I used to follow Camille religiously. Alas she is stuck, she have been saying the same things more or less for the past 20 years. My advise to her is to stop hanging around the morons in the Philadelphia ”art” school. But her language is still very unique. Paglia writes in the NYT - No Sex Please, We’re Middle Class:
“In the discreet white-collar realm, men and women are interchangeable, doing the same, mind-based work. Physicality is suppressed; voices are lowered and gestures curtailed in sanitized office space. Men must neuter themselves, while ambitious women postpone procreation. Androgyny is bewitching in art, but in real life it can lead to stagnation and boredom, which no pill can cure.
Meanwhile, family life has put middle-class men in a bind; they are simply cogs in a domestic machine commanded by women. Contemporary moms have become virtuoso super-managers of a complex operation focused on the care and transport of children. But it’s not so easy to snap over from Apollonian control to Dionysian delirium.
Nor are husbands offering much stimulation in the male display department: visually, American men remain perpetual boys, as shown by the bulky T-shirts, loose shorts and sneakers they wear from preschool through midlife. The sexes, which used to occupy intriguingly separate worlds, are suffering from over-familiarity, a curse of the mundane. There’s no mystery left.”
The dress thingy is interesting. It has to do the casual suburban life, the influence of the black culture and the sports where tight basketball shorts have been replaced by the “loose shorts”. The lack of the urban social events that are not concerts or “walks for hunger”. The lack of the proper dress decorum in the restaurants. I was surprised that in the suburban San Fransisco the dress was proper even in 1968.
Further reading: