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Is it me, or is there more prejedice against them, and fewer longhair guys in general, in american than england? I wouldve thought it had been the other way round but it seems im wrong... I have noticed though, particularly in school and college in america, there seems to be much more of a heirecy (spelling?) like, u have so many different groups of people... jocks, cheerleaders, geeky kids, goths etc and there doesnt seem to be much mixing or tolerance between them... would i be right in thinking this? in england, it seems that there is less prejedice between social groups, and this includes long hair guys. its still by far more popular to wear hair short, but LHG seem to get a much better deal over here... in fact, come to think of it, in my school last year there was an award for the best hair voted by the school and staff.... and it went to a long hair guy!
I'd say you've pretty much got it.
Well I live in Wales and Im in the 6th form and I notice alot of predujice. The younger kids are the ones to make comments usually because they like to think that they're standing up to the 6-formers.
What you said about a hierarchy (I think thats right), with the cheerleaders, jocks, geeks, goths, etc definatly exists here its just that there are different levels. Where I am it seems to be "popular" people (always up to date on fashion, into the latest EVERYTHING), geeks/nerds, punk rockers and goths. Im not too sure where I fit in in the grand scheme of things but because I have long hair I have been labelled a grunger/goth.
Prejudice does exist, but its subtle. People like to insult a person behind their back rather than to their face. Rumours, true or false, about a certain person will spread like wildfire once they get going. I really do think that alot of people (at least here) tend to look down on guys with long hair no matter how clean or well kept it is.
Sorry, worst spelling ever.
Sounds like a description I read about Columbine High School.
Nationality, race, language, and what side of the tracks you lived on don't matter so much to today's enlightened youth. Let's hope that means we'll see less fighting over those old things in the future. But as Columbine shows, battles can be fought over the new.
Today's youth appear to have settled into the groups you mentioned - groups which must have a universality which transcends national borders (possible now, with today's communications) so they must strike right at the primeval human soul. These groups are surely an improvement over the old - groups formed to bolster the power of kings and prophets - because the new groups arise from the soul of the common people and move upward rather than down.
One question seldom asked when I was a kid was "what music do you listen to". Look at this board right now and you'll see a huge thread about that. Today, many people define themselves in these "new ways" through music it seems. Guess I'll go crank up the hippie rock.
This point baffles me as well. When you look at a random young person walking down the street, you can pretty accurately guess the music they like by their clothes. Music is important to me, but why does it also dictate fashion? I'm 22, and I think my generation believes music is associated with character, or your soul. I think my generation doesn't know how to figure out our identities, so we adhere to the ready-made personas marketed to us by MTV.
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I'd support the arguement that there doesn't seem to be a well-defined hierarchy of 'coolness' in English schools/colleges. But I don't think we're considering the geographical factor enough, if at all.
Being an 18 yr old living on the outskirts of South-East London, I feel I can only share thoughts on what it's like to be a longhair in London itself. I'm sure the prejudices differ massively even in the Midlands, and I've no idea what it could be like in Scotland or Wales.
So, since London has a flourishing multi-racial community, I think the tolerance for longhaired men is very high. Children in the 12-16 bracket will shout the occasional insult, but other than that things are fine. I've never even had trouble finding work.
As for the USA, I really can't comment, I get a vague idea from the rest of you guys who post from across the pond, but I've probably got lots of outdated stereotypes in my head as well :) I'd only know the truth if I lived there for a while.
It's a different case in South Wales, right next to England, but in no way England. In my secondary school you couldn't have hair shoulder length if you were a boy, or buzz cut and dyed hair. They became slack about the buzz-cut look however recently.
You can't possibly make a generalization about the entire country (the USA is very big --- the state of New Mexico alone is bigger than the entire UK). It depends upon the previaling attitudes of the people in an area. In areas with diverse populations, where people's minds are exposed to a wide range of different people and attitudes, there is no problem with having long hair. This is true in many of the larger cities. Conversely, in areas where there is little influx of people, the culture tends to become "stagnant" and people are not exposed to new ideas and fail to see outside of their little "boxes". Although stereotypical, this seems to be most common in the south-central USA (from Texas to Georgia). I have lived in Minneapolis (Minnesota, in the north-central USA) and the culture there is very open (look who they voted for governor --- Jesse Ventura --- not a choice I personally agree with) and in Santa Fe (New Mexico, in the Southwestern USA). New Mexico is unique in that it does not have any large cities, but with the unique mix of Hispanic, Native American and "European" cultures, it is generally a very open, friendly place to live. Stupid issues such as long hair is irrelevant here. Our major issue is that we're running out of water. However, right next door in Texas, it is a completely different story. Most of Texas is monocultural and backwards, the exceptions being Dallas and Austin. Most of the long hair "horror stories" you hear about on this board originate in Texas.
I will be heading to England and Wales for a business trip in a few weeks --- I'll see if I notice any differences.
I agree that generalizations from small samples are dangerous. Getting a stastically valid sample by observation is enormously difficult, given the number of cells to fill and the problem of determining the relative size and influenece of each,
Howsomever -
For comparing people's attitudes, the generally accepted measure is population, not area. By that measure, the UK, even if Scotland Forever! secedes, is larger than NM. However as NM is short on one and long on the other, I can understand how a transplant would be a tad confused. Especially someone from up Nawth whose brain may be permanently pickled by the sudden lack of humidity.
As for NM not having any large cities, I suppose that is a matter of definition. However the last time I was out that general direction, I did notice that wide spot across the mountain known as Albequerque which seems to dominate the State. Of course it does try to keep the contamination of state government confined to Santa Fe, figuring if a few touristas succumb, escpecially if they are from Japan, no one will be too upset. Just don't clutter up the Plaza.
