Are you society-whipped?

I am wondering if you, perhaps, identify with any of the following situations.

1. Someone's coming round to yours and Mum's running around like a frightened cockroach to get everything unnaturally clean and tidy before they arrive. She then goes apeshit due to the state of your bedroom.
2. You've had a delightful day on the town, sporting a relatively low-cut dress, but zip up your hoodie up to your eyeballs five minutes before it's time for interaction with your boyfriend's parents.
3. Your parents force you to take your far younger sibling to see 17 Again or some shit. You actually enjoy it. You lie to your friends and tell them it was shit. For the purpose of verisimilitude, you throw in a homosexual slur about Zac Efron.
4. You're just a douche and lie about how far your pity-date went with you to make it seem like you actually get some.

My point may also be exemplified through the joy of Jim Carey in The Mask.

"Your car, sir."

"Uh, that's not my car."

But, basically, last semester we took a very excellent class at university. One theorist studied was Michel Foucault, and his ideas about a self-surveilling society: an efficient society in which we no longer need Big Brother because we scrutinize ourselves for concern of what others might think of us. Even if conforming to cultural norms conflicts with our interest in manifesting our individuality. And so, we behave ourselves, we watch our grooming, our sexuality, what we talk about, how clean our homes are, whom we form relationships with - virtually each aspect of our lives. Remember back to kindergarten, when the mad cunts pressured you to cross the line and join them in the out-of-bounds area? You wanted to be cool and accepted, didn't you? Well, think of society's normalizing gaze like that. Think of it as an omnipresent, pounding, constant yet invisible version of the peer pressure chant.

Peerpressurepeerpressurepeerpressurepeerpressurepeerpressurepeerpressurepeerpressurepeerpressurepeerpressurepeerpressurepeerpressurepeerpressurepeerpressure.

And we want to be normal, yeah? I dunno.

It is only after this had been articulated to me that I became conciously aware of it and desired to betray, and see others betray it. I found myself perplexed and angry, because I think it's plain shit. I mean, where's the beauty and wonder in humanity if we are all perfect, clean, and restrained? If we keep going like this, no one wins but the companies who roll around in mammoth piles of our normalizing money, smoking their cigars with their white-gloved hands, their fat eyelids dripping over their monocles. I bet they love how we've been manipulated.

Fuck it! Let's eat icecream for breakfast, sleep with tampons in, and admit to all the poppy garbage in the Top 40 we actually like. I mean, shit, we might not smell as nice, but dammit, we'd be a shitload happier.

I feel smug allowing the hair on my inner thighs to grow back, because I like it like that. I am also pleased to see evidence of people I know giving mass-media the big Fuck You. Adam wears glasses that make him look like a total nerd, because he likes them. Sam wears whatever the hell she wants. She likes it. Cowie is raring to grow facial hair that will make him look like a 70's porn star, because he likes it. (Also, I have absolutely no problem with that last one.)

It would give me the deepest pleasure to see makeup companies and cosmetic surgeons go broke. And Gillette. I don't believe society will ever celebrate our imperfect selves. But still, we can rebel in a happy orgy of oversized ears, dirty old chucks, and beards down to our normal tits.

I wanna see it untame itself and break it's owner.
Car, Built to Spill