Are you ever tired of explaining why you live or dress the way you do?

missjo · Jan 14, 2013

The only thing is that it is different.
It is almost like any other kind of movement that isn't familiar to the average public.
Why are some people gothic or punk, why do some people who don't live in France like to have a 'French country kitchen' in their home, why do people have a religion, why do some people dress a certain way, etc, etc, etc.
It is just a lifestyle and if it isn't one you know or understand, you will be puzzled.

LizzieMaine · Jan 14, 2013

In my town in the '30s there was a woman for whom time had stopped in the 1880s -- she wore the clothing of that era every day, her house was exactly as it was fifty years earlier, she refused to adopt modern technology, and she stayed that way until the day she died. She had her reasons, but she never explained them to anyone, and nobody bothered her about it -- it was just the way she was.

The little kids in her neighborhood, however, were convinced she was a witch. I wouldn't mind that if the kids in my neighborhood thought that about me, it might keep them from letting their dogs mess in my dooryard.

CaramelSmoothie · Jan 14, 2013

missjo said:
I wonder why anybody would want to live 24/7 in the current time period.

Another thing I wanted to add on to my comment in reference to this statement. I believe people tend to romanticize the past (not saying that you or anyone else in this thread is doing that just speaking in general). The past for many people were a time of fear and terror and I know that I would not want to live during the 30s or 40s at all as I do not think I could handle living under such an oppressive system where I could lose my life just because I didn't move off the sidewalk quick enough or tried to vote or some other such nonsense. But at the same time, I can look at it and appreciate the fashion and the people who contributed to the past being a great time for the masses who actually had to live in it so it wasn't all bad at all. But yeah, count me in as a person who would definitely want to live in the present.

CaramelSmoothie · Jan 14, 2013

missjo said:
It is just a lifestyle and if it isn't one you know or understand, you will be puzzled.

Right, this is basically what I am saying.

PrettySquareGal · Jan 14, 2013

CaramelSmoothie said:
The past for many people were a time of fear and terror

As is today.

CaramelSmoothie · Jan 14, 2013

LizzieMaine said:
In my town in the '30s there was a woman for whom time had stopped in the 1880s -- she wore the clothing of that era every day, her house was exactly as it was fifty years earlier, she refused to adopt modern technology, and she stayed that way until the day she died. She had her reasons, but she never explained them to anyone, and nobody bothered her about it -- it was just the way she was.

Is her house still standing?

Funny you should mention this, I had thought about starting a thread about people who lived during the Golden Age who held on to even earlier decades. Like when the 1940s came around were there people still stubbornly holding on to 1920s fashion? LOL

CaramelSmoothie · Jan 14, 2013

PrettySquareGal said:
As is today.

Yep, no decade has been absent of human suffering.

PrettySquareGal · Jan 14, 2013

CaramelSmoothie said:
Yep, no decade has been absent of human suffering.

Then why do you use that as a reason to not favor things of the past?

missjo · Jan 14, 2013

CaramelSmoothie said:
Another thing I wanted to add on to my comment in reference to this statement. I believe people tend to romanticize the past (not saying that you or anyone else in this thread is doing that just speaking in general). The past for many people were a time of fear and terror and I know that I would not want to live during the 30s or 40s at all as I do not think I could handle living under such an oppressive system where I could lose my life just because I didn't move off the sidewalk quick enough or tried to vote or some other such nonsense. But at the same time, I can look at it and appreciate the fashion and the people who contributed to the past being a great time for the masses who actually had to live in it so it wasn't all bad at all. But yeah, count me in as a person who would definitely want to live in the present.

I see myself as a realist nostalgist, or in short; even though I know about all the bad things of the past, I still prefer it to the present and wouldn't mind living there, at least for a while.
But yes, many people are nostalgic without being realistic, which is fine.
As a researcher I know very well about all the dark sides of the 1930s, I have even gone out of my way to try and proof to myself that it was not a very nice time.
But still, I feel that I would have felt more at home in the 1930s.
And no matter how many bad sides the 1930s had... 2012 has plenty of other bad sides.
Each era has its good and bad sides, most of the bad things of the 1930s that are now thankfully gone... have been replaced with different and new bad things.

