I think the tweet about the espresso maker and staub cookware has a point.
The origin of a registry was for like, 22 year olds starring a life together who didn't live together to get things they didn't have.
If you're late 20s or early 30s and have lived together for a while a accumulated high end things, that need no longer exists - it's more like gilding the Lily.
This is especially true if you're having a destination wedding - guests are spending a lot to just go in the first place.
Agreed! I send my regrets to bridal showers for couples who are clearly established and already living together. I’ll bring an appropriate cash gift to the wedding but I’m not going to sit at a brunch and watch someone who already has a mortgage and a dog unwrap her new ninja creami and wirecutter upgrade pick wine glasses. I refused to allow a bridal shower to be thrown in my own honor for this reason, it is so impolite, like having a second baby shower with a full scale registry for your second pregnancy 2 years after your first shower.
Exactly - I didn't want a bridal shower either. I owned a condo, had a dog, and owned a food processor. I also didn't have a registry because I had a 20 person wedding. If people gave me a check, that's kind, but I didn't ask for anything.
I feel this has become really unintentionally tacky, where people aren't thinking about the original intent.
I have cousins who are 30-36 getting married with very high end registries, in long term live in relationships, who make a lot of money and again, find it questionable.
Agreed. We got married into our 30s and already owned a home. We ultimately eloped, but if we had a normal wedding I wouldn't have done a gift registry. We already had so many things! (Including a Breville espresso machine lol) It does seem like gifts should be for younger, or low-income, couples.
For sure, and at least among my relatives, weddings have all become destination. They're not getting married in a hometown of most guests who are only buying a gift.
Yeah, my wife and I had a no-gifts wedding. We'd lived together for two years, made good money, and had way too much house stuff already. It felt so absurd to be soliciting gifts and money in exchange for a party.
Thank you! I mean, it’s nice to give people wedding gifts, but if they already live together, they don’t really need this stuff. Whereas when my husband and I got married, never having lived together before, we needed sheets for our bed and towels for our bathroom and basically everything you need in a house. Like, the only towels we owned were a few that we’d bought for college eight years ago, and the only dishes we owned were some coffee mugs my husband’s grandma had given him as Christmas presents over the years.
Yep we already owned a house and we're well established. We put "no gifts please, just your presence" on the invites (I realize I may be stepping into controversial territory here bc I recall an article about this topic in the past), which I didn't think would do the trick so I sent like three emails to everyone beforehand telling people "we really mean no gifts! Being nothing! No one else is going to, don't do it!". That worked, and no one brought a gift (which was our actual goal), except for one guy who was in his 70s and told me he couldn't bring himself not to, but it worked just fine with everyone else. I would've felt ridiculous if people did. Honestly by then we were already at full-garage, nowhere to put a thing point and the whole concept of needing starting life gifts would've been a joke.
That post about “food was food in the ‘90s” was clearly written by somebody whose parents didn’t have issues around food. I love my mom but she’s fallen for every “healthy” diet known to man.
“People look back at the Good Old Days; it was good because they were young! They act like it was because of the Day. No. YOUTH is good. That’s gone, and you’re fucked.” -Doug Stanhope
And remember Slimfast? I remember the ads being on all the time, a (thin) woman grinning beatifically as she opened her fridge full of nothing but cans of slimfast and, like, celery. Thankfully my mom didn’t go in for any of this stuff but my aunt did it all—slimfast, snackwells, those olestra chips that made your mouth feel like you’d eaten a candle, you name it.
Yeah, Slimfast was a thing in my house too. Also Nutrisystem, Jenny Craig, and good old Weight Watchers. It makes me sad how much mental energy some women put into trying to make their bodies do something they just don’t want to do.
My dad definitely stocked the cabinets with Snackwells as the "healthy" cookie option (hilarious in retrospect given the cookies still had plenty of sugar).
Like they were kind of a phenomenon. Apparently briefly snackwells sales topped sales for Oreos which is wild in retrospect.
Stuff like this is why I sort of post a lot to CCH that she should really consider how often what she sees on social media is really "real'. Like this post is so absurd that honestly my first thought was "this person is trolling and trying to be today's 'main character' and congrats you succeeded". Sometimes its bots, sometimes it's people literally pretending to be someone they're not. But I think a lot of time it's just people looking for their version of 15 minutes of fame.
Also likely someone who was a kid in the 90s. I know tons of kids have (and had) eating disorders as teens. But reality is your metabolism is faster as a kid. Meaning there is a decent chance you could eat all sorts of bad foods and not gain any fat in a way you just can’t as an adult (at least for most of us).
Just the 7 trillionth example of people’s nostalgia for the “good ole days” is just people yearning to be a kid again. Would be more funny if it wasn’t for the fact that this impulse the core reason the why Americans decided to be run by an authoritarian man baby and the basically the core part of fascism generally.
I think yea health food in the 90s with the lens of the 20s is junk food (fat free over processed everything!) But that doesn't mean that people weren't obsessed with healthy. It is a fair point that some subset angst over kids food more than in the 80s 90s
Yeah, it’s mainly shifted angst. In the ‘90s fat and sugar were Bad, so being healthy meant picking fat-free, sugar-free whatever. Then there was a while in the 2000s where nobody was eating carbs. Now it’s all about protein and avoiding chemicals. It is probably fair to say people worry about children’s nutrition more now, in part because overweight kids are so much more common.
I suppose you could make the distinction that the 90s diet culture was about being thin, whereas in this century, the rhetoric changed to “health” and “wellness.” “Wellness” is at best a meaningless marketing term. It was often total, dangerous, quackery. Don’t steam your vaginas, tan your scrotum, or get medically unnecessary IVs!
In the late 2010s/early 2020s, it seemed like there was a push to surrender. Our waistlines were inexorably expanding, though not as fast as the sanctimony on Twitter. Suddenly the marketing was “body-positivity” and “healthy at any size.” The latter is a dangerous lie. I’m sorry, but as someone who used to be quite overweight, it’s virtually impossible to be in perfect health when very heavy.
If “body-positivity” was actually about not judging fat people (for being fat*), I wholly support that. But as it gained steam, it, like a lot of what it was wound up in, felt like an enforced cultural orthodoxy. Putting fat women on the cover of the sports illustrated swimsuit edition is an editorial decision that you can make, but your target audience may not be huge fans of that! You can’t force people to be attracted to someone they are not.
People are good at lying to themselves. Revealed preferences are hide to hide, however. As soon as GLP-1s became available, it’s clear that almost everyone in the “Body positivity” movement would rather be thin. There a few holdouts, but as pricing comes down, I imagine even more people will be on them, which considering the stress that obesity related conditions take on healthcare resources, is fantastic.
In a way, the far more superficial 90s discourse was much more honest. “Don’t be fat. Fat people aren’t hot.”
*fat people are totally capable of being assholes and should be judge appropriately.
True story, I once took a class from a prof who stood up and said that she wanted to normalizarse use of the term “Vanillaism” to describe the privilege and increased social acceptance that non-kinky, straight, and monogamous people enjoy.
The next week, she issued a mea culpa because it has been brought to her attention that the term “Vanilla” was racist.
That was when I realized that perhaps the field of psychology was fucked, not in a vanilla way, but as if someone were tying common sense to the bed and choking the life out of it.
I have a hard time wrapping my head around how not being kinky is a privilege. I’m pretty sure people were just as into kink 50 years ago, they just didn’t feel the same compulsion to share it with the general public.
I have a hard time wrapping my head around a lot of things that were said in this class!
To be fair, I guess the most charitable interpretation (and one I mostly agree with) is that if kinky sex is a non-negotiable part of someone’s intimate life, they will have a harder time finding a partner who is into what they’re into, while also being compatible in other ways. I think that’s true regardless of how public or private a person is—you don’t have to put your kinks in your LinkedIn bio, but you eventually will need to sus out how your date feels about them.
Fair enough, but then how is being kinky different from something like being religious or childfree? Everything about someone is going to filter out a certain portion of the dating pool. I can see where extreme kink might make things more difficult than, say, being mainline Catholic and preferring a partner who shares your faith, but there are going to be degrees for everything.
I mean, sure, but the underlying sentiment is just “it is easier to be in the majority of the culture you are in, and being any kind of minority brings complications that most people wouldn’t be aware of.” As long as that isn’t taken to ridiculous identitarian extremes (and I am aware that far too often it is), that’s not a crazy thing to talk about.
It's hard to know for sure since this would involve literally trying to peer into the minds of people 50 years ago, but I'm going to guess that people were not into kink as much as they are today given this is something for most people you have to sort of discover about yourself. 1976 was not THAT long after the 60s feminist revolution, meaning that despite the 70s reputation for being so bacchanal, think it's likely that a whole lot of people and especially women were living in area or were in a situation where exploring your sexuality would result in a pretty decent degree of shame and opprobrium. So if you did have a proclivity towards a kink, there is a decent chance you didn't really discover this about yourself.
Think it's fair to say that some people are bit too willing to share their kinks or sexual proclivities with the public. There's a reason "TMI" became a thing. But also good to keep in mind that being open about your sexual proclivities became a thing for a reason. I'm thinking about the gay marriage fight. It's obviously about a lot of things, but lets face it, it's at least partly a proclamation of how you like to have sex. It's why gay pride is the way it is (or least partially why it's the way it is). Given your sexual desires until recently could be held against you as far as your basic rights as a citizen I get why and support in general the idea that people should open about sexuality and kinks even if there are times people take it too far especially in online spaces.
I am so envious of your productivity. I'm sitting here still mad at being awake before nine on a Sunday and you've got a whole ass article up.
So this Clavicular fella I wish I knew nothing about: I do not understand. I see a handsome, if troubled, young man. His nose was fine, his nose is fine. He reminds me of Amy Winehouse without so much heroin, and I worry we're going to witness a tragedy if no one steps up and cares about this kid. Who, to be fair, seems to make himself somewhat difficult to care about.
LOL on the 90s food. Come sit by me, youths, and I will regale you with stories of diet cookies that tasted like drywall and diet potato chips that would make you shit your pants. Afterwards, we'll talk about the psyop that was carob. 90s diet culture did have Tab, which tasted like carbonated aluminum and was delicious.
If it makes you feel better, these are scheduled! I often have a backlog of over 10 unpublished articles and I set them to publish when I can't write or don't have any ideas. I use my writing time very productively but I don't write EVERY morning ;) Thank you though!!
My favorite post(s) that might be the clearest example ever of the idea that nostalgia is hell of a drug is people who post about the "good ole days" of...2020. Because gas was so much cheaper or inflation was so low.
I honestly think anyone who cites 2020 as some year to feel nostalgic for with even 10% sincerity should actually genuinely consider seeking help.
Wow why would gas be so cheap when no one was going anywhere?! I swear to God I call this "people who can't see last the horizon". If they cannot extrapolate or see second order effects because they can't see it immediately right in front of them.
Per my husband who has a strange fascination with Clavicular, his parents actually tried to intervene multiple times when he was a teen and were unsuccessful. There are only so many times you can confiscate a 16 year old’s TRT when he keeps getting it delivered to new PO Boxes, apparently. But agreed, he seems deeply troubled and I feel bad for him.
Tab was a visitor from the 80s and kinda hard to get in the 90s.
When did the health worries about saccharine start? It had a distinctive taste, but I feel like there were vague health concerns about it in the 90s, but Nutrasweet was supposed to be the modern version.
My sister recently tried to pass off roasted carrots as hot dogs to her grandkids. The looks on their faces were mirror images of when our mother proudly presented us with carob cookies - "just like Tollhouse chocolate chips, I promise!"
The tweet about '90s food had the right spirit but missed the mark. Diet culture was very much alive and well in the '90s, with all the weird processed foods to accommodate the latest trends. But what was very different from the current state of things is you could just...bring food to an event without worrying about a variety of allergens or diet restrictions. When you planned a dinner party, you didn't find yourself juggling how to accommodate different attendees who include vegan, dairy-free, gluten-free, and nut allergies. And then there's the one who's just gonna ask if everything is organic. This was decidedly not a thing in the '90s. For the most part, people just ate the food that was put in front of them at social events without making all sorts of special requests.
I wonder when the movement to take allergens out of baby’s food until x arbitrary age started? Seems like a very ill thought out idea from a scientific perspective.
Avoiding common allergens for babies seems to be a failed experiment. The idea was that this could prevent allergies but it seems to have done the opposite. Now the advice is to intentionally provide a lot of exposures to things like peanuts or eggs for babies under one year and childhood food allergies are decreasing in prevalence.
I worked in an immunolgy lab for several years in the '00's and every talk about food allergies mentioned that it was nearly impossible to induce a food allergy if the animal was exposed early in life. We could not understand how the APA had decided that delayed introduction was a good hting. My colleagues who were parents said this was one of those cases where you ignored the pediatrician and encouraged your friends to do so as well.
Tide's turning on that one. When my 8 year old was a baby we were advised to wait, but my 2 year old was recommended to start allergens early and often
I hate mushrooms. Hate hate hate. When the delightful parents of one of my grad school friends put me up for a night when I was on a road trip with a cat (i.e., hotels would be hard), there was a salad with dinner. You know what? I just ate the fucking mushrooms.
That might be the real change — not so much people worried about health less, as that it was socially expected to shut up and eat what was in front of you. The only special diets I remember being aware of were vegetarian and being Kosher.
Has that really changed that much though? Or is it just that a lot of us are remembering this era as children, when we’re being told to shut up and do things more often in general? I’m sure plenty of parents are still teaching their kids that it’s polite to eat what you’re served, certainly in other people’s homes. But yeah, there is also more awareness of dietary restrictions in general and expectation that they be accommodated. Within reason though, I think this is a good thing.
I'm the king of "don't overromanticize the good ole days". In fact, as I've hit middle age this mindset has only strengthened in my head as given my age the "good ole days" are a time period I actually remember now. I honestly think we underrate how much the fact the median age of the typical American has increased from 30 in 1980 to almost 40 today explains an astonishing amount of politics, culture and why the country is the way it is.
But that's a big run up to say, there really are some things that are worse than "back in the day" (even if most things on net are better) and one of those is issues with food allergies.
