 Hey baby, are you really a doctor? Yeah, I have a PhD. Can I see it? You can hear about it. When do you want to get together? How about Thursday at noon? How about every Thursday at noon on CFUV? You want other people to hear us? I want everyone to hear us. I spoke with Alyssa Altman in her Vancouver home where she lives with her husband, Maury. Alyssa is one of a growing number of people who are crossing international boundaries via the internet and finding themselves wanting to marry a person from another country. In Canada, two developments in the past year have made this more complex. The September 11th incidents and the recently passed Immigration Act, which had been written before September 11th but which has been fast-tracked since September 11th. Logically, Alyssa and others like her have turned to the internet as a source of information to assist them in dealing with these complexities. This informal network provides potential immigrants with real-life experiences and it has afforded Alyssa a kind of grassroots knowledge that she shares via a Yahoo group that she has co-founded. She stresses that she is not a lawyer and that she is not giving legal advice, but she does have a broad knowledge of immigration. Let's just start with your story. I understand you're from the United States, so tell me how you got to Vancouver and from where? I'm originally from the New York City area and had met my husband online. He is from Canada and was at the time living in Vancouver and I came for a visit and just absolutely fell in love with Canada. Unlike most of the people in our circle, it wasn't a spousal immigration. I came on my own, an independent application. I was here for about two years before we got married. Every visit I've had to Canada, I just absolutely adored Canada. I love the politics, I love the personalities. I love the physical aspect of Canada, the climate and the terrain. And then when I came to Vancouver it was just ping. So you didn't come originally to Vancouver? No, I immigrated to Vancouver, but these were visits to Canada in general prior to moving. So I had been to Toronto and Ottawa, a couple of places in Ontario and Montreal, and then came to Vancouver. How long ago did you immigrate? Two years ago, it was December 24th, 1999. Okay, so this is fairly recently then? Yeah, it's been here just over two years. And so you met your husband via the internet? Yes. What kind of forum was it that you met him in? It was actually a Jewish discussion board. It was just a general group for Jewish interests. People would post discussions about the different camps they went to as kids and Passover. It wasn't any kind of dating service or anything like that. So were you looking to fall in love? Not at all, absolutely not. And neither was he actually. It was sheer coincidence. We clicked on the board and most people were just known by whatever their online identity was and there wasn't any real personal friendships on the board. It was just a group of us who posted and just happened to know each other through the board. And one of the members who is from Vancouver is a filmmaker and had a film premiering in Toronto. And one day he just posted, hey, anybody want to come to my film premiere? And at first everybody went, oh, sure, we've never met you. We have no idea who you are. And what kind of film are we talking about here? Exactly. He and my husband had known each other personally in Vancouver. And my husband at the time was planning on coming east anyway for a visit. Decided to go. One of the members lived in Toronto and she said, well, what the heck, she was going to go. And I started thinking about it and realized that I hadn't gone on vacation in ages and I always wanted to go to Canada. My previous trip to Canada had been about 30 seconds long. Long enough to go for a beer run and that was it. 120 kilometers on the four-row way. There goes Niagara Falls. There goes Niagara Falls. And that was about it. So I actually started getting excited about it. And I planned carefully. I had a hotel room and all the meetings were going to be in public. So I figured if it wasn't comfortable with anybody, then I'd be perfectly happy touring on my own. And I had gone on vacations on my own before. And I left contact numbers with everyone. And then Maura emailed me about staying with a friend of his. And I asked if this friend knew that he was emailing me. And after a couple of conversations and we started emailing each other five times a day then ten times a day. And we decided that it would be really cool to meet in person. We'd be great friends. And once we met in person it was love at first sight. We spent the week together and then I brought him home to New York with me for a week. And so then you went through the process of emigrating. Yes. And made the decision to emigrate because you intended to marry? That might have been in the back of my mind. It was actually three months after we had met the first time. It was when I first came to Vancouver and Maura handed me a book on emigrating to Canada. So I think that was his way of asking me to move. Oh, they can't. And at that point I grew up as a military brat. My dad was in the army and we moved all over anyway. So I'm used to moving and even as an adult I've continued moving every year. Did you live in different countries in the United States when you were younger? I had actually, I think from age seven to about thirteen I was in Germany. And prior to that we had been in California and Missouri and Virginia and Connecticut and New York. Just all over. I think we were in California twice but I'm not sure. He says too much of it. So it wasn't entirely unusual to just pick up stakes and go? No. I want to kind of move into immigration issues which is why I wanted to talk to you a little bit. And I think the first question I had since this is in part for International Women's Day which is March 8th. I wondered if emigrating as a woman had any special issues for you. Did you think, have you picked up on any kind of differences between women emigrating and men emigrating? Either as a spouse or even as an independent? No, actually I haven't. None that I'm aware of. I initially thought that there might be issues because especially as an independent you have to have a certain amount of savings in order to be approved for immigration. And just given poverty statistics in the US and the number of women, especially women with children who are below poverty level, I thought that would be kind of limiting that women wouldn't be able to have the resources to emigrate. But I looked up the statistics and according to Statistics Canada the mix is fairly even between men and women who emigrate. But the chart, the statistics I looked at didn't distinguish between married or single. Ah, so the women that emigrate might be more or less, or more often