It’s been some time since we’ve talked about old rules as they may or may not apply in this century. We seem to be collectively adding new ones and discarding others as being outdated or no longer applicable. As you may know or could at least guess, I was brought up with a passel of rules that Mother meticulously programmed as the right way to do all sorts of things.
I’m still her obedient child in some respects when it comes to things like what should not be worn until after Easter and what absolutely should not be worn after Labor Day. But then, of course, there were those rules that came from the larger world that I couldn’t seem to follow. Not that I was alone in this, seeing as how most of the folks I have known and observed bent the rules or even broke them as they individually saw fit.
Here’s a rather entertaining illustration of my point. Years ago, I had lunch with an old friend I had not seen in a long while. The last time I had seen her, she had just come through a rather friendly divorce, as divorces go. In the thinking of that time, he had married up and she had married down. She had just married her second husband, a successful doctor, and was happy to be in love again. But there was a catch, and she thought me to be the only friend she could talk to about it.
The doctor was very handsome and intelligent, and my friend was very beautiful. If you met them at a party or under any usual circumstances, they might have looked carved out of cream cheese, as Clairee might say. No one would guess that the clean underwear his mother had always admonished him to wear would be in the form of nylon panties.
My friend asked if she should be concerned about this fetish. As far as she could tell, her husband just preferred panties to men’s underwear. But might this indicate that he might be, you know, gay? I told her that I had not experienced or heard about any correlation between being gay and wearing panties. But what was important was that she loved him, that he treated her right, and that he was good in bed.
As I said, that was a long time ago and things have changed. Who wears panties and who wears boxers or briefs seems a rather silly thing to have rules about, don’t you think? I know of ladies who prefer to wear cotton briefs as they tend to be easier to care for and are more durable. It’s a preference, not a defining decision.
Now let’s talk about something more serious that gives too many people the jumpsie wumpsies. With everything going on in the world today, some folks get the fidgets because guys, even straight guys, enjoy wearing nail polish. It might be different if all women wore nail polish, but they don’t. Can we all agree that some folks like to wear it, and some folks don’t? Why should this be a rule?
Which leads me to the important political question of our day. Not something significant like Venezuela or what ICE is doing, but whether or not J. D. Vance wears eyeliner. Well, I can’t say for sure without seeing him in person. But I do have a couple of thoughts on it.
I want to know what kind he uses as I have not seen a picture of him with it smudged. All of us who wear it know that, given enough time since application, it invariably finds it way off your eyelid and moving south. It would be unseemly for the Vice President to make a product endorsement, but these are unseemly times.
Now I’m not poking fun at him, mind you. That would directly contradict my point that it’s really none of my business. Besides, there’s way more material to talk about than whether or not he wears eyeliner. The same could be said about Trump and his maquillage. That’s a rather lazy criticism when there’s so much from which to choose.
One last thing while I’m at it. In addition to the aforementioned, we could talk about tattoos, piercings, and all the rest of the choices being made today that weren’t made in days past. With median age in the United States at about 39 years, those born before about 1987 are on the grayer end of the spectrum, so to speak. (It pains me to say that.) So if you’re on that older end of the spectrum, the good news is you can do whatever the hell you want, and you may have already figured that out.
If you’re lucky enough to be on the younger end of it, it’s your job to challenge those of us on the other end. Just remember, the day will come when those babies who are here and yet to be born will one day challenge you, too, and the rules you left behind.
But as Katharine Hepburn said, “If you obey all the rules, you miss all the fun.”