There were vegetarians and vegans then too though. I think it just used to be more the norm that they wouldn’t have anything to eat at events. There’s also way more medical understanding now of conditions like celiac disease. Obviously some people get into ridiculous, faddish restrictive diets that are annoying to deal with but I actually think it’s mostly a good thing that there is now more expectation that people’s dietary restrictions be accommodated. I eat everything but I take pride in hosting meals where everyone can eat well.
Exactly. People had their diets but they didn't inflict them on others and moralize about them constantly. It's amazing how many people think they are morally superior for avoiding carbs or whatever shit.
There's a real life Hapsburg on twitter and besides actually being rich the yearning for a life that could have been is palpable and delicious. Like yea sorry your ancestors had the ear of the pope. The new one is from Chicago and you need to get a job.
Did I just glance down my shirt to check out the size of my nipples? I will never tell.
Lord the child-free wedding discourse; I want to gouge my eyes out. I keep reminding everyone here of my aged state, but I started going to weddings in the sixties with my parents. What is notable is how many weddings my parents attended without me, or my siblings, because they were adult-only affairs. It was common then that evening weddings in fancy places - fancy fancy with catering and candles - were for the old folks, and if you had a wedding in a church basement or VFW Hall the whole family would come and sometimes bring a dish.
What was different is that no one really thought much about it.
Child-free weddings are just a choice, not some horrible Gen Z trend. Now, the bridal couple deciding on a theme and a vibe and setting a dress code that says you must wear specific colors (some form of "frothy purple" sticks in my mind) is definitely a trend. Not a good one, either.
People's experiences must be very different -my parents never went to weddings without me. We just went into family weddings where kids were invited, and frankly, they were all at churches which meant morning or midday.
Part of why weddings have become a child free thing is the timing, I think, due to an increasingly secular culture - they're night parties vs day time church.
The kid-free weddings in my own extended family feel weird to me because I went to my cousins' parents' weddings, and they're the only family reunion, but I can't go, because I have a family. Feels strange !
I think it depends whether you grew up in a religious environment. It's also regional and class-based. However, I assure you in the past there were plenty of adult only weddings. This isn't a new trend.
I mean, we were Catholic, but barely. We hit up church about once a month, when my mom remembered we had to. My extended family was culturally Catholic but so far from religious it's not funny. We were the family of swearing and drinking and divorces (not my folks, though, devoted until death).
All our parents got together frequently without us - headed to the theater, out to hit up a bar, neighborhood cocktail parties, the occasional wedding, etc. We kept babysitters in business. The older cousins made bank watching the younger ones.
However, it's different for people in different environments.
Mormon weddings/receptions, for example, are very family focused. Lots of open houses during the day, with very little, if any focus on adult entertainment. Southern weddings are often in people's backyards with half the neighborhood showing up, and in my husband's small town every wedding was held at one or two churches with the reception held at the VFW - food provided by the local ladies auxiliary. Entire families would just drop by. He loved it, and went to practically every wedding that was held in that town. He learned to polka at three! He ended up having a strong dislike for religion but he does have super fond memories of the weddings.
People's experiences are different and we tend to hold the traditions we grew up with close. But they aren't the sum total of human experience at all.
I think part of what's happening nowadays is that social media is causing young people to choose to get married in the celebrity style they see on Instagram instead of doing what's normal for their family and region, which is causing a ton of culture clash.
This is an excellent point. Weddings are definitely fancier and more of an EVENT. Destination weddings, for example, bring a lot agita to family dynamics.
Oh for sure, I agree. The destination wedding stuff in areas with really expensive and limited hotels is just brutal, and my boomer aunts and uncles are always trying to talk my cousins into being more considerate and just get rebuffed!
My aunts got married in their hometowns or where they lived - like in NYC, where you married at a church and then walked to a reception.
Yes, the traditional way was to have a local wedding and a distant honeymoon for just the couple. I don't know exactly why weddings have become so combined with honeymoons.
Mormon weddings are not family focused though - the ceremony is in the temple and that excludes anyone who hasn't gone through the temple yet, so anyone under 18.
I grew up in a large Irish Catholic family in CT spread across NYC and NJ. Kids were at all weddings. I never heard of a kid free wedding until adulthood.
True, only certain people can go to the Temple, but the receptions are very family and community-focused! Even I, a virulent atheist, have been invited to a couple and truly enjoyed them.
My husband was shocked I didn't want to invite his entire town to our wedding, so I understand ingrained customs for sure. It's just that our experiences don't encompass the entire world.
I'm fine with people liking what they like, whether it be child-focused or child-free or just child-allowed weddings. What I push back on is that it's something new or a horrible, selfish Gen Z trend.
I actually do view it as a younger Millennial and below trend. I'm an elder millennial and my own friends didn't do this. It's a norm for like, people born in 1990 and beyond.
The reason it comes across to me that way is that my own family was big, very kid focused, and children were always invited to big holidays, anniversary parties, and weddings.
Now my own cousins that I babysat have child-free events, and it's true it's their choice, but my single cousins act like my not going means I don't want to hang out with them. Like literally, a 35 year old single cousin of mine acted like I must not want to go when her parents picked her up, drove her, then paid for her hotel on an expensive island - in essence, being in a kid role herself, whereas I would have to arrange travel, accommodations, childcare, etc. There's a real lack of awareness of what a logistical nightmare that is, and I do see a connection to younger people acting more childlike at older ages - at least in my family .
I would say it rings true. I was talking specifically about weddings, not protracted youth, which I do think is a current thing. I mean, by age 25 my mother and aunts were all married and had at least one kid. My dad and uncles were older because they had been fighting actual wars, but there were well entrenched in the workforce by at least 30. Now, that I think of it, that's probably why they were all drinking so much and dying to get out of the house without the kids.....
I suspect that the real answer to “Do men have unrealistic, porn-influenced standards for women’s bodies” is that men *who are actually having sex* (and thus are actually in a position to be unbothered by Flora’s body hair or anatomy) are way less likely to. Meanwhile, men who are inside online all day ruminating resentfully about how they’re not getting laid are posting about how women are too gross for them to touch anyway. This is not unrelated to your recent article about how the internet skews people’s perceptions of the opposite sex!
And lamenting those men’s “unrealistic standards” probably mixes cause and effect: if and when (and in most cases, when) they start having sex, they will see that having it with normal looking women is pretty boss, and stop being weird about it.
The “standards” thing is usually either a posture or self-delusion to avoid framing the problem as “I am unsexy.” These guys would be totally psyched to have sex with a girl they would call “mid” online. It’s all a bunch of kayfabe.
My suspicion is its a lot like the whole video games debate from the 90s (apropos of one of the topics). Most of the dire warnings about video games on men were complete garbage. Specifically, the idea that violent video games were causing men to be more violent in real life. But too much gaming does have negative effects for the same reason too much porn usage can be bad but also the same reason that too much social media usage can be bad; if you're use of said product is harming your ability to have real relationships THAT is the real problem.
