Once upon a time, things were supposed to be “real” and “honest”. “Organic” was shiny and new, and “authenticity” a gold ring for the distant yuppified artisanal future.
Calling something (or someone) fake was an insult. Being fake was bad.
People were still supposed to be physically attractive, but nobody (of either gender) wanted to look like they were wearing makeup, or even like they bathed. Think Woodstock.
And it wasn’t enough to have opinions, people were supposed to care about absolutely everything. Think Earth Day, which started in New York 1970 (and generated hundreds of thousands of metric tons of trash but let’s not go there.)
Oh, and all of our ideas were supposed to be original and well-founded.
There was more to us than just ecology and politics and music and art and clothes. We were supposed to care about everything.
Well, everything except food. That came later.
Let’s recap: Unassisted beauty and informed passion, all based on unique, well-researched experience – this in the days when information only came on printed sheets of paper, either bound, stapled or folded. Unless Cronkite was on, of course.
It was an impossible standard, yet fakery was still supposed to be bad.
Did you catch that transition? Now I’m saying fake was just “supposed to be” bad.
See previous, re impossible.
The aesthetic was to have a face that looked like laminated fabric, in a way that human skin just doesn’t. Well, the makeup was real, and for all our ecological zeal, it sure as hell wasn’t “organic” or “cruelty free” back then either.
We all decorated our clothes ourselves, but in a precisely similar way. So much for originality.
And as for our opinions, well, go Netflix “The Breakfast Club”. Same as previous.
I’m conflating my eras here, but it works.
Historically, we faked being informed and passionate. Now we are surfeited with information, and fake being too cool to care.
Ironically, irony wasn’t in fashion back then either.
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