some refined mess

humidity

oh alas, you say. oh papa, whatever shall i do, it is ever so hotte and drye in california. the very air hath been sucked of all its moisturey droplets and whatnot.* one hundredy and tennith desiccated degrees!

*(yo, drought is serious. i am pretty obviously not making fun of that.)

alright. let’s check it out. here’s a random california city, right about now:

thirty-two percent. and here’s a random mid-atlantic city located somewhere in the wet fleshy crease behind a demon’s knee*:

*(confession: i do not live in dc, but several years ago i spent three weeks steaming like a tinned ham in arlington in august. none of the pants i took with me could ever keep a crease again.)

huh! funny thing! “see, dc’s actually seven degrees COOLER,” you say, because you’ve obviously never gone outside and taken a deep lungful of wet sock trash air in your life. and now for added bliss, here’s what early wednesday morning’s gonna be like for these poor clowns:

that’s right! eighty-two percent humidity! the point at which showers no longer matter, because you’re all caught in God’s grease trap! just stressed human eels miserably slip slidin’ their way through a damp melty bathwater-flavored hellscape that feels like it’s actively sous viding their top layer of skin! a hundred thousand people packed into public transit breathing air that feels like deepthroating swamp thing! and you wanna talk to me about fuckin california!

[cue science voice]: human bodies cool through evaporation, a process by which the body sweats and sweet invisible angels towel us off, whisking away our unwanted moisture into the air and literally chilling us out. (it’s also why air conditioned air feels so fucking deliciously refreshing: it’s not just being cooled, it’s being conditioned, aka, dehumidified. it’s cool dry air.) but. if the air is already made out of fucking chowder and can’t absorb shit then guess what the fuck our bodies can’t do.

In 1980, photographer Anita Corbin decided to turn her lens on the young women of UK subcultures. Over the next two years, rockabillies, mods, goths, rude girls, skinheads, rastas and more posed for Corbin and opened up about what it was like to be a young woman navigating an alt scene, and the importance of female friendships. 

“I have chosen to focus on girls, not because the boys (where present) were any less stylish, but because girls in “subcultures” have been largely ignored or when referred to, only as male appendages.” -Anita Corbin, photographer, “Visible Girls”

Listen to our interview with Corbin and learn what happened when Corbin and her portrait subjects reunited earlier this year.