Sorry but the aristocrat soul guy is right and his detractors are wrong. Aristocrats ARE born, they do NOT get jobs, they do NOT accomplish things, and for the love of God they do not "generate income" like electricity. Sorry to this guy that his body was born into a nation lacking a natural aristocracy and must toil. I can relate personally, my soul was made to drift around like a cottonwood seed but God saw fit to make me out of meat.
well.... that's the mythology. Hasnt been the reality in centuries.
The reality is since 20th century aristos have jobs (except the national royalties). Oddly enough i know several Bourbons, the real ones. They're professional class people. By the 19th century the aristos no longer could afford to not generate income (the whole 19th century literature and reality thing of aristos marrying American industrial families or local families is from that).
After two weddings of my own, here's why I find the Childless Wedding trend selfish to the point of narcissistic. I was raised with the idea that a wedding ceremony was a religious service, and a reception was the time to share the celebration of your commitment with family and special friends. With regard to the wedding itself, a religious service is simply not something you deny entry to, ever. Not letting little kids into a wedding ceremony is irreconcilable with "Allow the little children to come to me."
As far as the reception goes, my wife to be and I made all kinds of "annoying" accommodations for people we loved or cared about. That included: elderly relatives, people with physical limitations, people with financial limitations, my current wife's divorced parents who still hated each other, my maternal grandmother who was a religious teetotaler and offended by the champagne toast...my second wedding was during the height of Covid, and we had to accommodate maskers and anti-maskers. And yeah - we also had to accommodate little kids.
Point was, we cared about all these people and they cared about us, and we all wanted to celebrate together, regardless of what quirky beliefs we have or what logistical challenges made things more difficult. And then we went on our honeymoon and pretty much ignored the world for 5 days.
Obviously some people don't see it this way, but I'm happy to dig my heels in and hold the opinion that "celebrating with the people you love, warts, inconveniences, toddlers, and all is simply the better way."
For most people, setting up their wedding is full of choices, many driven mostly by logistics. The time of day, size of venue, the location, the budget, and how many people might have to travel. Also, many weddings aren't religious, so their considerations will be different from yours. I think the last three weddings I attended were all officiated by either the couple's friends or family, not a pastor/priest in sight. Certainly no religious overtones, either.
I'm glad you were able to have the wedding of your choice. It sounds like you enjoyed it and made your guests happy and comfortable. I celebrated with kids at my wedding, too, but I wouldn't label those who choose differently as narcissistic.
I think child-free weddings are fine; you just gotta accept that if you come from a big family where that's not the norm it's gonna come with a social cost, because a lot of the people coming to the wedding are probably related and many people rely on family to watch their kids for non-kid-friendly events. My wife's family is of Mexican descent, in twenty years together I've never seen them have a "no kids" event and there would probably be big feelings if someone did, but there's nothing inherently wrong with it.
Now, I do disagree a little bit about the wedding being for the couple. The *marriage* is for the couple. The *honeymoon* is for the couple. The wedding is basically a party you're throwing to celebrate your marriage that is *for* the guests to have fun. It's like a housewarming party... yes, it's your home, and yeah, you live there, but really you're throwing it to show it off for your guests.
I agree, the reception should be geared toward making guests comfortable and letting everyone have fun. So if you come from an environment where whole families come to weddings and you decide to throw some upscale adult only event, be prepared for some grumbling and some RSVPs no.
Again, I support anyone's decision to have the wedding reception of their choosing, but if it falls outside your social group's norms you might be on an uphill slope.
Right now my neighbor is working hard to talk her daughter out of a Black Tie reception since the extended family is full of people who have never in their lives worn a tuxedo.
I see both sides of the wedding discourse but as a parent to very small kids, please don't invite my children to your wedding! I want to have a nice time and changing diapers and managing crayons at the function is not fun!
Our wedding was canceled because of Covid but our plan was 14 y/o and up because that was the age of my youngest 1st cousin. It also let us draw a neat cut off between 1st and 2nd cousins.
But that would be a choice you could make. If they're invited, you can just not bring them. I keep declining my cousins' child-free destination weddings that are basically family reunions most of my family aren't invited to. It's really awkward that this is somehow considered completely reasonable vs s huge, unrealistic ask when out of state travel is involved.
Agree!"I maintain “vanilla” is not nauseating! “Poop-flavored” is nauseating! Vanilla is delicious!"
I love vanilla icecream and pudding and don't want any of the weirdo flavors added. Vanilla is nice comfort flavor, delicious flavor and comfort is good.
I think the “porn standards” thing is not very salient, no more than it was when I was a kid, with various kinds of lionized unattainable bods being further enhanced in photoshop for magazine covers. I think that guys watch porn, and people in porn are hot, because, why wouldn’t they be? People who star in movies are hot. Women don’t expect to have Glenn Powell or Jacob Elordi fall for them just because they see it in the movies. The step from “people watch hot people have sex -> people only want to have sex with hot people” is not really empirically supported! It’s just assumed.
And all the stuff about sex being violent is based on a minority… I don’t think there is any evidence that shit is the rule and not the exception. And the most popular porn, by far, is the porn where people are some kind of flirtatious with each other and then have “vanilla” sex.
Man and it’s like this in every issue in the world at once, where people are being presented with this twisted fantasy where normal opinions don’t exist, they are surrounded by extremists, and they must pick a side. Because of algorithms. We need to stop with this!
Is it passivity??? I thought Hot Still Youngish Moms since other categories seem to be things like also Young Guy Scores with Stepmom. Hardly an expert here but passivity isn't the phrase that comes to mind from my vague understanding.
It is generally the MILFs who are the sexual aggressors in that genre. I mean, doesn’t it make sense that men who are sexually passive (which most adult virgins are by definition) would like to see a relatable situation lead to someone getting laid?
I also think the average MILF actually manages to clock in in her mid 30s these days, it used to be more common for them to be 25 year olds who just got too old to play “teen.”
I think the tweet about the espresso maker and staub cookware has a point.
The origin of a registry was for like, 22 year olds starring a life together who didn't live together to get things they didn't have.
If you're late 20s or early 30s and have lived together for a while a accumulated high end things, that need no longer exists - it's more like gilding the Lily.
This is especially true if you're having a destination wedding - guests are spending a lot to just go in the first place.
Agreed! I send my regrets to bridal showers for couples who are clearly established and already living together. I’ll bring an appropriate cash gift to the wedding but I’m not going to sit at a brunch and watch someone who already has a mortgage and a dog unwrap her new ninja creami and wirecutter upgrade pick wine glasses. I refused to allow a bridal shower to be thrown in my own honor for this reason, it is so impolite, like having a second baby shower with a full scale registry for your second pregnancy 2 years after your first shower.
Exactly - I didn't want a bridal shower either. I owned a condo, had a dog, and owned a food processor. I also didn't have a registry because I had a 20 person wedding. If people gave me a check, that's kind, but I didn't ask for anything.
I feel this has become really unintentionally tacky, where people aren't thinking about the original intent.
I have cousins who are 30-36 getting married with very high end registries, in long term live in relationships, who make a lot of money and again, find it questionable.
Agreed. We got married into our 30s and already owned a home. We ultimately eloped, but if we had a normal wedding I wouldn't have done a gift registry. We already had so many things! (Including a Breville espresso machine lol) It does seem like gifts should be for younger, or low-income, couples.
