tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5689865906513225949.post3706468186868489301..comments2024-03-28T03:13:28.585-04:00Comments on Beauty, and What It Means: Come as You Are: Nirvana and GenX BeautyAutumn Whitefield-Madranohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03379314479257695986noreply@blogger.comBlogger11125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5689865906513225949.post-78874207994473315482011-12-02T15:13:02.296-05:002011-12-02T15:13:02.296-05:00Beth, I'm glad to hear you bring up the gender...Beth, I'm glad to hear you bring up the genderization (word?) of teenagers and children--I definitely think that's gotten heavier since I was a teenager. I mean, my flannel shirts were culled from my father's gardening clothes! There was no such thing as a "women's T-shirt," just smaller sizes. (Though I am grateful that there are women's tees now, but whatever.) It's like the lesson of comfort taken from our generation was kept, but with "sexy" added on. And interesting to hear your perspective on how you see a homogenized look among teenagers--would love to have a sociological outing with you and Alexa (the teen guest poster) to hear arguments for each in a room of teenagers!Autumn Whitefield-Madranohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03379314479257695986noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5689865906513225949.post-20836992192451186162011-11-25T11:28:25.105-05:002011-11-25T11:28:25.105-05:00Hi -
I'm REALLY late to this party, but I'...Hi - <br />I'm REALLY late to this party, but I'd like to say that my experience of being a teen in the early '90s was different from what I've heard so far here. I graduated HS in '93, in a suburb of NYC. Now, I teach HS for a living, outside of Boston. <br />I remember thinking, when I was a teen, that things were just getting better for women. There was this hope: we had, as someone mentioned, women to look up to. Feminism was cool to some, and at least talked about by almost everyone. It was cool to be smart, to wear baggy, un-revealing clothes, and to play headlining sports instead of being side-lined in cheerleading. <br />And then, sometime between then and 2003, when I started teaching, everything changed (I think) for the worse. From where I sit, at the front of the room, it looks to me like girls don't have many female role models anymore. They aren't thinking about feminism, and no one around them is talking about it anymore. There's this feeling that it's done -- and none of them analyzes that too deeply. And, although this last commenter and your guest poster both claim that there's a lot more room for girls to look different from one another now, it's hard for my older eyes to see much difference at all. Most teenage girls dress mostly the same, with very subtle differences to denote the groups the feel they identify with. <br />The basic look of today's teen girl seems to be sexy comfort. yoga pants are a good example of this.<br />I feel sad for girls, and boys, in our current teen environment. They are so polarized in a way that, in 1993, I would never have predicted they would be. In a way I thought we were fighting out way out of in the early nineties. There have always been things boys CANNOT do and girls CANNOT do, but it seems that those things are increasing in number instead of decreasing. And, now that I have a baby daughter, it seems to me that the gender-polarizing message is starting WAY younger than I ever noticed before. Why does every little girl have to be a princess now? Why does every little girl item of clothing have to have some amount of pink in it? (Just to name the two most obvious ones.) Why are we, as a society, not talking about feminism and allowing the princess culture to pervade our daughters' childhoods? <br />I find all of that pretty depressing, and my bottom line here is this: It feels like the hope (and maybe the will?) of things getting ever better for women is gone. And I miss it!Bethnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5689865906513225949.post-53062650217217488612011-10-03T11:00:18.488-04:002011-10-03T11:00:18.488-04:00Hannah, glad to meet you! It's interesting to ...Hannah, glad to meet you! It's interesting to me to hear from younger women on this--to hear you say based on reports of the era that there was more "room" for girls to be their own creatures, for example, highlights the truth of that. In any case, we were a *little* unwashed, rest assured! It's funny how it's represented as this total greasy era, though... Here's to hoping for a return to excellent music.Autumn Whitefield-Madranohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03379314479257695986noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5689865906513225949.post-51636149563720109412011-10-02T22:47:21.617-04:002011-10-02T22:47:21.617-04:00I found this post through Mara/Medicinal Marzipan&...I found this post through Mara/Medicinal Marzipan's blog and I love love love it! I'm 