Mind Streaming

Thursday, November 20, 2003

STREET SCENE SALFORD , BUT ELSEWHERE IN MY ENGLAND, RIFE


I have no idea why these two new industries are enjoying such a growth in England . First of all, tattoo places are still quite rare, but have gone upmarket in the city , have distanced themselves from the somewhat seedy, backroom, infection ridden image they once had and have embraced body piercing to their repertoire and it is becoming increasingly fashionable to have metal attached to your body. Self-mutilation has become hip and is incredible hard for me to understand.

It is seen in some circles as a kind of two fingers up rebellion, but why someone should want a stud in their tongue or their nipples pierced as a fashion statement, completely confuses me. In former days, gypsies had pierced their ears; something to do with ensuring good eyesight but yet a mark of being an outsider and free spirit. Ear piercing was once viewed as 'common' and essentially a working class phenomenon, but it has become a classless statement of outlaw and otherness for people who slave to fashion and who have no concept of what individuality really means.

I have dark, heavily pigmented skin from my father?s side of the family. I tan very easily, but have never lain on a beach to get a tan, rather walked the shoreline beachcombing. A tanned skin was once a statement of money; people coming back from a hot holiday abroad with their skin telling all their pasty white friends that they had made it away. But in the last ten years, we have been getting all sorts of health scare advice and the sale of high factor barrier creams has rocketed as a result. Skin cancer is on the increase big time, about the same amount that tan shops have exploded onto the streets. Bizarre.

Health and beauty are now associated with these businesses ; changing your skin colour , for example,and it is unbelievable that people spend all this time and money sitting under sun lamps in these joints and that is deeply worrying. It is actually, in my view a total vanity trip, very much tied into the health trip industry with narcissus people working out in gyms to reshape themselves and counteract excesses of every day life. There are people totally addicted to exercise and it is completely unnatural and pure vanity on a huge scale in so many cases.

Driving home tonight, we noticed yet another tan parlour had opened on our route and I mused that it might have been called 'Melanoma'. What is happening here? What ever happened to accepting yourself, being content with who you are?

Tattoos, well , I never understood this. It seems such a crazy thing to do to yourself. It also amazes me because, I do know that there is an incredible correlation between having tattoos and criminality. Always made me laugh this one. Tough guys who had themselves tattooed, small time criminals from a subculture that tattooed itself and made themselves so identifiable ! No great brains here I thought. O.K. a butterfly on the shoulder, a love heart on you bum , no problem , but tell me why bother? The vanity industry has grown so huge and it is tragic.

Shopping has become the major leisure activity and designer labels, buying hollow status in names seems to be a kind of new religion for the sad amongst us. Having bits of metal added, artificially, to your body or changing the colour of your skin . I just don't get it. I don't understand it and think people who buy into this are extremely sad . And the people who artificially tan their hides or who strain to catch every ray in hot places have they no idea of future realities when they will age prematurely and , too young, their faces will look as wrinkled as a person in their late nineties. What too, is this lip collagen implant thing, the plastic surgery, the breast 'enhancement', liposuction, and surgical tucks and all that. Busnesses feeding on anxiety only, in my view.


It all is so completely unnatural and the endeavour of very sad people and it is really all about the vanity industry and people getting very rich at the expense of the neurotics in our mist. Nothing is for ever and these things are incredibly self-defeating. It is the illusionary dogma that surface is all, when beauty is inside not out and that can?t be tanned , tattooed or pierced and all this artificial nonsense is completely risible. We are all going to die, and when I do, what you see is what you get. Ain't died my hair, my skin colour is normal, no piercing, no tattoos. I go as I came . Me. Why does that idea seem so frightening to an increasing section of our people?

johncoxon 11:56 AM - [Link] - Comments ()
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