For sure, and at least among my relatives, weddings have all become destination. They're not getting married in a hometown of most guests who are only buying a gift.
Would be positively bonkers to have a gift registry with a destination wedding. We know y'all got money!
It would be funny to buy the gift and bring it on the plane. They can figure out how to transport a bunch of kitchenware back from Cabo.
Yeah, my wife and I had a no-gifts wedding. We'd lived together for two years, made good money, and had way too much house stuff already. It felt so absurd to be soliciting gifts and money in exchange for a party.
Thank you! I mean, it’s nice to give people wedding gifts, but if they already live together, they don’t really need this stuff. Whereas when my husband and I got married, never having lived together before, we needed sheets for our bed and towels for our bathroom and basically everything you need in a house. Like, the only towels we owned were a few that we’d bought for college eight years ago, and the only dishes we owned were some coffee mugs my husband’s grandma had given him as Christmas presents over the years.
Exactly, needing to finish a home together vs looking to upgrade your bedding or get new things.
Yep we already owned a house and we're well established. We put "no gifts please, just your presence" on the invites (I realize I may be stepping into controversial territory here bc I recall an article about this topic in the past), which I didn't think would do the trick so I sent like three emails to everyone beforehand telling people "we really mean no gifts! Being nothing! No one else is going to, don't do it!". That worked, and no one brought a gift (which was our actual goal), except for one guy who was in his 70s and told me he couldn't bring himself not to, but it worked just fine with everyone else. I would've felt ridiculous if people did. Honestly by then we were already at full-garage, nowhere to put a thing point and the whole concept of needing starting life gifts would've been a joke.
That post about “food was food in the ‘90s” was clearly written by somebody whose parents didn’t have issues around food. I love my mom but she’s fallen for every “healthy” diet known to man.
“People look back at the Good Old Days; it was good because they were young! They act like it was because of the Day. No. YOUTH is good. That’s gone, and you’re fucked.” -Doug Stanhope
Why did this make me laugh that hard?
Snackwells popped immediately into my head.
And remember Slimfast? I remember the ads being on all the time, a (thin) woman grinning beatifically as she opened her fridge full of nothing but cans of slimfast and, like, celery. Thankfully my mom didn’t go in for any of this stuff but my aunt did it all—slimfast, snackwells, those olestra chips that made your mouth feel like you’d eaten a candle, you name it.
Yeah, Slimfast was a thing in my house too. Also Nutrisystem, Jenny Craig, and good old Weight Watchers. It makes me sad how much mental energy some women put into trying to make their bodies do something they just don’t want to do.
And the Special K diet! "A bowl for breakfast, another for lunch, and then a healthy dinner." LOL. Totally normal stuff.
I still fondly remember those Snackwell’s Vienna fingers and those chocolate-marshmallow cookies. Fat-free dairy, however, was tragic.
Oh yeah - the chocolate marshmallow ones! Hhhmmmm…
My dad definitely stocked the cabinets with Snackwells as the "healthy" cookie option (hilarious in retrospect given the cookies still had plenty of sugar).
Like they were kind of a phenomenon. Apparently briefly snackwells sales topped sales for Oreos which is wild in retrospect.
Stuff like this is why I sort of post a lot to CCH that she should really consider how often what she sees on social media is really "real'. Like this post is so absurd that honestly my first thought was "this person is trolling and trying to be today's 'main character' and congrats you succeeded". Sometimes its bots, sometimes it's people literally pretending to be someone they're not. But I think a lot of time it's just people looking for their version of 15 minutes of fame.
Also likely someone who was a kid in the 90s. I know tons of kids have (and had) eating disorders as teens. But reality is your metabolism is faster as a kid. Meaning there is a decent chance you could eat all sorts of bad foods and not gain any fat in a way you just can’t as an adult (at least for most of us).
Just the 7 trillionth example of people’s nostalgia for the “good ole days” is just people yearning to be a kid again. Would be more funny if it wasn’t for the fact that this impulse the core reason the why Americans decided to be run by an authoritarian man baby and the basically the core part of fascism generally.
I think yea health food in the 90s with the lens of the 20s is junk food (fat free over processed everything!) But that doesn't mean that people weren't obsessed with healthy. It is a fair point that some subset angst over kids food more than in the 80s 90s
Yeah, it’s mainly shifted angst. In the ‘90s fat and sugar were Bad, so being healthy meant picking fat-free, sugar-free whatever. Then there was a while in the 2000s where nobody was eating carbs. Now it’s all about protein and avoiding chemicals. It is probably fair to say people worry about children’s nutrition more now, in part because overweight kids are so much more common.
YES. I vividly remember when a bowl of plain angel hair pasta with fat-free, jarred marinara sauce was considered a healthy meal option.
I seriously doubt this person remembers the 90s.
I suppose you could make the distinction that the 90s diet culture was about being thin, whereas in this century, the rhetoric changed to “health” and “wellness.” “Wellness” is at best a meaningless marketing term. It was often total, dangerous, quackery. Don’t steam your vaginas, tan your scrotum, or get medically unnecessary IVs!
In the late 2010s/early 2020s, it seemed like there was a push to surrender. Our waistlines were inexorably expanding, though not as fast as the sanctimony on Twitter. Suddenly the marketing was “body-positivity” and “healthy at any size.” The latter is a dangerous lie. I’m sorry, but as someone who used to be quite overweight, it’s virtually impossible to be in perfect health when very heavy.
If “body-positivity” was actually about not judging fat people (for being fat*), I wholly support that. But as it gained steam, it, like a lot of what it was wound up in, felt like an enforced cultural orthodoxy. Putting fat women on the cover of the sports illustrated swimsuit edition is an editorial decision that you can make, but your target audience may not be huge fans of that! You can’t force people to be attracted to someone they are not.
People are good at lying to themselves. Revealed preferences are hide to hide, however. As soon as GLP-1s became available, it’s clear that almost everyone in the “Body positivity” movement would rather be thin. There a few holdouts, but as pricing comes down, I imagine even more people will be on them, which considering the stress that obesity related conditions take on healthcare resources, is fantastic.
In a way, the far more superficial 90s discourse was much more honest. “Don’t be fat. Fat people aren’t hot.”
*fat people are totally capable of being assholes and should be judge appropriately.
Back then we were even worried about the fats being trans!
Palm oil - the devil!
True story, I once took a class from a prof who stood up and said that she wanted to normalizarse use of the term “Vanillaism” to describe the privilege and increased social acceptance that non-kinky, straight, and monogamous people enjoy.
The next week, she issued a mea culpa because it has been brought to her attention that the term “Vanilla” was racist.
That was when I realized that perhaps the field of psychology was fucked, not in a vanilla way, but as if someone were tying common sense to the bed and choking the life out of it.
I have a hard time wrapping my head around how not being kinky is a privilege. I’m pretty sure people were just as into kink 50 years ago, they just didn’t feel the same compulsion to share it with the general public.
I have a hard time wrapping my head around a lot of things that were said in this class!