19, so I was just a wee little one in the '90's, but it's funny-I have a romanticized image of that time-there was rugrats and Nirvana and no one washed their hair. Haha. So I may have been wrong, and also there was the Kate Moss Calvin Klein add, but it does seem accurate that there was still more "room" for girls to be how they want to be than now. I've felt immense pressure being a teen in the 21st century, and it's amazing-maybe I would be different had I grown up in a different decade. Even though I was not a teen when Nirvana was around-I absolutely love their music-maybe for those reasons: they represented something unusual, revolutionary, and against social norms. I wish there was more of that now.Hannahhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11880547340043395876noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5689865906513225949.post-80025570426730726472011-10-01T10:33:35.185-04:002011-10-01T10:33:35.185-04:00Cameo, it's so weird to think how my style cha...Cameo, it's so weird to think how my style changed from grunge to college--I wasn't really a pleather-wearer but I know I was wearing stuff I NEVER would have as a teenager. Part of that was just appropriacy but I also think the culture at large was shifting. I definitely wore more revealing clothes later on.<br /><br />Courtney, it's weird because that's how I felt too--that I had all that shit going on when I was 10, but yeah, I can't help but think it's worse now. Maybe not so much with body image--that has less to do with fashion and more to do with self-esteem, I think--but with the actual choices?<br /><br />ModernSauce, isn't that funny? I had to double-check to make sure I had the years right even though I knew full well they were both 1991. Excellent point about people who also happened to be attractive vs. hyperattractive people. Seriously, I'm on this X-Files kick and Gillian Anderson is amazing--obviously she's a beautiful woman, but she's styled in SUCH a different way, as is Claire Danes in "My So-Called Life" as mentioned below by Rebekah.<br /><br />Caitlin, yeah, I think women of all ages are more sexualized today than they were back then. (Again, I'll reference the X-Files here.) And like I was writing to Cameo, by college I definitely presented a more sexualized appearance, even though I probably dress more revealingly now than I did then, ha! I guess the difference now is that I'm more comfortable with my sexuality and aware of the messages I'm sending, and able to handle the image I'm presenting--as a teenager, obviously I wouldn't have been equipped to do so. And YES about better role models then. Shirley Manson was on the cover of CosmoGirl, you know?!<br /><br />Emily, did you ever watch Daria? It was later in the '90s, maybe '97, but it's sort of incredible to think that there was a bespectacled super-smart bookworm cartoon character who was seen as awesome and pretty in her own way--as opposed to, say, Meg on Family Guy, whose glasses serve as the default signal of "hey, remember, she's not supposed to be cute." I was looking at my yearbook when writing this post and there's definitely a range of what was considered cool--certainly the preppy girls still had their perms and whatnot, but like you point out, those were just signifiers. There was more room to breathe.<br /><br />Rebekah, it IS amazing, and it's something you don't realize until you actually go back and look--just remembering it, it's like your mind's eye adjusts it, because it didn't seem abnormal in the least at the time. And heh, my boyfriend and I had a "My So-Called Life" marathon last year and commented in the same way--RayAnne's hair! The flannel shirts! Leto Hair! Funny to think that Danes went on to develop "eyelash hypotrichonosis" and shill Latisse.Autumn Whitefield-Madranohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03379314479257695986noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5689865906513225949.post-66168664438209811412011-09-29T13:30:33.222-04:002011-09-29T13:30:33.222-04:00"If you watch The X-Files today, it’s shockin..."If you watch The X-Files today, it’s shocking how ill-fitting and shapeless Scully’s clothes were in 1992..."<br /><br />Isn't that amazing? My boyfriend and I have been watching "My So-Called Life" (which I'd never seen), and the costumes are endlessly fascinating. Oversize plaid as far as eyes can see. Also, it's surprising how 'natural' Claire Danes looked compared to modern teenage leading ladies.Rebekahhttp://www.jauntydame.