As for friendly and open, the voting & feuding patterns are still dominated by the 1600's uprising: Peublos & allies on one side, Spanish surnamed on the other, & "Anglos" (including the Schwartz's, Ivanovs, & Johansens) basically ducking for cover. It's not for nothing Richardson touts his Hispanic forebears in his election runs. Lord help the outsider who mistakes every Spanish surname for an Hispanic descent!
The only consensus position is that all those Angelinos moving in to fly Southwest commuting to LA are going to drive real estate prices to Hades. They aren't diversity, they're just crazy. Ban 'em right after I get my land sold to one.
But what can you expect from a state that did not receive the notoriety of Florida in the last election only because everyone knew the NM county election officials routinely excede the capacity of their calculators. Twenty is as high as they go, and that's only if they remember to remove their boots. It's not that they don't want to steal elections, it's just they can't count consistently enough to do so. :)
As for Texas, careful: We might insist on NM making up the Rio Grande water deficit and turn the whole state back into one giant Malpais. Of course there was the little matter of that 200 year drought that seems to have rid the area of the Anastazi. And that was before all those nasty ol' people doin' all that nasty ol' pollution.
Now the Great State is more diverse than you give it credit. Always has been and continues to be. Nacogdoches in East Texas looks on San Antone as a bunch of Juans come lately's. You couldn't tell the Spanish, the Tejas, and the French apart without a scorecard after a few generations on the frontier. (That's the frontier with Louisiana for all you who are Atlantic oriented.) They just all had this problem with the Apache before the Comanch rode down & kicked their tails into Southern NM that no one wanted.
And then we got Germans, and Czechs, amd Cajuns besides the Southern migration, as well as Scandanavians, Russians, and Poles, as well as Cherokee, Delaware, and Alabama before the Revolution. Galveston received more immigrants than any port except NY and N'Awleens. And after the Swedes finished cutting the Upper Mid-West cleaner than a bowling ball, they moved South. With the Aggies having had Dat Nguyen as a middle linebacker, lack of diversity ain't exactly a problem.
But you come from, or have passed through, Min-knee-so-tah, a land so diverse that it thinks a brunette is someone with honey-blonde hair. A land still voting the great grain price depression of 05. (Jesse will probably win again since he doesn't need much more than 1/3 + 1 to beat out the GOP German vote and the Farm-Dem Swede vote. He just has to find enough Norwegian bachelors with cabin fever.) A land of ten months of winter and two months of hard sledding that thinks 90 degrees Fahrenheit is an intolerable heat wave. A land so lacking imagination that it wants to ban air conditioning as an evil luxury (but I repeat myself - Verbeld epitomized the Scandinavian belief that comfort was sinful, except he called it waste.) That is except for the four months each year they inhabit their condos in Florida.
Min-knee-so-tah, the land of tolerance which hung 89 Sioux at one fell swoop during the Civil War. Min-knee-so-tah which thought a Methodist was a heathen religion with stained glass and all. Min-knee-so-tah, which does not understand government other than by consensus because doesn't everyone basically think alike? Except for those crazy foreigners in Chicago, of course. Why those people believe in sin, spelled F-U-N.
That was Min-knee-so-tah, which thinks salt is a spice? And lutke fish is a delicacy? And thinks food is to be boiled into an unidentifiable mush that the English wouldn't eat? :)
But as for Texas diversity, well Houston has just about all of 'em. Never mind the full set of arts and a world class medical center that keeps curing the medical cases Europeans reject as too hazardous. Lawdy, it even has Canadians! El Paso is a little strange, between griping at NM to let loose their water and what floats over from Juarez. Austin has always been weird, ever since it was Waterloo and was raided quarterly by the Comanch. Now it has the biggest collection of NIMBY's and non-contributing property in the State. To curse your enemy, wish them to work for the City of Austin. Lubbock, well you try growing grapes in the middle of a wheat field and you might confuse hidalgos and conquistadores too. Dallas has a New York complex (It ain't NY as it wishes to be) and is just touched enough to think that Olympians keeling over from the heat in the Summer Games would be a marketing plus. Foat Wuth just shakes its head and wonders what those looney birds to the East will try next. San Antone has Germans, and Canarys, and Hispanics who are largely multi-generation mestizos from before the Revolution, not to mention an overdose of military retirees, originally from up Nawth. Bush the Elder was Connecticut Yankee, but Bush the Younger is Midland oil patch. Nawthen roots can be overcome. Lawdy, we even joked about it at the Centennial.
Texas does have a sense of history, which confuses a lot of other folk. We do wonder from time to time whether we flubbed it by not staying independent, but who could turn down ten cents an acre for New Mexico? (Considering inflation, we still got a deal.) Lawdy, we even know you don't need shots and a passport to enter NM, unlike most of the school products fum Nawth uv th' O-hi-o. We just have been around long enough to know there isn't much new under the sun but the reborn sense in every generation that the world started when they first got spanked.
Never mind that Texas women have a sense of style, strength, & grace that has survived the California onslaught. Texas may have started as heaven for men & horses & hell for women, but we got around to taming things down in a hurry. A man who thought his woman was a doormat would soon find out different. The old en flagrante delicto rule simply meant that if she could shoot straight, she could save the cost of a divorce, while he still had to pay a lawyer.
So smile, pahdnuh, whan ya say them thangs. After t'all, yuh hain't fambly and we mightun not know better 'n' take you seriously outn behin' th' barn. :)