Some Drive-By Thoughts from Vacation

We’re now at the two-week mark of The Worst Debate of This Century, and President Biden seems pretty dug in on continuing to the nomination. I have some hope, however, that he’s going to step back sooner rather than later. I think he’s going through the stages of grief, and that his appearance at a news conference this evening will not yield the rebound he hopes for. The people defending him seem to be doing so out of a sense of respect and resignation, not because they believe it’s for the best. Mainly, I think people doubt there’s a capacity for dramatic change like this. We are accustomed to not getting our way, as voters, so the idea that an elected leader might change his mind in response to the popular will is hard to grasp.

Maybe I’m wrong, but I hope not.

I’ve been traveling around the past two weeks, hitting a lot of your standard tourist spots, and I’ve concluded (unoriginally) that Instagram has completely fucked up travel. Tourists always took pictures, and often with disregard of the enjoyment of those around them; that’s not different. Instagram has added complexity to this event that makes it even more unpleasant. People hold up lines and traffic to get themselves posing in front of something that has been photographed thousands of times before. They strike poses that must have a lexicon of their own that I don’t understand - half-turned, leg shifted, peace sign. Now let me look at it. No, take more. The rest of us are enlisted as unwilling audience and maybe even staff for these photography sessions. It makes me not want to take pictures even of my own loved ones, which sucks.

And when I say THEY, I mean mostly young women, but not exclusively. And I don’t mean “a few” or “a couple,” I mean dozens at every site and at any hour.

There simply aren’t enough people to be influenced by all these influencers.

I’ve tried to understand this phenomenon and I think it’s happening because people want to be seen. Young women want to be seen, they want their existence confirmed. They want to be heard. They want their aesthetic choices validated. This is good, in one way. We all want to be seen, and we are all entitled to make our presence in the world felt. It’s why I write. I want to be heard. On the other hand, it’s bad. They want external validation for their capacity to conform. Look at me being exactly like everyone else! I am the same! I am in compliance with what culture wants me to be. This depresses me.

I have a similar view of tattoos now, although it’s complicated by my own choices. When I got my tattoos (an octopus and an ant) in 1997-98, it was to mark my body as unique. My tattoos are unique in that no one else has them, but certainly other people have octopus and ant tattoos. And my body was already unique, which was not something I understood when I was 23. Now that my own kids are getting tattoos or wanting tattoos, it’s not clear to me that it’s about differentiating one’s self but may be it is. In any case, the fact that everyone is trying to show they are unique in the same way - by marking their body with a fairly proscribed set of symbols - undermines the message.

Plenty of people get tattoos for a different reason: to show that they are a member in a particular subgroup. Military tattoos, for example, or tribal tattoos for people who are actually members of that tribe. My tattoos may have also been intended to mark me as part of a tribe of people who wanted to be seen as outside the dominant culture - punk, indie rock, riot grrl, whatever I might have been.

Tattoos and IG accounts are both ways that marking ourselves present in this world, as both unique and a part of a group larger than ourselves. Unfortunately, they both feel commodified to a degree that undermines their good intentions.

I’ll probably do another post in a day or two about this trip but in the meantime, stay cool!