Probably the most scream-inducing thing about the weather here in the Isle of Gaels isn’t the rain — the rapidly changing skyscapes are actually very beautiful, as is the play of light and shadow created by the high atmospheric winds that knock the clouds around — and it isn’t the poorly kept roads and rutted, puddled cobblestones, though those are a pain sometimes. What’s scream inducing is how the people respond to the weather — as if we’re crazy. Crazy for noticing it, that is. See, people here in Glasgow are too tough for coats. They’re too tough for umbrellas, most times they’re too tough for hats, especially hats with brims. They scuttle around from building to building, or, heads bent, trudge through with icy sleet skidding down the backs of their necks. They often don’t even hold up a newspaper above them — they just carry on and SUFFER.
We have come to the country of martyrs.
This weekend we saw whole families — Mum, Dad, kids — with coats on — open to the elements, hooded coats, too, mind — and not one hood was up, nor one zip zippered. The little girl wore ballerina pumps, no socks, and three quarter-length pants. It may be that this city is a series of small towns, and people assume they’re “only going to Anderston,” so there’s no need for all of that weather dressing, but it’s ridiculous out, and they’re so under-dressed! But do they care? No.
Apparently, part of living in Glasgow is declaring war on the weather.
Every once in awhile we come across yet another bit of the urban landscape that leaves us gobsmacked. This little bit of uniqueness T. discovered in the Glasgow Student University Union, in the ladies’ room, to be precise.
She had to stand and gawk at it for a moment or two before she could figure it out. “High temperatures ensure plates remain sterile” the sign below it said. She stared at it blankly. Sterile hair? She kept reading. Deposit £1. Well, there are things in the ladies where you put in money, but… The Beautiful Vending Company?
When she finally put together that it was a coin-op flatiron, she wasn’t sure whether to be grossed out or inspired. True, she’s given up on having her hair look like anything, as winter in the UK seems bent on providing instances where perspiration, precipitation and condensation, not to mention gale force winds and unlined woolen hats destroy anything remotely resembling stylish locks. But to share… a flatiron or curling iron… with the world?
The high heat is supposed to create the ideally sterilized surface, but she shudders at the idea of everyone else’s crisped hair products (and perspiration and dandruff) mixing with hers. What might be more helpful is if all ladies’ rooms came equipped with blow dryers…
We’ve been pondering style since we’ve arrived, because … well, Glasgow’s city slogan is Scotland, With Style, and apparently ‘style’ is a concept more blatant, out there, and just plain garish in this fine university city. As is his usual wont, when T. makes her sociologist-style observations on the populace, D. has arrived at a theory to express her rather random meanderings.
THEORY: the “noisier” the population, the “louder” the signals need to be in order to get the point across. The signals, in this case, would be ones of availability: micro minis, deep vee tops, all screaming out, “I’m not married!” The female populace has to scream, we’ve decided (and dust itself with glitter, perhaps?), because there are so many other things in a city to attract one’s attention.
To put this in engineering-speak (because everything is better when you do, right?): the signal to noise ratio is probably the same as in other environments, but the carrier wave has a greater amplitude, so the individual variations are stronger. We perceive the individual signals as being stronger, but they are not, relative to their base signal. So, if you look at the illustration, you’ll see two carrier waves, along with a representation of what happens when you encode information into those waves. The red wave is 2x the amplitude of the blue wave. The bottom illustration (with the signal encoded) shows how a series is encoded, and also shows you a little bit of “noise” on that – the irregularity of the encoding, where some of the curves actually drop out of the range that’s expected. The overall encoding, though, is relatively free of noise, and can be interpreted.
In looking at the um… blatant, unsubtle nature of the outfits here in Glasgow, we’re thinking that the “background noise” is high, so we’ve come up with the thesis that “availability signaling is necessarily more blatant in urban settings; this is attributable to the amount of ‘noise’ present in the environment, and the signals are thus necessarily made ‘louder’ to compensate for ‘background noise.'”
See what a good education gives you? The ability to be utterly baffling — with charts. Those of you going to San Francisco or L.A. in the near future — test this one out. People in cities invariably are on the forward leading edge of fashion; all the big houses are in huge population centers. No wonder the average person has no interest in wearing Paris, Milan and New York high fashion. It’s just too quiet in their little neighborhoods.
Pondering the Urban Populace,
– D & T
