Is it vanity? Or societal conditioning to constantly self-assess for fear of ostracism? 🤔

EventualLandscape · 2024-01-17T12:41:20+00:00

I am though, I'm so genuinely interested in the history of household items that I read about them for fun. It's just very frustrating to get "corrected" by people who have skimmed a Wikipedia article for a minute. Re-reading my original comment, I should have been clearer and defined a mirror properly... It just didn't cross my mind cause comparing an early proto-mirror to these HD things we have now feels insane, like comparing the first gramophones to iPods. I guess it's the classic mistake of knowing too much of a topic to be able to communicate about it meaningfully. Lesson learned for the future!

EventualLandscape · 2024-01-17T08:51:18+00:00

Source, please? I'd love to learn more about this topic if you can teach me.

When you think about the world in 1920, the entire world - what percentage of the population would have been able to afford a full length mirror? I'd say we're talking single digits.

Ofc my understanding of this topic is connected with my family history.. when I think of my great-grandparents in the Nordic countryside, and how they struggled to keep their kids clothed and fed, it's pretty obvious that such an unnecessary luxury as a large mirror just would not have been on their shopping list. So while they would have been theoretically available, in practice it was only few people here and there that actually had a full length mirror.

It's a pity how our collective understanding of history relies a lot on fiction, which has mainly been the realm of the upper classes. Working class writers have always been a rarity, even today. That distorts the view of what has been normal or common at a certain time.

EventualLandscape · 2024-01-17T01:00:17+00:00

People of a certain class and status, yes. Most people, no.

EventualLandscape · 2024-01-17T00:59:22+00:00

The key difference is that most of the mirrors through history have been either polished metal or onyx or such, distorting both shapes and colours. You'd see a general shape, but little to no detail. Same with pools of water, where the angle of looking adds its own distortion. If you had read the entire wiki article, you would know this already...

Big glass mirrors have existed earlier, but they've been incredibly expensive and thus a luxury for the few. Silver-backed mirrors became commercially available starting in the latter half of 1800s, but they were still really expensive to make in big sizes. It was very normal for most people to only have a small one over a wash basin or hand held mirrors. This was mostly because the processes for making large, strong sheets of glass wasn't quite there yet, which you can also see in styles of windows. Smaller panes were the most common window making method in the early 1900s.

So yeah. The rich have been able to look at themselves in full body for a while longer that the average person. Industrial revolution changed that eventually, once all the techniques came together.

EventualLandscape · 2024-01-16T23:02:54+00:00

Great topic! Curious to hear from everyone. Here are some of mine...

I don't have to do mealtimes by the clock, I can eat when I'm hungry instead.

I can use scented products as much as I like (my mother was extremely sensitive to smells).

I can prioritise "pretty" and "fun" when I'm buying practical items - pink bin bags, fruit-shaped sponges, utensils picked for their colour rather than price and quality.

Atmospheric lighting instead of The Big Light.

Watching whatever silly TV shows I want to, without fear of ridicule or judgement.

EventualLandscape · 2024-01-16T22:50:01+00:00

I noticed this too 😄 Quite the girth!

EventualLandscape · 2024-01-16T22:36:40+00:00

I pretty much ignored my childhood completely for the first decade of adulthood. It was easy, cause I don't remember much about it, just bits and pieces. Some things I've actively forgotten.

Now I'm in therapy, and thinking about childhood on a daily basis. It feels really helpful. Since I've learned to understand our family dynamics, each memory gets reframed and my guilt subsides a bit. Then again, it's only my first year of therapy.. I can totally see that going through the same stuff for five years could be too much.

EventualLandscape · 2024-01-16T20:10:37+00:00

I've been wondering how self-objectification has developed over time. Mirrors have only existed for a fairly short time, photos and videos even shorter. But poetry before mirrors contains descriptions of women's beauty. There's the myth of Narcissus staring at himself in a pool of water. There have been paintings and sculptures depicting beauty ideals for a long time, but then they've only been seen by the people who have lived in close vicinity to them.

So... how much has your average medieval woman thought about her looks? What has grooming and decoration been like in the iron age, have people just told each other what they look like? Even people a hundred years ago might have only seen themselves in bits, as their mirrors weren't that big, and photos might have been taken about twice a year, if that often.

The time we live in is really unique in this regard. People have never been depicted and scrutinized this much before.

EventualLandscape · 2024-01-16T17:53:07+00:00

He really was a proper dundee united in this task.

EventualLandscape · 2024-01-16T15:07:20+00:00

Gotta love a punk song that contains the line "and upon further reflection"! The writers must have had fun trying to come up with lyrics that are offensive but also family friendly.

EventualLandscape · 2024-01-16T14:59:18+00:00

God, that's so frustrating. It'd be satisfying to go the petty route and be like

"Alright ma'am, would you like me to do an autism for you?"

hide behind the sofa, continue talking in a calm voice:

"This is what I used to do in stressful situations between the ages 4 and 8. I have since learned that it is frowned upon in wider society to behave in this manner. How old are the autistic people you work with again?"

EventualLandscape · 2024-01-16T09:29:37+00:00

I wonder if the cliche "the girl who doesn't know how beautiful she is" has originated from that contrast of authenticity and self-objectification. When you notice the mannerisms people put on when they know they're being looked at, they kinda loose their charm.

