Nothing's Changed!

[Dennis A Lederl]

The new Sear's Tall Man catalog came today. It's a necessity for me to shop for any type of clothing that will come even close to fitting me.
As I browsed through, looking at very uninteresting and very ordinary men's clothing the tyhought occured to me, that except for the totality of blue jeans as the "main course" this catalog could be sent back to the 1950s or 1960s and no one back then would anything in it that different from what was the "accepted" men's wear that was common during those years.
The entire 20th century came and went. And sixty year after the end of WWII (when women's fashions began to evolve toward their modern man-drag pants wearing) nothing changed.
All the massive alternative culture attempts, from the 50's beatniks to the 60's hippies and yippies to the modern yuppies and men are mired in the mud of "tradition" as they would say in Fiddler On The Roof!
One of the problems is the short sighted memories of our modern cultures make out as if men always wore pants.
Huh?
Christ never wore a pair of pants or anything like that.
Hercules DID NOT wear pants, nor did any of the Greeks or Romans or other fierce fighters. Even though Braveheart, the movie, gets it's details wrong at least they wear kilts. That is historically wrong, kilts were year away and William Wallace would have worn peasant tunics. He and his men would not have use the F-word either. That wasn't coined until the late 1790 by London Bobbies who used the four letters in the police reports.
In only 200 hundred years we've forgotten skirts on men as a culture.
What will we change as a culture in the next 200 years.
I hope and pray it will be that men ever wore pants.
But with they way women no longer wear skirts anymore, I doubt it.
Dennis A. Lederle

[DrWu]

I'd bet a lot of money that you're wrong about the origin of "f***". I don't think any words derived from acronyms were in common usage until the 20th century (e.g., radar.) More likely it derives from something Anglo-Saxon.

As for the rest of your post...I don't have much to say about that, since it's all been said here so many times.

How about this, though: What are you going to do about it?

I might be the better one to ask this, since I'm 20. (The youngest one here? Possibly.)

[Cams]

But surely you must have noticed the suit jackets changing from 4 buttons to 3, and the very risque 2 button jackets?

[Milfmog]

I'd bet a lot of money that you're wrong about the origin of "f***". I don't think any words derived from acronyms were in common usage until the 20th century (e.g., radar.) More likely it derives from something Anglo-Saxon.

From dictionary.com:

Word History: The obscenity **** is a very old word and has been considered shocking from the first, though it is seen in print much more often now than in the past. Its first known occurrence, in code because of its unacceptability, is in a poem composed in a mixture of Latin and English sometime before 1500. The poem, which satirizes the Carmelite friars of Cambridge, England, takes its title, “Flen flyys,” from the first words of its opening line, “Flen, flyys, and freris,” that is, “fleas, flies, and friars.” The line that contains **** reads “Non sunt in coeli, quia gxddbov xxkxzt pg ifmk.” The Latin words “Non sunt in coeli, quia,” mean “they [the friars] are not in heaven, since.” The code “gxddbov xxkxzt pg ifmk” is easily broken by simply substituting the preceding letter in the alphabet, keeping in mind differences in the alphabet and in spelling between then and now: i was then used for both i and j; v was used for both u and v; and vv was used for w. This yields “fvccant [a fake Latin form] vvivys of heli.” The whole thus reads in translation: “They are not in heaven because they **** wives of Ely [a town near Cambridge].”

No guarantees that's definitive but it indicates some of the history of the word. Not sure what it has to do with mwn in skirts though

Have fun,


Ian.

(Obviously this board is censoring the word but I guess the meaning of the above is clear enough)

[Bob]

The Sears Catalog may not have changed, but Sears' dominance in the retail landscape HAS changed --- because our SOCIETY has changed, and hip people don't shopw at sears these days.

[AMM]

The Sears Catalog may not have changed, but Sears' dominance in the retail landscape HAS changed --- because our SOCIETY has changed, and hip people don't shopw at sears these days.

I'm not sure "hip people" ever bought clothes at Sears.

Even when I was a kid (45 years ago), I remember Sears as being a place to get tools and car parts, not clothes. Their "fashions" ran to utilitarian clothes, especially work clothes.

As un-hip as we were, we still didn't go to Sears for clothes if the appearance mattered. My mother always took us to J.C. Penny for school clothes, and my grandmother took us to our city's major department stores (local equivalent of Macy's) for suits for church.

-- AMM

[Stu]

That wasn't coined until the late 1790 by London Bobbies who used the four letters in the police reports.

I don't think so. London "Bobbies" (named after Sir Robert Peel) came into existence under the law he introduced called the Metropolitan Police Act 1826. Before that, there were no "bobbies".

Stu (a provincial "bobby")

[binx]

Any relation to Emma?:rolleyes: I thought the acronym was something to do with fornicating under the something of royalty....? Anyway, found some good deals on skirts at Sears, probably summer clearance.

binx