Breakfast in America Album
Dear [Mentat],
I have a CD copy of BIA [Breakfast in America], but bought it in 2003. So it likely has the same problem as yours. I don’t know the song you mention. Is that tape-stretch flaw something one would hear who is not acquainted with how the song _should_ sound?
I had a vinyl copy of BIA once upon a time, but probably got rid of it. It I still have it, it’s up in storage. I’ll look for it next time I’m up there.
Yes, the 2050 number sounds familiar. I’m reading a book called “Survival Of The Prettiest” that suggests that prevailing beauty standards largely conform to how people from the economically dominant race / ethnic group / culture look. It exemplifies how the women of northern and western Europe seem to mirror America’s “ideal” lady. The book theorizes that this happens because people from these areas were the first to immigrate to the US several hundred years ago, and so, where the first to establish economic power (and thus, influence) in America. The immigrants that came later from other regions of Europe and elsewhere in the world never achieved the preeminence of the first group because they weren’t really pioneers and had a more difficult time acquiring wealth as a group because they had to contend with the first group, which had already established a strong cultural foothold in America’s politics and business worlds.
Anyway, the book talks of blacks and how African American women still do not appear often on the covers of popular cross-cultural magazines and catalogues, raising the question of why this is, considering that blacks are wielding more and more spending power, and in fact, spend more today on many cosmetic products than do whites. Of course, prejudice probably plays a factor here, but it does mention that sometime in this century, minorities will collectively have more money to spend than whites, and it speculates that American beauty standards will probably change accordingly, to glorify more women from minority groups.
Don’t worry about getting exact figures for these demographic shifts. You made your point well.
Later,
Tom