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Can we go back to the "old days", even if they were three months ago, a year ago, or ten? Today's world keeps feeling more bizarre, unnecessarily rude, crude, and more complicated.
I don't know about you, but I was raised with certain simple standards of decency and common sense. I'm no prude — I made it through the hippie 60s as a tie-dyed t-shirt, ripped jeans kid, along with the sex, drugs, rock and roll era of the 70s, the discos, more drugs, platform shoes, and sequins of the 80s, the grunge of the 90s. Somehow, I'm still intact.
But I really long for those good ol' days when, for example:
Basic Hygiene: This was taught in grade school, in case your parents didn't make you take a bath, which was unheard of. You never saw vulgar ads in those days for "full body" deodorant. When did a "72-hour" deodorant that describes the body in street terms like boobs, pits, privates, feet and more become a thing? How much more can you cover with spray? I cannot imagine needing a 4-day deodorant unless I was in the military, stationed in a remote desert area with no access to water or soap.
A cheap bar of soap and a daily shower are not only healthy but way more refreshing than trying to mask odor with a roll-on chemical. I've been next to some folks in nice department stores who bought into this marketing, and I can tell you, four days without a shower doesn't work. The body breathes and throws off toxins through the skin, so masking these areas is bad info and, I am sure, all started by the eco elites trying to save water for themselves...!
Appearance: I am no fashionista. I stopped shopping for fancier stuff when I left the corporate world and needed lighter and more casual duds when I started a property management business. Cool but clean khaki shorts, nice t-shirts or polos were my go-to — and always a watch. Nowadays, I see pajama bottoms or skin-tight (leaving nothing to the imagination) workout pants at the store, in restaurants, with furry slipper flip flops, and sloppy cartoon-riddled t-shirts and hoodies. I love Crocs, but not paired with dirty socks with holes (talking to the young guys here).
Hair these days looks greasy and unwashed, or rainbow-hued, even on older women, and some could give Bozo the Clown a run for his money. Personal expression or a trend run amok? How is this a good look? Did they stop selling mirrors? Did they just roll off the couch of a frat house after an all-nighter? Do they ever care about attracting a mate, or how they even look to their family?
The crazy eras we survived looked better. Remember Twiggy, Cheryl Tiegs or Lauren Hutton? Our current culture could take a lesson in style from our First Lady.
Even during the wars that pummeled Europe and the world through the 1920s - 1940s, women and men somehow managed to wear hats and gloves, even suits. They combed their hair, refusing to give in and reflect the hell around them, and showed respect for themselves and others by cleaning up and carrying on.
It was almost a statement - refusing to be defined or denigrated by an evil, inhuman thing that took hold, an ugliness that unfolded in tearing down all that was good, holy, and beautiful. From the fashion and advertising world, trying to make people today look slovenly, androgenous, clownish, and smell bad is not coming from a healthy place. When did this start? Is it just me, or have others taken notice?
From AI Overview:
U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, as part of the Trump administration, launched a "civility campaign" in November 2025 that encouraged passengers to stop wearing pajamas and slippers on airplanes to restore a sense of "class" and respect to air travel. The campaign, titled "The Golden Age of Travel Starts with You," aims to reduce in-flight disruptions by encouraging better behavior, suggesting that dressing better may lead to better conduct.
- Purpose: The initiative is a response to a record surge in unruly passenger incidents and a perceived decline in airport courtesy.
- Proposed Standards: The Department of Transportation (DOT) advises wearing "respectful" clothing, such as jeans and a nice shirt, rather than loungewear.
- "Golden Age" Campaign: The initiative includes five key questions for passengers to ask themselves, including "Are you dressing with respect?" and "Are you saying thank you to your flight attendants?"
Note this is just a part of the "civility campaign" message... Show respect.
Communication and teaching manners: In the good old days, families at a night out spoke to each other, phones and tablets were non-existent at the table, and babies received attention. I am seeing this more frequently, after not seeing it for so long, especially since Covid, and it is wonderful. Little boys with toy cars instead of tablet games, and their parents attending to them. Little girls wearing ruffled jumpers and needling their little brothers. It was such a pleasure to see no phones or tablets at a child's birthday party recently. Saying thank you to the waiter or waitress means a lot.