To be fair, I guess the most charitable interpretation (and one I mostly agree with) is that if kinky sex is a non-negotiable part of someone’s intimate life, they will have a harder time finding a partner who is into what they’re into, while also being compatible in other ways. I think that’s true regardless of how public or private a person is—you don’t have to put your kinks in your LinkedIn bio, but you eventually will need to sus out how your date feels about them.
Fair enough, but then how is being kinky different from something like being religious or childfree? Everything about someone is going to filter out a certain portion of the dating pool. I can see where extreme kink might make things more difficult than, say, being mainline Catholic and preferring a partner who shares your faith, but there are going to be degrees for everything.
I mean, sure, but the underlying sentiment is just “it is easier to be in the majority of the culture you are in, and being any kind of minority brings complications that most people wouldn’t be aware of.” As long as that isn’t taken to ridiculous identitarian extremes (and I am aware that far too often it is), that’s not a crazy thing to talk about.
It's hard to know for sure since this would involve literally trying to peer into the minds of people 50 years ago, but I'm going to guess that people were not into kink as much as they are today given this is something for most people you have to sort of discover about yourself. 1976 was not THAT long after the 60s feminist revolution, meaning that despite the 70s reputation for being so bacchanal, think it's likely that a whole lot of people and especially women were living in area or were in a situation where exploring your sexuality would result in a pretty decent degree of shame and opprobrium. So if you did have a proclivity towards a kink, there is a decent chance you didn't really discover this about yourself.
Think it's fair to say that some people are bit too willing to share their kinks or sexual proclivities with the public. There's a reason "TMI" became a thing. But also good to keep in mind that being open about your sexual proclivities became a thing for a reason. I'm thinking about the gay marriage fight. It's obviously about a lot of things, but lets face it, it's at least partly a proclamation of how you like to have sex. It's why gay pride is the way it is (or least partially why it's the way it is). Given your sexual desires until recently could be held against you as far as your basic rights as a citizen I get why and support in general the idea that people should open about sexuality and kinks even if there are times people take it too far especially in online spaces.
I am so envious of your productivity. I'm sitting here still mad at being awake before nine on a Sunday and you've got a whole ass article up.
So this Clavicular fella I wish I knew nothing about: I do not understand. I see a handsome, if troubled, young man. His nose was fine, his nose is fine. He reminds me of Amy Winehouse without so much heroin, and I worry we're going to witness a tragedy if no one steps up and cares about this kid. Who, to be fair, seems to make himself somewhat difficult to care about.
LOL on the 90s food. Come sit by me, youths, and I will regale you with stories of diet cookies that tasted like drywall and diet potato chips that would make you shit your pants. Afterwards, we'll talk about the psyop that was carob. 90s diet culture did have Tab, which tasted like carbonated aluminum and was delicious.
If it makes you feel better, these are scheduled! I often have a backlog of over 10 unpublished articles and I set them to publish when I can't write or don't have any ideas. I use my writing time very productively but I don't write EVERY morning ;) Thank you though!!
Ah! I assumed that was the case and still used your post as motivation to get things done. It's always a delight to wake up to new CHH!
I saw a tweet where someone was like "people in 2045: The 2020's were awesome! We just ate Chipotle and played Roblox"
My favorite post(s) that might be the clearest example ever of the idea that nostalgia is hell of a drug is people who post about the "good ole days" of...2020. Because gas was so much cheaper or inflation was so low.
I honestly think anyone who cites 2020 as some year to feel nostalgic for with even 10% sincerity should actually genuinely consider seeking help.
"gAs WaS sO cHeAP"
Wow why would gas be so cheap when no one was going anywhere?! I swear to God I call this "people who can't see last the horizon". If they cannot extrapolate or see second order effects because they can't see it immediately right in front of them.
Per my husband who has a strange fascination with Clavicular, his parents actually tried to intervene multiple times when he was a teen and were unsuccessful. There are only so many times you can confiscate a 16 year old’s TRT when he keeps getting it delivered to new PO Boxes, apparently. But agreed, he seems deeply troubled and I feel bad for him.
Tab was a visitor from the 80s and kinda hard to get in the 90s.
When did the health worries about saccharine start? It had a distinctive taste, but I feel like there were vague health concerns about it in the 90s, but Nutrasweet was supposed to be the modern version.
Carob. Good memories.
My sister recently tried to pass off roasted carrots as hot dogs to her grandkids. The looks on their faces were mirror images of when our mother proudly presented us with carob cookies - "just like Tollhouse chocolate chips, I promise!"
The tweet about '90s food had the right spirit but missed the mark. Diet culture was very much alive and well in the '90s, with all the weird processed foods to accommodate the latest trends. But what was very different from the current state of things is you could just...bring food to an event without worrying about a variety of allergens or diet restrictions. When you planned a dinner party, you didn't find yourself juggling how to accommodate different attendees who include vegan, dairy-free, gluten-free, and nut allergies. And then there's the one who's just gonna ask if everything is organic. This was decidedly not a thing in the '90s. For the most part, people just ate the food that was put in front of them at social events without making all sorts of special requests.
I wonder when the movement to take allergens out of baby’s food until x arbitrary age started? Seems like a very ill thought out idea from a scientific perspective.
Avoiding common allergens for babies seems to be a failed experiment. The idea was that this could prevent allergies but it seems to have done the opposite. Now the advice is to intentionally provide a lot of exposures to things like peanuts or eggs for babies under one year and childhood food allergies are decreasing in prevalence.
Which is what you would have predicted given the known mechanism of immune tolerance. I’m not sure why they tried it.
I worked in an immunolgy lab for several years in the '00's and every talk about food allergies mentioned that it was nearly impossible to induce a food allergy if the animal was exposed early in life. We could not understand how the APA had decided that delayed introduction was a good hting. My colleagues who were parents said this was one of those cases where you ignored the pediatrician and encouraged your friends to do so as well.
Tide's turning on that one. When my 8 year old was a baby we were advised to wait, but my 2 year old was recommended to start allergens early and often
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I wish I had thought of your name honestly.
I think I came up with it to comment on an Astral Codex Ten post lmao
I hate mushrooms. Hate hate hate. When the delightful parents of one of my grad school friends put me up for a night when I was on a road trip with a cat (i.e., hotels would be hard), there was a salad with dinner. You know what? I just ate the fucking mushrooms.
That might be the real change — not so much people worried about health less, as that it was socially expected to shut up and eat what was in front of you. The only special diets I remember being aware of were vegetarian and being Kosher.
Has that really changed that much though? Or is it just that a lot of us are remembering this era as children, when we’re being told to shut up and do things more often in general? I’m sure plenty of parents are still teaching their kids that it’s polite to eat what you’re served, certainly in other people’s homes. But yeah, there is also more awareness of dietary restrictions in general and expectation that they be accommodated. Within reason though, I think this is a good thing.
In fairness, this at least partly and maybe in large measure because stuff like gluten allergies are way more common then they used to be. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3908912/
I'm the king of "don't overromanticize the good ole days". In fact, as I've hit middle age this mindset has only strengthened in my head as given my age the "good ole days" are a time period I actually remember now. I honestly think we underrate how much the fact the median age of the typical American has increased from 30 in 1980 to almost 40 today explains an astonishing amount of politics, culture and why the country is the way it is.
