davidthompson

You Will Practise Not Noticing

Further to recent rumblings in the comments, the Globe and Mail’s Phoebe Maltz Bovy offers what I believe is called a hot take:

Most will be familiar with the following scenario: a young girl, a teen or tween, gets in trouble with her school’s administration for a dress-code violation. Her supposed crime against decency: looking provocative. It will turn out that the girl was wearing some normal teenager outfit, jeans and a T-shirt or something equally boring, but had the audacity to attend school in a body with breasts, hips and a post-pubescent-looking behind… She is not choosing to draw attention to herself simply by existing. It’s the fault of the adults around her for sexualising her.

Given what follows, do keep that last line in mind.

But in a twist to the typical narrative, this time around, a high-school teacher in Oakville, Ont., made headlines for her curvaceous classroom presence.

That would be this chap’s curvaceous classroom presence.

“The conservative press and right-wing social media” are then mentioned, complete with implied hissing, on grounds that those irredeemable right-wingers have noticed something untoward:

A Bold Use Of Talc

We have of late been neglecting the arts, and that simply won’t do. By way of correction, here’s another chance to behold the feats of the Austrian choreographer and performance artist Ms Doris Uhlich, filmed earlier this year at Vienna’s Rabenhof Theatre. The video of Ms Uhlich’s performance – which, we’re assured, is a “vigorous and critical” work, a “bodily and textual discussion of flesh and opulence” - is presented below the fold. For reasons that may well become apparent.

Now Wash Your Hands

It’s with an almost nascent nostalgia that I recall the coining of the Gen Z “sexual recession”: a patronising concern that our youngest generation would be rendered psychosexually stunted, unable or unwilling to fornicate due to over-exposure to smartphones, social media and porn.

Yes, it’s the Guardian, where almost nascent nostalgia is a thing that exists.

Ciara Gaffney, a resident of Los Angeles and a “brand strategist,” is very excited – all but rendered incoherent – by a “cybersexual revolution” that, during the pandemic, is apparently occurring.

Flinging the Gregorian calendar into irrelevance, humanity will be bisected into pre-Covid-19 and post-Covid-19, and although many will ruminate on how we have changed, one thing is indisputable: the rose-coloured epoch before the coronavirus bitterly shamed the sending of nudes.

There’s more of that, a lot, in fact. You’d better used to it.

They were perceived as gauche, even pathetic. In the lockdown era, however, thirst traps and nudes are not only making a glorious, unrepentant comeback, but are now a form of emboldened agency in Gen Z’s blossoming sexual liberation.

For affirmation, Ms Gaffney links to Buzzfeed, where we’re told of an unattached lady named Alicia who sent nude photos to a female friend because she “wanted some validation.” Said friend was expected to “say nice things” and, as Alicia puts it, “hype me up.” Neurotic neediness, it turns out, is the new empowerment. What’s more, the coronavirus lockdown is “galvanising” this new “sexual revolution,” in which seemingly unhappy people share photos of their genitals, often far and wide, in the hope of being validated. It’s all terribly exciting, and radical, and brings our narrator to a state of agitation:

Elsewhere (237)

Joe Simonson on the latest innovation in anti-Trump “resistance”: 

Just Nips [are] the “official nipples of The Resistance movement,” according to founder Molly Borman. Started last January in time for the Women’s March, Just Nips provides synthetic nipples that you can wear over your bra or over your nipples. The product “cements the idea that women can and should do whatever they want,” Borman told me over the phone. In this case, “whatever they want” means making random people in public think you’re not wearing a bra — for empowerment or something. Just Nips’ release date is no coincidence. Borman sees her product as a direct challenge to President Trump’s administration. According to Borman, “a lot of women feel unsafe” under Trump, and her product helps provide comfort and “a safe space.”

Apparently, they’re “the WMDs of nipple erectors.” 

Sarah Hoyt on processed youth:

I don’t know who coined “Reeeee” for the sound progressives make when in the middle of a scream fest about some – mostly imaginary and unintended – offence. I know that for several months now my friends have been using it, usually when just having dealt with some idiot who keeps yammering on about moon ferrets. Or patriarchy. Or white supremacy… Thing is, if you’ve read about the Cultural Revolution… those too were a bunch of ignorant kids, taught only Maoism, and completely ignorant of what the peasants needed to do to survive and grow food. Their advice, their demands, their theories, were not only stupid but actually life-threatening. But people had to follow it because otherwise they’d be denounced and held up before revolutionary tribunals… The people who destroyed Chinese culture and productivity in the Cultural Revolution, and who filled the Yellow River with so many bodies that they washed up en masse on the shores of Macao (where my dad saw them), were nothing more and nothing less than weaponised Reeeee brigades.