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The accessorizing spectrum

I remember Lilly Tomlin saying, “it’s our ability to accessorize that separates us from the lower life forms.”

The other day I saw the first two pics on a “seen on the street” blog called the “Satorialist.” The (I’m guessing unintentional) juxtaposition of these two looks made each one stand out more.

Both people are accessorized, one is after a traditional look of feminine beauty, while the other is striving more towards self-expression and mixing cultures.

The other three pics are from around the web representing different takes feminine beauty and accessorizing from only using body paint, to a small bikini and fake boobs, to a formal full length evening gown.

I’m not trying to leave out men entirely, it’s just easier to focus more on the spectrum of accessorizing used by women. It’s in general a richer and broader palette.

Other animals differentiate themselves but not by accessorizing and without regard to evolutionary pressures. Humans do it for fun and often times without being concerned about attracting a mating partner, although at the extreme end some people are attractive because they’re different.

Any “look” is a message, even the choice to not have a “look.” A person’s look is a signal to other people. Once the look transgresses the traditional the signal can be and is interpreted unpredictably.

The human animal is endlessly fascinating if you leave yourself open to appreciate the spectrum of human expression we use when accessorizing.

 

 

Categories
Exercise

Katy Bowman

A friend stopped by our house last night. She wanted to introduce her new baby.

Before having a baby she was a free spirit untethered by a regular job or home. She even camped out in the jungle here in Mexico for a bit between house sitting gigs. Not the life for most, but she seemed to like it.

We started talking about carrying her baby around. I told her about Katy Bowman who only carries her kids. Everywhere. Even traveling around Europe she and her husband carried their small kids or had them walk.

Katy Bowman is a biomechanist, author, and mom with a couple of kids. I thought my friend might like her because of the way Katy lives her life.

Katy says most of us are basically sedentary when we aren’t in the gym or on the road, no matter how ‘fit’ we think we are because at a cellular level, hours of sitting leave our cells starved for movement. Just like bad eating habits stave our bodies of nutrients.

Katy thinks structured exercise is the movement equivalent of nutritional supplements. If you just run for exercise it’s like eating just one type of food at every meal. A healthy diet calls for a wide range of foods. In the same way, our bodies require a constant variety of movements throughout the day.

One of Katy’s solutions was removing all the chairs and sofas from her house ensuring regular getting up and down movements plus changing positions often while seating on the floor.

I’ll check in on our friend after a while to see if she can implement any of Katy’s ideas.

Categories
Ideas

How women can have better sex

There’re some big trends indicating the general direction we’re headed in as a society. The internet of things, self driving vehicles, and advanced versions of CRISPR are just the tip of the iceberg headed our way.

Some people are predicting that high unemployment will accompany the rise of robots and artificial intelligence.

Behind almost every inconvenience there’s a new business or political opportunity waiting that could develop into the next big thing. Food for thought that’s being discussed is providing a universal basic income (UBI).

A UBI will allow people to buy things and manage their own affairs, possibly reducing the bureaucracies now in place to manage public assistance. It’s also human nature for people to want more money and move into work and entrepreneurship.

But there’s another possible unintended benefit from a UBI – better sex for women. Apparently under communism, despite its failings, one unforeseen benefit was that women reported having had better sex. Checkout this NYT article.

Here’s why I imagine that a UBI might lead to better sex for women (and probably for many men too because the women will be having sex most of the time with men). Eastern bloc women were encouraged to join the labor force and became financially untethered from men, enjoying a degree of self-sufficiency few Western women had. The Eastern bloc women didn’t have to marry, or have sex, for money. And so if everyone received a UBI women might enjoy the same degree of being untethered from men financially.

You are not what you earn and you don’t need lots of money, but you do need enough (and be able to deal with it). That’s where a UBI comes in.

A person’s income is commonly assumed to be the source of information about character, intelligence, maybe even someone’s worth in human terms. The more money we make, the more we deserve to exist. Some of this won’t go away with a UBI but it might upend something about our sense of the world and our place in it.

“The task is not so much to see what no one has seen, but to think what nobody has yet thought, about that which everybody sees.” –Schrödinger