Sideroxylon

Why the long shorts?

When the Bistro was on the road recently, I happened upon a copy of USA Today (June whiteredseersucker12, 2014), that printed thing whose lack of journalism is compensated for by colour. In it, an etiquette and style writer criticized how short men’s shorts were becoming. After all, she wrote, who wants to see a man’s thighs?
The photo that accompanied it showed this mid-thigh pair of men’s shorts.

 

Seriously, USA Today?
He is wearing a pair of pink seersucker shorts, for crying out loud!
Your problem is its length?

At athletic events, of course, the longer shorts of the time are coupled with high athletic socks, giving us a look like this:Lionel Messi (L), Bruno Alves (R)

Which is not too different from this:victorian bathingsuit

bruce_jenner_wheaties_boxI certainly am not an advocate of short shorts.
Somehow, Bruce Jenner came back, but we certainly don’t need his  I’m not really that big of an advocate of shorts in general. They are comfortable in warm weather, but not very high on the fashion totem.
But this: mid-thigh being considered “too long?”
or even long? Not exposing anything but the knee?

This is a little crazy— especially when we think about the standards for women’s shorts.

Among the ancient Greeks, the male body was a symbol of Netuno19bpower—virility and action rather than a passive, vulnerable object—and therefore depicting it nude was a symbol of power.
By contrast, in our culture, clothes are power, so the more power a man wishes to project, the more he puts on—business suits, hunting cammo, or Teflon armour.
So maybe length does matter.
Of course, the gaze we fix upon women’s clothes is much more sordid.

We have always been ludicrous when it came to women’s bodies, but here in the 21st century, when we should have been getting away from our hang-ups and cultural expectations are we going to start worrying about not exposing men’s thighs?

Our Nation’s founders all had bodies, but two centuries later, American’s are as obsessed and repulsed by them as ever.

Men’s thighs— OY!
Have a bialy— it’ll do ya’ good.

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Sensuality, continued.

We Americans are a rather hedonistic culture, placing a high value upon comfort and pleasure.
The sad thing is, we are not very good at it.
We are not very good at being hedonistic, because we really don’t understand how to use our senses.

Any trip to most American restaurant will prove my point—there are huge servings, and way too much salt, fat, and sugar, but there isn’t really that much sensual pleasure to be had. We have made gluttony a national past-time and, at the same time, a chore. In fact, the reason we need so much sauce (besides the low quality of the ingredients—Damn you food industrial complex! Damn you to hell!….Wode-Toad-color-miffed.jpg

                                                ***SLAP!***

But I digress. Thank you, Wode Toad.

The reason we need so much sauce is that we don’t really taste our food. We don’t take the time to find out what the flavor of each item is. We allow our food, our music, our body washes (Thanx, Axe), our entertainment, our sensual experiences (Thanks, 50 Shades) to be over-blown and way too loud, going for quantity, but not enjoying the full array of sensations each moment can bring us.

Among the problems is that we put so much priority upon sight and sound—the least intimate of all sensations—have we barely are aware of the wide variety of input of our other senses.

I already talked a bit about taste in the recipe section, but what of the others?

Step outside. Feel the sun on your face. Close your eyes, and feel the sunlight soal into you as if you are absorbing it, the way a tomato does. Breathe in, and try to figure out how many smells there are in each breath. Dogs absorb most of their information through smell, whereas we tend to ignore this sense entirely. Is there fresh mowed grass? The early browning of tree leaves? New flowers? The roads and sidewalks baking through the afternoon sun?
Or just exhaust and different cigarettes? Can you smell the different smells of the city? At a distance, even unpleasant smells can be interesting—the faint smell of skunk on a summer night is one of the smells in very good coffee.
Speaking of that, how do you drink coffee? Do you feel the warmth of the cup in your hands, look at the rainbow-mottled surface of the liquid (of course there is oil, ya’ mook! Essential oils provide most of the flavors we enjoy), add sugar, and feel it as you drink it—each cup involves taste and smell and sight and feel.

Stretch.
Take a moment and feel different muscles tighten and untighten as you stretch. Tense and relax, and feel your body.
At work, take a hop and then break into a run; feel your legs stretching beneath you as you dash.
Jump up under a tree, grab a branch, and pull yourself up; you will be aware of each part of your body as your feet hunt for new footholds and your hands swing across branches amd you taste and smell each leaf and bark.

Dance! Throw yourself into wide, wild abandon as you feel the rhythm pounding through your body, and your boots against the floor.