married than not, you don't know. That would be my suspicion but I couldn't find any specific statistics on that. Now you're involved in online. The way I found you is that I've been involved with an immigration group online. It didn't quite fit us as we were thinking about moving to Canada but nonetheless gave us a lot of good information about getting to Canada. And that is an online group for spouses of Canadians who are trying to emigrate. And then you also started your own forum, is that what I understand? I didn't start one. Somebody else started a group who quite ironically had absolutely nothing to do with emigrating. He just thought the topic was interesting and because the group that you're talking about was really geared towards spousal immigration, he wanted to do kind of a general interest type forum on immigration issues and posted some really fantastic links. And shortly after the group started he was going abroad for at least six months. And I met him in Ottawa when we got together and he asked me if I would become a co-founder because he was going to be away. So that's the sort of one I took over and he hasn't quite come back. Now the spousal immigration group has about 1,100 members now, is that right? Somewhere in that? It was about 800 but since the club has moved. It's gone down. Yeah, not a lot of members got transferred and didn't rejoin with the new group. Yeah, let me just by way of explanation for people who are listening. Yahoo is the sponsor or the forum where this has been done. And Yahoo had a distinction between what were called clubs and what were called groups. And then they are moving their clubs into their groups. And it's been kind of a painful experience for a lot of people who have formed clubs. And I think that this particular club, the spousal immigration club, is going to have some difficulties because they're being pushed into a group kind of early. I think because they were such a large club. On Yahoo, my little sort of informal survey was that they were one of the larger clubs on Yahoo. Most of them have like about 100 members, maybe even less than that. Yeah, they're typically much smaller. This is a tremendous group and it's actually gotten to the point where Ryan, the founder, a couple of the more well-known forums for immigration to Canada have actually recommended people go to Ryan's club. To get information. It seems to be that she's really the only, this is really the only group concentrating on spousal immigration. And it's open to anybody who has any kind of immigrating to Canada questions. Which is one of the reasons why I stay on so I can help anybody who's got an independent question. But it's mainly attracting spousal immigrants. Yeah, I know for us one of the things that was helpful is she also has a website where she posts what she calls timelines. And the timelines are very good because they give you a sense instead of the sort of official line of how the process works. You actually get to see actual experiences of people because they post as they go along each little milestone that they come to. Have you noticed in postings any kind of differences along cultural lines? Like do certain people get more hassles because of their background, ethnicity, that kind of thing? Have you noticed any differences? Not in general. Of course most of the people coming out from the US are Americans. So those are the main stories we hear about. But not really. I haven't heard too many problems. But then on that particular group there's not a lot of... You don't get groups or you don't get for the most part people like Indians or Asians, people from Arab countries aren't necessarily posting on that group. So far most of the landing stories that I've heard have been relatively positive. And people talking about how well it only took five minutes. Really surprised. Which is basically the case. As a spousal immigrant you get three questions usually. Do you have a criminal history? Have you ever been kicked out of Canada? I forget what the third question is. And that's it. They stamp your paper and they welcome you. We should make it very clear that that's not all that you have to do though. When you're at that point where you're being asked those questions, you've already submitted quite a few things. The act of landing is like the last little bit. That's after you've been approved. After you've gotten your paperwork, if you're applying as a spouse from within Canada, it can take anywhere from four months to nine months to beyond that if there's problems associated with your application. And problems can be medical issues. If you have a criminal history, even the smallest infraction, they'll call you a bunch. Are we talking traffic? Yeah, even something like a bounce check that the courts had to pursue you to get you to pay it. That somebody had a traffic ticket. It was a major traffic ticket though. I don't remember what it was. But obviously if it's just like a speeding ticket, that doesn't matter. It has to be an arrest made. Right. And then there's all sorts of additional paperwork that you have to go through if you have that in your background. Does it delay time that does do things like that prevent the spouses from immigrating? Not normally. Usually what happens is you get a minister's permit that is a special permit that allows you to stay in Canada while you're either undergoing rehabilitation. I'm not exactly sure what the rehabilitation process is or what it involves. But once Canada has decided that you have this criminal history, whatever it is, then you get the minister's permit or you apply for a minister's permit. I've only heard one case where somebody was denied and I don't remember the specifics about it. But for the most part... Do you remember that it seemed pretty drastic or not? Unfortunately, no. I can't remember what it was. It might have even been a health situation, not a criminal situation. But I just know it was whatever the cause they needed to get a minister's permit and they were turned down. Again, I have a vague recollection of this. I think they reapplied and received it later. But in my personal experience, that's the only one I've ever heard of being denied. And there's quite a few people who are on the group under minister's permits. What's the longest time that you've called? I just got a question from somebody who's been in the process for three years. That's as an independent immigrant, not a spouse. Independent takes longer, generally, doesn't it? Generally, it can take about nine to twelve months, generally. But as an independent applicant, really depends on where you're coming from, what embassy you submitted your application to, because all the different embassies and consulates have different processing times. And a lot of it depends on the countries themselves because Canada does background checks. And