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5689865906513225949.post-29524488686109533402011-09-29T09:56:15.738-04:002011-09-29T09:56:15.738-04:00I was talking about this with a friend my age just...I was talking about this with a friend my age just yesterday! We're both straightish white women our mid-twenties, and we both tend to date men closer to than us to generation x. I was talking about how seldom I wear full face makeup, and it wasn't until I started reading your blog earlier this year that I realized that most women, including cool girls (like you!) spent time and eneregy on the stuff. <br />This friend and I have frequently discussed the way we feel about how we look, and how we're looked at, and neither of us are conventional beauties, but at the risk of sounding vain, we're both attractive young women, just shaped from a different mold. She said that she felt like there were more look options in the '90s, enough to accommodate more types of feminine attractiveness. And that the time was much friendlier to weirdo girls who like contemporary visual art and comic culture and experimental literature.<br />It seems like grunge and the mass-cultural ironicism of the 90s had more space for women to be cool through a diversity of signifiers, rather than these fractured 2010s. And while I wasn't even there, really, I think it's something worth longing for.Emily M. Keelerhttp://booksidetable.wordpress.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5689865906513225949.post-51320381189894276262011-09-29T09:51:33.493-04:002011-09-29T09:51:33.493-04:00I was a teenager in the 1990s, and I definitely re...I was a teenager in the 1990s, and I definitely remember feeling pressures to look a certain way. Yeah, we wore flannel shirts and jeans, but they had to be specific kinds of jeans. You could wear t-shirts but they had to be specific t-shirts. Girls were still expected to have "good bodies" and nice hair and wear make-up. I'd say the big difference is that nowadays the expectation seems to be a lot more heavily sexualized than it was in the 1990s, but then that seems to be the case for women of all ages. <br /><br />I do think that the best part of being a teenager in the 1990s is not so much that beauty expectations were absent (because like you said, they weren't), but that popular culture was filled with women for us to look up to. I wasn't into riot grrrl, but you didn't have to be to take part in girl-centric culture in those days. I admired women like Shirley Manson and Tori Amos and Ani DiFranco and about a billion others, and yes, those women are all white and thin and conventionally attractive, but they were also pretty unconventional in many ways. I mean, I'd rather have Fiona Apple, with her "this world is bullshit" speech than Katy Perry, you know? So I'd say that, in terms of cultural representation, it was definitely a good time to grow up.Caitlinhttp://fitandfeminist.wordpress.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5689865906513225949.post-71188246163326123292011-09-29T09:33:03.824-04:002011-09-29T09:33:03.824-04:00It's interesting that in my head The Beauty My...It's interesting that in my head The Beauty Myth came out AGES ago but Nirvana seems like just a few years ago! Makes me question what "progressive" means to me (or how it's perceived).<br /><br />I was just noticing the other day (as I watched old Star Trek: TNG episodes. Nerd alert!) that when I grew up in the 90's actors were people who also happened to be attractive. Now it seems tv/movies are filled with SUPAH attractive people that directors are fortunate enough to discover can sometimes act too. I think you are right - maybe we were lucky and didn't even know it. The ultimate privilege!ModernSaucehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08993930835985764220noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5689865906513225949.post-21839716594659221142011-09-29T08:59:43.139-04:002011-09-29T08:59:43.139-04:00I was a teenager in the early to mid 2000s and you...I was a teenager in the early to mid 2000s and your experience is probably more similar to my older sister's than to mine. I think the internet must also impact the expectations on girls today. I don't know, though. I don't know many teenage girls, so it's hard to say if what they're going through is the same or different than what I went through. All I know is that I am never surprised when I hear studies saying that some crazy percentage of 10 year olds want to lose weight because I'm pretty sure I did, too.<br /><a href="http://thosegraces.com" rel="nofollow">--Courtney</a>Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03703150053201639138noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5689865906513225949.post-78258728419613472652011-09-29T07:11:00.269-04:002011-09-29T07:11:00.269-04:00Love those 90's photos. I fear I burned all o...Love those 90's photos. I fear I burned all of mine because while I was the epitome of grunge gal, I was also super insecure about my big bossoms and went out of my way to hide them in good-will stock. My mom would lament each day that I was making myself look ugly, but man did I feel COOL and like, "F-U world! I am so much deeper than you will ever understand..." Fast forward to the end of my college life and I am in miniskirts and skin-tight pleather. Guess I was just a lost young lady...ah, reminiscing is nice. I love the 90's!cameohttp://www.vergingonserious.comnoreply@blogger.com