Cultural shifts and reversals

[DanaC]

One of things that always fascinates me in the study of history is the way aspects of culture shift from one paradigm to another. Like,for instance, with masculinity. We tend to think of masculine qualities as fixed, almost static, or at least shifting along quite a short spectrum. The idea of male stoicism, for example, that men are less emotionally driven than women, that to openly express deep emotion is in somesense unmanly - feels like something that has always been and is only really being challenged in recent decades.

And yet there have been times in western history when to feel things deeply, and be moved to tears by sentiment or beauty was a component of acceptable manliness. Often followed by periods of reaction to that, with a closing down of male emotional expression, or a refocussing of male appreciation for homosocial activity (defeminise through segregation from female company). Activities which had been a glorious and manly exploration of the sublime became frivolous and feminine. I'm grossly simplifying of course - they're all parts of more complicated social and cultural developments with a myriad of interlocking as well as countervailing aspects - but you get the gist. From easy tears to a stiff upper lip in a handful of generations.

Femininity has been through similar shifts - as has religiosity, attitudes to science and the arts. It's lazy of me, really to call them reversals - they sometimes are, but mostly they're just developments and reactions that look like reversals. But they are fun and they show a fluidity that you don't get to see so much when you're in it. Or at least, didn't get to see - changing media brings some of it into sharper focus.

Gender is the area I've studied a little and have a long-standing interest in - but you see it in all sorts of things. What sparked this thread was actually an article about changes in how tipping has been viewed in american culture. Tipping is one those things that I think of as quintessentially american. Like many brits, I find tipping a source of discomfort - I am never really sure when to tip or not to tip, how much to tip - when a tip is in fact an essential part of the remuneration for the people who've done the work (like a taxi driver), in which case I feel very guilty not tipping, or tipping low and generally apologise for that, and when it is a nice bonus for the staff that gets shared at the end of the week (my niece's bar job), in which case I don't feel bad for not tipping every time but would throw some spare change in the tip jar when I have it. Sometimes it's clear and sometimes it isn't. It's horrible and socially awkward and complicates the totting up of a restaurant bill with discussions about how much we should be tipping. I'm slightly envious of the ease with which americans seem to navigate that stuff.

So, I found this article really interesting.

https://wamu.org/news/15/11/30/when_...ly_un_american

When tipping began to spread in post-Civil War America, it was tarred as "a cancer in the breast of democracy," "flunkeyism" and "a gross and offensive caricature of mercy." But the most common insult hurled at it was "offensively un-American."

Loathed as a master-serf custom of the caste-bound Old World that went back to the Middle Ages, tipping was blamed for encouraging servility and degrading America's democratic, puritanical, and anti-aristocratic ethic. European immigrants surging into the U.S. were charged with bringing this deplorable custom with them. But in fact, it was also American tourists, like the characters in Henry James' novels, who picked up the restaurant conventions of the Continent, and imported them back to America.