Want to buy or sell something? Check the classifieds
  • The Fedora Lounge is supported in part by commission earning affiliate links sitewide. Please support us by using them. You may learn more here.

So trivial, yet it really ticks you off.

LizzieMaine

Bartender
Messages
33,715
Location
Where The Tourists Meet The Sea
I know quite a few young women who go in heavily for tattoos, and they don't do it to be "attractive." They do it to please themselves and express their own aesthetic, regardless of whether anyone else finds it "attractive" or not. Which is, as I strongly believe, exactly as it should be. I don't have any tattoos myself, nor am I interested in getting any -- but I do have several prominent work-related scars on my arms. I've been told they "aren't very attractive," and I have expressed the view that I'll be happy to cover them up to be more attractive when all the men my age that I see stumbling around with two inches of exposed flab between the hems of their T-shirts and the top of their shorts and Dunkies' crumbs falling out of their beards do something to be more attractive.

As far as Aldi's goes, we don't have them here yet, thankfully. I still miss my neighborhood IGA.
 
Messages
10,930
Location
My mother's basement
I find it hard to believe that any person (other than a prisoner in a Nazi concentration camp, maybe) got a tattoo they didn’t find attractive in one way or another. Maybe they weren’t entirely satisfied with the artist’s efforts after the fact, but they didn’t go into the parlor not wanting something they found appealing.

My lovely missus has three tattoos. I can’t say I actually like them, but I hardly notice them anymore.
 
Last edited:
Messages
10,930
Location
My mother's basement
It’s all about projecting an image, an image that person finds appealing, no less a statement than makeup and heels and a little black dress.

As I’ve already made clear, my opinion on the matter, or yours or anyone else’s here, doesn’t count for much. And that extravagantly tattooed person’s opinion of my opinion doesn’t count for much either.
 

LizzieMaine

Bartender
Messages
33,715
Location
Where The Tourists Meet The Sea
The difference, of course, is that doing something for one's own satisfaction or to suit one's own taste is not the same thing as doing so in deference to "the exterior gaze," be it the male gaze of feminist theory or some other. For a lot of young people, what some might consider excessive tattooing, piercing, etc. is actually a defiant act of reclaiming their bodily autonomy, and declaring that they, and they alone, will decide what "looks good" in reference to themselves and that they themselves alone will set the parameters for their own identity. In that sense it's no different than the teenage girls of the mid-1940s who insisted on wearing their fathers' cast-off old clothes to school in defiance of dress codes.

As part of a generation where many girls were still taught you have to be skinny and have to smile all the time, and have to not "come across as too smart," and basically have to do whatever you have to do to please the men, I think that's a much healthier and more refreshing attitude than the one that prevailed in my childhood. Keep on inkin', kids.
 
Messages
10,930
Location
My mother's basement
The case can be made that pretty much everything one does is done for “one’s own satisfaction.” Just depends on what one finds satisfying. The species continues only because most of us take satisfaction in being of some service to others.

To a degree one’s physical presentation is a service to others. I’m quite visually oriented. I appreciate that most folks appreciate, say, a better house paint job over a lesser one. Or a stylish getup over a tackier one. And it’s really not much about money. Some people can make a shack look good. Some people (the same ones, pretty much) can look better, and more compelling, in thrift store rags than others can do at boutiques on Rodeo Drive.
 
Messages
10,930
Location
My mother's basement
Is the mortgage system on shopping carts really nowhere done in the US??

In the not-so-distant past it was common to see shopping carts abandoned quite some distance from the stores they were “borrowed” from. It wasn’t so unusual to see some with the wheels removed, presumably to be used on some kids’ gravity-powered vehicles.

I don’t see that so much anymore. The assumption was that in most cases the carts were used to transport home the groceries bought by people without an automobile.

Whatever the cause, though, stolen shopping carts left here and there, for days and weeks on end sometimes, leave an unfavorable impression. Obviously stolen property, right out there in front of God and everybody. However understandable that “borrowing” might have been, it’s still theft, and it projects an acceptance and tolerance of lawlessness.

I can only guess why I see much less of this these days. Is it that the retailers are quicker to retrieve the stolen carts? Or are car-less people finding other ways to get their groceries home?
 

Old Mariner

One of the Regulars
Messages
260
There are a number of Aldi's stores here in my area - 3 that are close by. I was disappointed in the newest one though because it does not have a German cuisine section like another does. Really bummed me out.:(
 

Forum statistics

Threads
109,097
Messages
3,074,099
Members
54,091
Latest member
toptvsspala
Top