Do you have a pet peeve? I know many worse things are going on in the world, but little things can elevate the worst circumstances. A saying I grew up with was that it's not a sin to be poor, but it's a sin to be dirty. This message came from my relatives who survived World War II and the Great Depression.
Anyway. Thanks for letting me rant a bit.
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Discussion (20)
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On appearance: I'm projecting my own thinking process onto others, but I don't think it's too much of a stretch to imagine my thinking process is not atypical. My mental attitude and behavior are influenced by what I am wearing. I started my professional office worker career (lawyer) in the days of suits and ties (1981). I kept putting on a tie almost every day long after "office casual" became the standard because putting on that tie subconsciously told my brain that I was going to work. I was not going to hang out with friends or to play some sporting activity. (I did downgrade from a suit to slacks and a sport coat.) I detected among some of my coworkers that when they were dressed as though they were heading to the golf course, or out to ride their horses, or in their pajama pants for hanging around the house, they didn't seem to take their work as seriously.
I also wore the sport coat and tie when traveling by air for business. I had my own selfish reasons for doing so, but dressing that way did influence my mind to remember that I was a professional person who should behave as a professional person, whether in line, sitting in the gate area, getting on the airplane, getting off the airplane, or trying to retrieve luggage at baggage claim. I was not slumming it on the beach or participating in a WWE event.
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Basic Hygiene: I have been saying for decades that people with body odor should be arrested and cited for assault. No joking. I've got stories.
When it comes to Appearance, well, We've been conditioned for a few generations now not to make judgments about a person's appearance, lest We "blame the victim" for how They are perceived (which We should).
To correct Our course begins with bringing back shame and public standards.
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Manners: How you treat people who are arguably lower than you on the social or economic ladder matters. Treat the food servers with respect. Treat the clerks with respect. As a practical matter, you will get farther that way than by treating them as someone to be stepped on.
I got a lesson in this early in my lawyer career. While still in law school I worked for a law firm during the summer break. A case file for one of the firm's litigation matters had gotten lost in the vast Los Angeles County court system (this was 1979 or 1980, before computerized and on-line records). The case had been transferred among several different courthouses in the system. Where did the file go astray? I was sent out to find it. I found I made quite a bit of progress by being friendly with the clerks in the court system, and emphasizing that we were on the same mission - find a missing file. How could we work together? I got cooperation, not resistance. And eventually (after visiting several courthouses all over the county) we found the file!
In my first full-time lawyer job, I quickly realized (thanks to some of the more senior lawyers) that the "support staff" - secretaries, word processing clerks, docket and deadline clerks, etc. - really made the office hum, and were key to getting things done in a way to make to lawyers look good. Everybody was nice to them. . . . Until we got a new lawyer who very much embodied the attitude that he was God's gift to the legal profession, and was better than all that support staff. He treated the office staff with disdain, and openly expressed his attitude that they couldn't know as much as he did. He lasted about six weeks before he was dismissed, as it was clear that with that attitude he was not going to be able to get any actual productive work done.
Many years later I was helping another lawyer gather some information within a corporation. The other lawyer was impressed that I was on such friendly terms with so many of the company secretaries and file clerks. I reminded this other lawyer that those secretaries (today probably "executive assistants") and file clerks were key to accessing the corporate executives and the information that was scattered around the company, so it behooved me to treat them as valued people, and not as expendable servants for particular tasks.
When I did do a fair amount of business travel on airplanes, when something went wrong, I'd start with the airline clerk acknowledging that he or she was not the cause of the problem, that the clerk was constrained to work within a system with processes and limitations, so how can we work together to get me what I need. That attitude seemed always to get me something I could live with.
Just because someone is working in a service role that may be subservient to your "peer" level does not justify treating them as an irrelevant cog that can be used and abused with impunity.
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The Bronze Age? Historians find a common sentiment littered throughout the ages, going back thousands of years: Things were great when I was a kid, but now the world has gone to hell. Rest assured that when you were a kid, many middle-aged people thought the young people were insane. When your grandparents were kids, their elders likely said the same.
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And you set a good example to many. A very young guy who was our closing agent when we sold our house last year said he was in training. He was dressed impeccably, including watch and cuff links! He really stood out as different, and I found out his dad was French - raised differently...
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