But that's a big run up to say, there really are some things that are worse than "back in the day" (even if most things on net are better) and one of those is issues with food allergies.
There were vegetarians and vegans then too though. I think it just used to be more the norm that they wouldn’t have anything to eat at events. There’s also way more medical understanding now of conditions like celiac disease. Obviously some people get into ridiculous, faddish restrictive diets that are annoying to deal with but I actually think it’s mostly a good thing that there is now more expectation that people’s dietary restrictions be accommodated. I eat everything but I take pride in hosting meals where everyone can eat well.
Exactly. People had their diets but they didn't inflict them on others and moralize about them constantly. It's amazing how many people think they are morally superior for avoiding carbs or whatever shit.
The aristocrat guy must be the male equivalent of the "soft life" girl. Was going to happen sooner or later.
Wonder if that guy is from an aristocratic family because otherwise, back to the fields pleb
There's a real life Hapsburg on twitter and besides actually being rich the yearning for a life that could have been is palpable and delicious. Like yea sorry your ancestors had the ear of the pope. The new one is from Chicago and you need to get a job.
Wonder if that guy is from an artisocratic family because otherwise, back to the fields pleb
Did I just glance down my shirt to check out the size of my nipples? I will never tell.
Lord the child-free wedding discourse; I want to gouge my eyes out. I keep reminding everyone here of my aged state, but I started going to weddings in the sixties with my parents. What is notable is how many weddings my parents attended without me, or my siblings, because they were adult-only affairs. It was common then that evening weddings in fancy places - fancy fancy with catering and candles - were for the old folks, and if you had a wedding in a church basement or VFW Hall the whole family would come and sometimes bring a dish.
What was different is that no one really thought much about it.
Child-free weddings are just a choice, not some horrible Gen Z trend. Now, the bridal couple deciding on a theme and a vibe and setting a dress code that says you must wear specific colors (some form of "frothy purple" sticks in my mind) is definitely a trend. Not a good one, either.
People's experiences must be very different -my parents never went to weddings without me. We just went into family weddings where kids were invited, and frankly, they were all at churches which meant morning or midday.
Part of why weddings have become a child free thing is the timing, I think, due to an increasingly secular culture - they're night parties vs day time church.
The kid-free weddings in my own extended family feel weird to me because I went to my cousins' parents' weddings, and they're the only family reunion, but I can't go, because I have a family. Feels strange !
I think it depends whether you grew up in a religious environment. It's also regional and class-based. However, I assure you in the past there were plenty of adult only weddings. This isn't a new trend.
I mean, we were Catholic, but barely. We hit up church about once a month, when my mom remembered we had to. My extended family was culturally Catholic but so far from religious it's not funny. We were the family of swearing and drinking and divorces (not my folks, though, devoted until death).
All our parents got together frequently without us - headed to the theater, out to hit up a bar, neighborhood cocktail parties, the occasional wedding, etc. We kept babysitters in business. The older cousins made bank watching the younger ones.
However, it's different for people in different environments.
Mormon weddings/receptions, for example, are very family focused. Lots of open houses during the day, with very little, if any focus on adult entertainment. Southern weddings are often in people's backyards with half the neighborhood showing up, and in my husband's small town every wedding was held at one or two churches with the reception held at the VFW - food provided by the local ladies auxiliary. Entire families would just drop by. He loved it, and went to practically every wedding that was held in that town. He learned to polka at three! He ended up having a strong dislike for religion but he does have super fond memories of the weddings.
People's experiences are different and we tend to hold the traditions we grew up with close. But they aren't the sum total of human experience at all.
I think part of what's happening nowadays is that social media is causing young people to choose to get married in the celebrity style they see on Instagram instead of doing what's normal for their family and region, which is causing a ton of culture clash.
This is an excellent point. Weddings are definitely fancier and more of an EVENT. Destination weddings, for example, bring a lot agita to family dynamics.
Oh for sure, I agree. The destination wedding stuff in areas with really expensive and limited hotels is just brutal, and my boomer aunts and uncles are always trying to talk my cousins into being more considerate and just get rebuffed!
My aunts got married in their hometowns or where they lived - like in NYC, where you married at a church and then walked to a reception.
Yes, the traditional way was to have a local wedding and a distant honeymoon for just the couple. I don't know exactly why weddings have become so combined with honeymoons.
Some people want to to have a smaller crowd, but there's also just this push to get married in limited locations, I think for the vibes.
Mormon weddings are not family focused though - the ceremony is in the temple and that excludes anyone who hasn't gone through the temple yet, so anyone under 18.
I grew up in a large Irish Catholic family in CT spread across NYC and NJ. Kids were at all weddings. I never heard of a kid free wedding until adulthood.
True, only certain people can go to the Temple, but the receptions are very family and community-focused! Even I, a virulent atheist, have been invited to a couple and truly enjoyed them.
My husband was shocked I didn't want to invite his entire town to our wedding, so I understand ingrained customs for sure. It's just that our experiences don't encompass the entire world.
I'm fine with people liking what they like, whether it be child-focused or child-free or just child-allowed weddings. What I push back on is that it's something new or a horrible, selfish Gen Z trend.
I actually do view it as a younger Millennial and below trend. I'm an elder millennial and my own friends didn't do this. It's a norm for like, people born in 1990 and beyond.
The reason it comes across to me that way is that my own family was big, very kid focused, and children were always invited to big holidays, anniversary parties, and weddings.
Now my own cousins that I babysat have child-free events, and it's true it's their choice, but my single cousins act like my not going means I don't want to hang out with them. Like literally, a 35 year old single cousin of mine acted like I must not want to go when her parents picked her up, drove her, then paid for her hotel on an expensive island - in essence, being in a kid role herself, whereas I would have to arrange travel, accommodations, childcare, etc. There's a real lack of awareness of what a logistical nightmare that is, and I do see a connection to younger people acting more childlike at older ages - at least in my family .
Yes, I have heard that before!
I would say it rings true. I was talking specifically about weddings, not protracted youth, which I do think is a current thing. I mean, by age 25 my mother and aunts were all married and had at least one kid. My dad and uncles were older because they had been fighting actual wars, but there were well entrenched in the workforce by at least 30. Now, that I think of it, that's probably why they were all drinking so much and dying to get out of the house without the kids.....
I suspect that the real answer to “Do men have unrealistic, porn-influenced standards for women’s bodies” is that men *who are actually having sex* (and thus are actually in a position to be unbothered by Flora’s body hair or anatomy) are way less likely to. Meanwhile, men who are inside online all day ruminating resentfully about how they’re not getting laid are posting about how women are too gross for them to touch anyway. This is not unrelated to your recent article about how the internet skews people’s perceptions of the opposite sex!
And lamenting those men’s “unrealistic standards” probably mixes cause and effect: if and when (and in most cases, when) they start having sex, they will see that having it with normal looking women is pretty boss, and stop being weird about it.
The “standards” thing is usually either a posture or self-delusion to avoid framing the problem as “I am unsexy.” These guys would be totally psyched to have sex with a girl they would call “mid” online. It’s all a bunch of kayfabe.
