filthy-hot August day, something like "I can't believe I need to wear a shirt to go outside on a day like today... but the moment I walk down the street I'm going to run into some shirtless dude with breasts bigger than mine!") Similarly, I remember having conversations with a variety of males, long ago in Delaware, on the subject of unshaven female anatomy. To a man, each respondent expressed repulsion. Wait, I kept protesting, I don't understand. Everybody KNOWS women are variably hairy, too... why do we have to pretend they don't grow hair on their legs or under their arms? Nope. Even when they could admit that the custom was intellectually absurd, these guys could not undo their training. Stupid fucking humans.
"You just signaled that you're not from around here."
"Why?"
"Locals never take their shirts off in public. Even on a hot day, and even if doing manual labor, a gentleman may strip down to his undershirt, but that's as far as he'll go."
"Why?"
"It's gauche." <<slightly abbreviated version So... let me get this straight. An action based in the pursuit of tangible physical comfort is to be forgone by fiat of a pointless construct based on what other people think. Am I close? I don't know what really is behind the Anglo-American abhorrence of visible skin. Is it really nothing more than the millennia-old offspring of the 'nakedness' shame attributed to Adam and Eve in the very first Bible story? (And where did THAT come from?) Is it a remnant of pride as old as the first wanderers into the frozen North? "Haha, you Mediterranean types, look where WE can live because we can make these lovely, warm clothes!" Is it a random evolutionary adaptation, the search for human meaning behind which is de facto nonsensical? Whatever. Fuck unnecessary clothing and fuck humans who prescribe the wearing thereof. (BTW, that goes equally for women. I remember Anne Hairston saying, one filthy-hot August day, something like "I can't believe I need to wear a shirt to go outside on a day like today... but the moment I walk down the street I'm going to run into some shirtless dude with breasts bigger than mine!") Similarly, I remember having conversations with a variety of males, long ago in Delaware, on the subject of unshaven female anatomy. To a man, each respondent expressed repulsion. Wait, I kept protesting, I don't understand. Everybody KNOWS women are variably hairy, too... why do we have to pretend they don't grow hair on their legs or under their arms? Nope. Even when they could admit that the custom was intellectually absurd, these guys could not undo their training. Stupid fucking humans.