I would absolutely want to live in the 1930s... but am realistic enough that I would not take a trip back in time unless I knew I could always come back to 2013, just in case.

missjo · Jan 14, 2013

As for the 1930s being a time of fear and terror... for an educated woman living in 1930s Amsterdam life could be pretty good as long as you knew how to look after yourself.

The past was worse then many nostalgic people think but not as bad as many other people think.

CaramelSmoothie · Jan 14, 2013

PrettySquareGal said:
Then why do you use that as a reason to not favor things of the past?

Because for "ME", I know my life is better today than it would be if I were living in the past. Please note that I am only speaking personally and not for others. I have no problem with those who dress vintage and actually enjoy seeing it.

LizzieMaine · Jan 14, 2013

CaramelSmoothie said:
Is her house still standing?

Funny you should mention this, I had thought about starting a thread about people who lived during the Golden Age who held on to even earlier decades. Like when the 1940s came around were there people still stubbornly holding on to 1920s fashion? LOL

It is indeed -- I can look out the front window of the theatre where I work and see it just across the block. It's now maintained as part of the local art museum, which she endowed in her will, and is a major tourist attraction.

I think atavism was a lot more common in the past than people today realize -- because it was much easier to be isolated from the sweep of progress. Go anywhere away from the big cities in the Era -- the mountains, the Deep South, rural New England -- and you could easily find people living exactly as rural people had lived in the 19th Century. They weren't doing this as a cultural or social statement, just as many of us today aren't -- they lived that way because it was the way they were raised and they weren't inclined or weren't equipped to change.

PrettySquareGal · Jan 14, 2013

CaramelSmoothie said:
Because for "ME", I know my life is better today than it would be if I were living in the past. Please note that I am only speaking personally and not for others. I have no problem with those who dress vintage and actually enjoy seeing it.

Gotcha!

LizzieMaine · Jan 14, 2013

missjo said:
The past was worse then many nostalgic people think but not as bad as many other people think.

I think there's a tendency when teaching kids about the past to emphasize *only* the negative aspects of whatever era is being discussed, perhaps to make the modern era look that much better by comparison. The only exception is 1966-72, which for some reason is considered to be the apotheosis of human civilization. I think that has more to do with the generational leanings of those doing the teaching than with any actual historical reality.

One of the things I admire most about the Era is the frankness with which it attacked the evils of the time. The labor movement in the '30s didn't shilly-shally around with not wanting to offend anyone or managing its image -- it got out there in the dirt and the mud and it fought and bled for what it believed in. The civil rights movement was well underway before WW2, and laid the foundation for what would follow in the fifties and sixties. People didn't just lie back and take the abuses of that Era, they battled them for all they were worth -- and they didn't do it just to be fashionable.

Salty O'Rourke · Jan 14, 2013

CaramelSmoothie said:
Another thing I wanted to add on to my comment in reference to this statement. I believe people tend to romanticize the past (not saying that you or anyone else in this thread is doing that just speaking in general). The past for many people were a time of fear and terror and I know that I would not want to live during the 30s or 40s at all as I do not think I could handle living under such an oppressive system where I could lose my life just because I didn't move off the sidewalk quick enough or tried to vote or some other such nonsense. But at the same time, I can look at it and appreciate the fashion and the people who contributed to the past being a great time for the masses who actually had to live in it so it wasn't all bad at all. But yeah, count me in as a person who would definitely want to live in the present.

