Friday, October 13, 2006
The Flip Flop in the Global Village
If we are becoming more and more of a global village, which I think we already are in many respects, I think it makes sense that we follow our inner desires to let go of all our inhibitions, be storytellers by the campfire, and respond to our need to "go primitive" in one form or another, be it tattoos, piercings, or just wearing flip flops as much as possible. I wonder what Marshall McLuhan would have to say about flip flops. I'm sure he would recognize it as a powerful cultural phenomenon short-circuiting issues of class and race--to some degree. Of course, if you wear ratty ole flip flops and don't have any social graces, then you're in trouble.
And along with the flip flop musings, here are some sobering flip flop factoids I uncovered on www.ralphmag.org:
Flip-flops --- zori sandals --- are produced at a rate of 125,000,000 a year. Calvin Klein has a pair for $245. But it is the cheapest and most comfortable footware for millions of people over the world. Regular thong sandals cost 30 - 40 cents to manufacture. Havaianas has sold over two billion pairs of its brand filp-flops. But "discarded plastic footware is a major component of the world's flotsam, washing up in surprising places. In 1996 the Australian Cocos and Keeling Islands, home to a number of endangered species, were assaulted by hundreds of thousands of discarded flip-flop sandals, rejects of Indonesian manufacturers ... One Australian member of Parliament said, The beaches are the home of the green sea turtle and the blue rubber thong. One of them has to go. And the surfer Allan Seymour said, We call them go-aheads, because you can't walk backwards in them."
If we are becoming more and more of a global village, which I think we already are in many respects, I think it makes sense that we follow our inner desires to let go of all our inhibitions, be storytellers by the campfire, and respond to our need to "go primitive" in one form or another, be it tattoos, piercings, or just wearing flip flops as much as possible. I wonder what Marshall McLuhan would have to say about flip flops. I'm sure he would recognize it as a powerful cultural phenomenon short-circuiting issues of class and race--to some degree. Of course, if you wear ratty ole flip flops and don't have any social graces, then you're in trouble.
And along with the flip flop musings, here are some sobering flip flop factoids I uncovered on www.ralphmag.org:
Flip-flops --- zori sandals --- are produced at a rate of 125,000,000 a year. Calvin Klein has a pair for $245. But it is the cheapest and most comfortable footware for millions of people over the world. Regular thong sandals cost 30 - 40 cents to manufacture. Havaianas has sold over two billion pairs of its brand filp-flops. But "discarded plastic footware is a major component of the world's flotsam, washing up in surprising places. In 1996 the Australian Cocos and Keeling Islands, home to a number of endangered species, were assaulted by hundreds of thousands of discarded flip-flop sandals, rejects of Indonesian manufacturers ... One Australian member of Parliament said, The beaches are the home of the green sea turtle and the blue rubber thong. One of them has to go. And the surfer Allan Seymour said, We call them go-aheads, because you can't walk backwards in them."
