For Baby Boomers, this famous quote, attributed to Joan Collins, humorously captures a change many of them have observed in American society during their lifetimes: “Grandmother used to take my mother to the circus to see the fat lady and the tattooed man — now they’re everywhere.”
The reality behind the quote is that over the past few decades, American society has largely abandoned standard norms — of appearance, language, and behavior — in favor of a far more à la carte, each-to-their-own choice of how individuals should or can present and conduct themselves in society.
Fashions, standards, and mores evolve in all societies. What differs about the sea-change in this area since the late 1960s, however, is that rather than having one set of conventions gradually replace another, there has been a progressive withdrawal from the very idea of externally perceivable norms as the unwritten framework for what mainstream society considers acceptable and unacceptable.
The new “normal” is a near-absence of norms.
To hark back for a second to the Joan Collins quote, the example of the general spread of obesity and tattoos — once so marginal as to be limited to unfortunate occurrences of glandular dysfunction in the former case, and sailors and convicts in the latter case — is emblematic of not only those things now accepted or even celebrated, but of their co-existence with every other possible manner in which people today choose to present themselves in society, from Goth fashion, to sportswear as everyday attire,