Amen to that. I lost too many relatives to polio, tuberculosis, (now) preventable cancers, and accidents from riding around in death-traps to ever want to go back in time to the "good old days". Heck, if medical science hadn't caught up to my mom in the 50s I might not have been born at all. Dating some of the women I've been involved with would have landed us both in jail or worse back then. No thanks. I like my vintage fedoras and I get many nice comments on them but I'm firmly rooted in the 21st century.

missjo · Jan 14, 2013

Exactly.
Another problem is that the 1930s have SUCH a bad image that saying anything even remotely positive makes people accuse you of looking at the subject with pink sunglasses.
And yes, people don't like to hear that sometimes progress isn't as good as we would like to think, we don't like hearing that some things were better in the past because moving forward and making life better for the next generations is important.

missjo · Jan 14, 2013

Salty O'Rourke said:
Amen to that. I lost too many relatives to polio, tuberculosis, (now) preventable cancers, and accidents from riding around in death-traps to ever want to go back in time to the "good old days". Heck, if medical science hadn't caught up to my mom in the 50s I might not have been born at all. Dating some of the women I've been involved with would have landed us both in jail or worse back then. No thanks. I like my vintage fedoras and I get many nice comments on them but I'm firmly rooted in the 21st century.

But some of the old diseases have been replaced by new ones.
Old risks are now gone but we have different risks.
Medical science moves forward but hospitals have gotten dirtier and the way you get treated in hospitals has gone downhill.
As for getting arrested for dating certain women, not sure what that means, but perhaps it would have been idea to catch a Zeppelin to Europe.

I am not denying a lot of things are now better, but some things are also a lot worse.
But the main thing is that some of the bad things that are now gone have been replaced by new bad things.

CaramelSmoothie · Jan 14, 2013

Salty O'Rourke said:
Amen to that. I lost too many relatives to polio, tuberculosis, (now) preventable cancers, and accidents from riding around in death-traps to ever want to go back in time to the "good old days". Heck, if medical science hadn't caught up to my mom in the 50s I might not have been born at all. Dating some of the women I've been involved with would have landed us both in jail or worse back then. No thanks. I like my vintage fedoras and I get many nice comments on them but I'm firmly rooted in the 21st century.

I agree. Ironically, the mid 1920s to the early 1930s is my favorite as far a fashion and architecture goes, so despite all of the bad, I do agree that there are many redeeming qualities of the past that makes it appealing to those of us who live today so I can see why people would want to dress as they did back then because the clothing was beautiful.

LizzieMaine · Jan 14, 2013

As far as medical science goes, it giveth and it taketh away -- we cure one disease, and something else comes along to take its place. I've known people who were victims of polio -- one of my aunts, for example -- and I've known people who died from AIDS. My sister nearly killed herself with bulimia, and my nephew is autistic.

Thirty years ago, nobody ever heard of anyone dying from being allergic to peanuts, now you read about it all the time. Yesterday I found out an old friend from high school died of flesh-eating bacteria. Where does it end? It doesn't, which is why I believe so much of modern progress to be illusory.

CaramelSmoothie · Jan 14, 2013

missjo said:
But some of the old diseases have been replaced by new ones.
Old risks are now gone but we have different risks.
Medical science moves forward but hospitals have gotten dirtier and the way you get treated in hospitals has gone downhill.
As for getting arrested for dating certain women, not sure what that means, but perhaps it would have been idea to catch a Zeppelin to Europe.

I am not denying a lot of things are now better, but some things are also a lot worse.
But the main thing is that some of the bad things that are now gone have been replaced by new bad things.

I wouldn't say "replaced" just that new challenges have presented themselves and will always present themselves for the rest of human history. My grandmother, for example, she grew up in a big city and lived there until her death a few years ago. When the drugs began to pour into the neighborhoods fast and furiously from the south of the border back in the early 80s she said that she was totally blindsided with the havoc it wreaked on her old stomping ground, which still has not recovered from that catastrophe. She would yearn for the past a little because she said with all the damage that crack has done to her neighborhood, earlier years were much better despite the negative things going on at the time. So I think of these new bad things as new challenges.

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