SacredCircle

All you are doing by telling her she is wrong is making things worse. I had to go through this stage myself (no spiked collars but dreads, tattoos, gauged ears and the like) I took jobs that didn't care too much how I dressed. I did have to get rid of the dreads to work in a coffee shop and because I wanted it bad enough I did it. Later, when I was managing one of the stores they asked me to not gauge my ears out any further so I didn't. But anytime a friend told me I was messing up my life. . .I went to the bar and then to my tattoo artist.
My friend's wife is 29 and still has the spiked collar, fish nets, and colored hair. This chick drives me nuts. In order to "be herself" she doesn't go to work because no one can accept her and of course this their fault and not her own. She actually quite a job because they played "soft rock" on the radio. But I don't tell her she's wrong. I'm hoping someday she'll realize her nonconformity is only hurting herself.
Just let your friend be as crazy as she can be while she still can! Hopefully, she'll be able to be herself inside and out her whole life, but most of us spiked collar, fish net wearing people just aren't that lucky.

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Olly Buckle

To some people their refusal to conform is most important. Some of them turn out to be a Rosa Parks, Gallileo or some such, most don't, but most people at the time couldn't tell them from the nutters and morons. Maybe we can't either, it seems to be important to them, we should at least be tolerant.

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Google Olly Buckle and click on my Associated content page, or find me on youtube.

I had a tremendous advantage in life, at the age of eighteen I caught polio and for eighteen months was totally paralysed except for my eyes. Milton Erickson

The Backward OX

Of course, you could always just dump her. I mean, who needs "friends" like that anyway? There's still plenty of normal people left, if you look.

JosephB

pesky double post.

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"The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources."
-- Albert Einstein

"I am really only interested in a fiction of miracles."
-- Flannery O'Connor

JosephB

Maybe. But I'd say that 99.99999999% of the people who wear dog collars don't go on to make significant contributions to mankind.

Rosa Park's refusal to conform was all about principles and doing what she believed was right. It had nothing to do with something as superficial as a need to be different. I don't see the comparison, although I understand Galileo had his nipples pierced.

__________________
"The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources."
-- Albert Einstein

"I am really only interested in a fiction of miracles."
-- Flannery O'Connor

The Backward OX

JosephB

Yes, but you are a tool.

__________________
"The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources."
-- Albert Einstein

"I am really only interested in a fiction of miracles."
-- Flannery O'Connor

Olly Buckle

Now, now, you two stop that bitchin.
The point was, Joseph, that at the time no one else (or very few) saw Rosa as being vindicated. She was just some nutty old black woman who didn't know what was good for her and needed teaching a lesson as far as most of white America was concerned at the time, if they thought about her at all. Superficial and about the need to feel different, that's your interpretation, maybe she feels it is an important statement of solidarity with all the other Goths and the values they stand for, or some such. I tend to agree with your analysis that she is one of the 99.99% who make no difference, but I think it arrogant to state it as more than our opinion if she believes it important.
Though time may well prove our opinion right, in my opinion.

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Google Olly Buckle and click on my Associated content page, or find me on youtube.

I had a tremendous advantage in life, at the age of eighteen I caught polio and for eighteen months was totally paralysed except for my eyes. Milton Erickson

JosephB

I see your point.

But regarding Rosa Parks, "most of white America" wouldn't have believed she needed a lesson taught to her, by any means. This would be primarily where there were still Jim Crow laws, in the Southeast.

You may know her action led to the Montgomery Bus Boycott, which got national press and the attention of many white people nationwide who supported the cause. I'm not going to tell you all was peaches and cream in regions other than the southeast, but your characterization of white America, as it applies to this, is a bit of an overstatement.

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"The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources."
-- Albert Einstein

"I am really only interested in a fiction of miracles."
-- Flannery O'Connor

Mermaid on the breakwater

Our rottweiler is so soppy, he'd look ridiculous in a spiked collar.

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Doors 2, an anthology: http://www.lulu.com/content/3522683

Olly Buckle

Glad you see my point JB. Maybe I am overstating it a little, perhaps "putting in her place" would be more accurate than "taught a lesson" outside the KKK dominated areas, but it wasn't long before the federal army had been segregated, for example. I am old enough to remember and it is stunning how much attitudes to race have changed in a generation, sometimes the world is not all bad.

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Google Olly Buckle and click on my Associated content page, or find me on youtube.

I had a tremendous advantage in life, at the age of eighteen I caught polio and for eighteen months was totally paralysed except for my eyes. Milton Erickson

JosephB

I think it will be another generation -- by this I mean my children -- before we lose some of our more subconscious prejudices. There is still racism, but I think it takes on more subtle forms. It will just take more time. In the meantime, I don't think we can afford to pretend like it doesn't exist anymore.

__________________
"The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources."
-- Albert Einstein

"I am really only interested in a fiction of miracles."
-- Flannery O'Connor

tristiano

Getting her to take off the collar is like trying to convert a televangelist. Ok... Trying to convert a Scientologist, since I don't think there are any here. (we don't want no trouble, officer)

No matter what point you make that she is wrong, she will just find a way to justify her actions. No matter how valid your points, even if you shake the entire foundation of her collar wearing habits, you will make no progress. She might try to convince you to wear a collar though. In the end, she will realize that the collar was a bad idea and that it is costing her jobs, or if she is stupid enough, she will live the rest of her life with the collar hindering her and stopping her from doing things she wants to do.

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