Can confirm
“having it with normal looking women is pretty boss”
Related, but there is pretty decent evidence that not only is porn usage is not particularly linked to sexual aggression but that there is an inverse relationship between porn usage and rape. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1359178909000445
My suspicion is its a lot like the whole video games debate from the 90s (apropos of one of the topics). Most of the dire warnings about video games on men were complete garbage. Specifically, the idea that violent video games were causing men to be more violent in real life. But too much gaming does have negative effects for the same reason too much porn usage can be bad but also the same reason that too much social media usage can be bad; if you're use of said product is harming your ability to have real relationships THAT is the real problem.
Salami was the winner for me, thank you
Sorry but the aristocrat soul guy is right and his detractors are wrong. Aristocrats ARE born, they do NOT get jobs, they do NOT accomplish things, and for the love of God they do not "generate income" like electricity. Sorry to this guy that his body was born into a nation lacking a natural aristocracy and must toil. I can relate personally, my soul was made to drift around like a cottonwood seed but God saw fit to make me out of meat.
well.... that's the mythology. Hasnt been the reality in centuries.
The reality is since 20th century aristos have jobs (except the national royalties). Oddly enough i know several Bourbons, the real ones. They're professional class people. By the 19th century the aristos no longer could afford to not generate income (the whole 19th century literature and reality thing of aristos marrying American industrial families or local families is from that).
Oh yeah lol we're talking mythology here. "Natural" aristocracy can you imagine
I can only hope to dear god that some combo of immaturity and too many Dungeons and Dragons books or something like that.
Bruh that mentality got them into a lot of trouble 60-150 years ago. These days they mostly have jobs and incomes
Couldn't Cavicular just have bashed his nose in with a hammer?
I’m not an expert on rhinoplasty, but I DO think that is step one of a nose job.
After two weddings of my own, here's why I find the Childless Wedding trend selfish to the point of narcissistic. I was raised with the idea that a wedding ceremony was a religious service, and a reception was the time to share the celebration of your commitment with family and special friends. With regard to the wedding itself, a religious service is simply not something you deny entry to, ever. Not letting little kids into a wedding ceremony is irreconcilable with "Allow the little children to come to me."
As far as the reception goes, my wife to be and I made all kinds of "annoying" accommodations for people we loved or cared about. That included: elderly relatives, people with physical limitations, people with financial limitations, my current wife's divorced parents who still hated each other, my maternal grandmother who was a religious teetotaler and offended by the champagne toast...my second wedding was during the height of Covid, and we had to accommodate maskers and anti-maskers. And yeah - we also had to accommodate little kids.
Point was, we cared about all these people and they cared about us, and we all wanted to celebrate together, regardless of what quirky beliefs we have or what logistical challenges made things more difficult. And then we went on our honeymoon and pretty much ignored the world for 5 days.
Obviously some people don't see it this way, but I'm happy to dig my heels in and hold the opinion that "celebrating with the people you love, warts, inconveniences, toddlers, and all is simply the better way."
For most people, setting up their wedding is full of choices, many driven mostly by logistics. The time of day, size of venue, the location, the budget, and how many people might have to travel. Also, many weddings aren't religious, so their considerations will be different from yours. I think the last three weddings I attended were all officiated by either the couple's friends or family, not a pastor/priest in sight. Certainly no religious overtones, either.
I'm glad you were able to have the wedding of your choice. It sounds like you enjoyed it and made your guests happy and comfortable. I celebrated with kids at my wedding, too, but I wouldn't label those who choose differently as narcissistic.
I think child-free weddings are fine; you just gotta accept that if you come from a big family where that's not the norm it's gonna come with a social cost, because a lot of the people coming to the wedding are probably related and many people rely on family to watch their kids for non-kid-friendly events. My wife's family is of Mexican descent, in twenty years together I've never seen them have a "no kids" event and there would probably be big feelings if someone did, but there's nothing inherently wrong with it.
Now, I do disagree a little bit about the wedding being for the couple. The *marriage* is for the couple. The *honeymoon* is for the couple. The wedding is basically a party you're throwing to celebrate your marriage that is *for* the guests to have fun. It's like a housewarming party... yes, it's your home, and yeah, you live there, but really you're throwing it to show it off for your guests.
I agree, the reception should be geared toward making guests comfortable and letting everyone have fun. So if you come from an environment where whole families come to weddings and you decide to throw some upscale adult only event, be prepared for some grumbling and some RSVPs no.
Again, I support anyone's decision to have the wedding reception of their choosing, but if it falls outside your social group's norms you might be on an uphill slope.
Right now my neighbor is working hard to talk her daughter out of a Black Tie reception since the extended family is full of people who have never in their lives worn a tuxedo.
I see both sides of the wedding discourse but as a parent to very small kids, please don't invite my children to your wedding! I want to have a nice time and changing diapers and managing crayons at the function is not fun!
Our wedding was canceled because of Covid but our plan was 14 y/o and up because that was the age of my youngest 1st cousin. It also let us draw a neat cut off between 1st and 2nd cousins.
An invite is not a jury summons. If you get an invite, you can just accept it for you and decline for the kids and get a babysitter.
But that would be a choice you could make. If they're invited, you can just not bring them. I keep declining my cousins' child-free destination weddings that are basically family reunions most of my family aren't invited to. It's really awkward that this is somehow considered completely reasonable vs s huge, unrealistic ask when out of state travel is involved.
Agree!"I maintain “vanilla” is not nauseating! “Poop-flavored” is nauseating! Vanilla is delicious!"
I love vanilla icecream and pudding and don't want any of the weirdo flavors added. Vanilla is nice comfort flavor, delicious flavor and comfort is good.
I think the “porn standards” thing is not very salient, no more than it was when I was a kid, with various kinds of lionized unattainable bods being further enhanced in photoshop for magazine covers. I think that guys watch porn, and people in porn are hot, because, why wouldn’t they be? People who star in movies are hot. Women don’t expect to have Glenn Powell or Jacob Elordi fall for them just because they see it in the movies. The step from “people watch hot people have sex -> people only want to have sex with hot people” is not really empirically supported! It’s just assumed.
And all the stuff about sex being violent is based on a minority… I don’t think there is any evidence that shit is the rule and not the exception. And the most popular porn, by far, is the porn where people are some kind of flirtatious with each other and then have “vanilla” sex.
Man and it’s like this in every issue in the world at once, where people are being presented with this twisted fantasy where normal opinions don’t exist, they are surrounded by extremists, and they must pick a side. Because of algorithms. We need to stop with this!
My search engine in incog mode suggests MILF is trending...
But anon google wissdom aside, entirely agree re last para
MILF being popular is funny because it shows that many men actually are turned on by the idea of passivity. (And silicone.)
Is it passivity??? I thought Hot Still Youngish Moms since other categories seem to be things like also Young Guy Scores with Stepmom. Hardly an expert here but passivity isn't the phrase that comes to mind from my vague understanding.
It is generally the MILFs who are the sexual aggressors in that genre. I mean, doesn’t it make sense that men who are sexually passive (which most adult virgins are by definition) would like to see a relatable situation lead to someone getting laid?
I also think the average MILF actually manages to clock in in her mid 30s these days, it used to be more common for them to be 25 year olds who just got too old to play “teen.”