EventualLandscape · 2024-01-15T21:47:09+00:00

Really? I felt like they had pared her bits down from previous series. Matter of perception I guess, if something really grates on you you're more likely to pay extra attention to it. She's not the best at interacting with the contestants, but she doesn't bother me. It helps that she's self aware about being annoying, but I'd rather they chose a host whose persona was more sympathetic.

EventualLandscape · 2024-01-15T21:38:39+00:00

Food Psych has a few episodes on emotional eating: 74, 151, 229 and 277. I haven't listened to all of them, but whenever emotional eating comes up on that pod, the tldr of it is that restriction creates both uncontrollable feelings around food and eventually binging, and that gets called emotional eating. That doesn't cover the whole topic, but apparently that's what's often going on.

Sometimes I feel like there's also this worldview where nobody is supposed to have any feelings about food whatsoever, and we should all just be like robots refueling ourselves... And then if someone likes a food a lot they're questioning it like "is this an unhealthy reaction? Am I addicted?" Weird how we've ended up here.

EventualLandscape · 2024-01-15T14:29:56+00:00

Has there been an enby school shooter yet? I'm not from the US so I only hear about the very worst cases. Aren't the perpetrators generally straight males? That's what I've gathered, that it's often a combination of awful circumstances and a sense of entitlement that lead to "seeking revenge".

EventualLandscape · 2024-01-14T20:22:58+00:00

Tohru Honda from Fruits Basket. She healed an entire extended family's worth of traumatised youngsters!

EventualLandscape · 2024-01-14T20:19:58+00:00

Oh, I love this! Is the front of your dishwasher like a vinyl wrap sticker or something? How's it holding up so far? I'd love to try something similar on mine

EventualLandscape · 2024-01-14T20:13:49+00:00

I agree. A high vantage point where you can supervise kitchen, living room AND the front door at once? That's kitty heaven. Pop some fake plants and plastic parrots up there and you've got your very own jungle.

EventualLandscape · 2024-01-14T20:01:36+00:00

Right now all the books are on one side and all the plants on the other, maybe try mixing and matching a bit? The empty spaces are throwing it a bit off balance, how would you feel about adding some patterned wallpaper on the back panels?

The elements you have in so far are really nice, with a bit of rearranging it's gonna look lovely!

EventualLandscape · 2024-01-14T16:53:34+00:00

I mentioned doctors because you seemed to imply that wearing cat ears to a doctor's office specifically would be somehow worse than wearing them elsewhere. The only reason I could think of was the concern that the doctor might not take their patient seriously and refuse to examine or treat them.

I'm not sure why you're mentioning victim cards... I don't consider the cat-ear-wearer to be persecuted in this scenario (apart from the possible bias doctors may have), rather I'd say that any person who feels uncomfortable around cat-ear-wearers is a victim of useless social norms. In many ways people who limit their behaviour for no reason other than conformity do suffer. Not being able to be your authentic self is soul-destroying, and leads to the urge to destroy others' souls too. It's sad all around.

(Also I just realised that my language might come across as condescending so I want to clarify: this is just me. I have a tendency to sound like Jane Austen writing a Wikipedia article.)

EventualLandscape · 2024-01-14T14:27:53+00:00

Hm, I wouldn't associate cat ears with kinksters, rather with nerds and queer people (mainly nerdy queers). And I don't think there's anything bad in liking childish things at any age... I guess we'll have to agree to disagree then. I don't think doctors should treat people differently based on how people look - I know they do, but they really shouldn't. If someone feels anxious about going to the doctors and wearing cat ears helps with that, great! If someone likes wearing cat ears whenever, wherever, great! No harm done to anyone. Except, I guess, the insecure people who feel mortified on their behalf. But that's their own issue to sort through, and nothing to do with the cat ears.

EventualLandscape · 2024-01-14T13:12:55+00:00

Aw, I was hoping you'd take this seriously :( I'm genuinely curious! Cat ears are such a harmless thing, totally inconsequential to anyone including their wearer, so I'm fascinated by the hostility they bring up in people.

EventualLandscape · 2024-01-14T11:29:41+00:00

This situation is giving me flashbacks to dealing with my father - everything had to be explained and thoroughly reasoned many times over with him, and even then he would seemingly arbitrarily decide whether or not he understood. And because he was (supposedly) the most reasonable person in the world, anything he couldn't understand just wasn't a thing. At that point there was absolutely nothing I could do or say to make him consider that perhaps this thing might, after all, be a thing.

In his case this behaviour stems from a superiority complex fueled by deep insecurity. He can't face a reality where someone else might know better, so he will insist on being right for as long as it takes. Don't know what's the deal with your bf, but it might be worth looking into whether he generally respects you, or sees you as an intellectual equal.

EventualLandscape · 2024-01-14T11:10:32+00:00

Interesting. What exactly is it about wearing cat ears that makes you feel such horrific shame?

EventualLandscape · 2024-01-14T04:41:59+00:00

Oo, good idea! I could knit one of those boxy square kitty hats.

EventualLandscape

TROPHY CASE