that means they have to get information from the various countries. And not all the countries are very forthcoming with their information. So that can significantly add to the time an independent application takes as well. Now, there are other categories as well. Do you know, do many people post to the other list that have come in as entrepreneurs or the business categories? Two people that I remember have applied under the business category. But for some reason, they seem to be a lot more independent in terms of the process that they go through. They tend to do it on their own or they have legal advisor or an immigrant consultant, something like that. Very rarely do I get questions from entrepreneurs. And usually, if there's a question, it's relating to how do I go about applying as an entrepreneur. It's not somebody who's in the process and has a question. I'm not really sure why, but I guess because you're coming in under a business category, so obviously you know something about establishing a business and in order to establish a business, you've got to be pretty good at forms and following instructions and things like that. I want to add one more thing to the mix here. Not only did September 11th sort of like put a kink in everything, but Canada just did a major upheaval. Maybe that's a loaded word. A reform of its immigration laws. Now my understanding is from reading the website and so forth and you can tell me whether this is so or not, my understanding is that this was in the works law before September 11th. These changes in the law were not in reaction to what was going on. And it is an attempt to try to make it where immigrants, especially independent immigrants who are coming into Canada are competitive in the Canadian economy. Now that's the party line. And I've seen on television, I mean obviously I'm not an expert in this, but I wondered what kinds of things are going on now that this law has gone into effect. I believe it was December 17th, 2001. The law is supposed to go into effect June 28th, 2002. But what Citizenship and Immigration Canada decided was to implement the rules for independent applicants effective December 17th, 2001. So basically it was anybody who had applied and been interviewed prior to December 17th would be assessed under the old regulations. Anybody who applied prior to December 17th but had not yet had an interview or an interview waiver would be assessed under the new regulations, but they would only have to meet a minimum point assessment of 75 as opposed to the suggested 80 in the proposal. Anybody who applied period after December 17th would be assessed under the new regulations. My feeling is that the proposal was rushed through as a result of September 11th. It definitely was not, it wasn't established in reaction to September 11th because it has been in the works for a while. And there's been quite an uproar about it because everybody who applied prior to December 17th but hadn't yet had an interview had applied based on qualifying their success based on the old point system. So where you have to have a minimum of 70 points and I believe, I'm not positive on that at the moment but I believe it's 60 points on your self-assessment and then you can add 10 points for adaptability they call it. Which was a really subjective. Very subjective. As in you've talked the immigration officer into believing you were adaptable you got in and if you didn't talk them into it you didn't get in. Exactly. So people who assessed to themselves based on the 70 point scale were spending the $500 Canadian on the application fee which is non-refundable. If you are not approved you do not get that back and submitting their application in good faith based on those qualifications and then being told that well we've changed the qualifications and sorry you don't get your money back. So I think the estimates were in the millions of dollars that Canada would be retaining in application fees for people who were now pretty much guaranteed to not qualify. Giving sociology an edge! Now there's been a review and the immigration minister had made a statement which I'm still confused about I'm not quite sure what he's decided. Apparently the articles keep saying everything I'm reading on it keep saying that people will be assessed under the current regulations but since the regulations went into effect December 17th do they mean the current regulations of the new proposal that is supposed to go into effect June 28th but has been implemented as of December 17th or are they referring to the old criteria before this bill came along? So I'm not sure what to tell people when they ask me well am I going to be assessed on the old criteria or the new criteria? Are you getting asked a lot? Not every day. That is the most common question now and I'm having to post it on my club every other day. Here's the CIC website, this is exactly what they say prior to December 17th, no interview, new regs but 75 points. So I posted the articles and the link to the CIC website and I'm kind of leaving it up to people to try and figure out Do you have a sense that people are seeking out legal counsel more than they were before? I'm not seeing any difference in the amount of people who are asking whether it's worth going to a lawyer or not. That's a pretty standard question and I'm constantly telling people unless you have something iffy in your background if you have a health problem or if you have a criminal conviction in your history there's absolutely no reason to use a lawyer. They cannot process your application faster. The only thing they can do is go through and basically prove your application and make sure you have everything that you're representing yourself in the best possible light helping you write a cover letter perhaps, things like that but they can't speed up your application, they can't guarantee that you'll get approved. A lot of them don't guarantee your money back if you don't get approved but some of them do but what a lot of people don't realize is if you don't get approved you lose that $500 application fee period. That is non-refundable if you do not get accepted and a lot of people misunderstand this money back guarantee that lawyers offer. But it's a very simple straightforward application process once they finally figure out whether they're using 70 points, 75 points, or 80 points and the instructions are very easy to follow. It's tedious and it's a lot of paperwork because you have to go through your entire life and collect paper from every facet of your life. Once you get into your 30s and 40s that's an awful lot of paper. So it's tedious and it's time consuming and it requires a lot of attention to detail but it's actually in its basic form very simple. I've lived in several states. I was kind of freaked out by being you have to have a police check from every state that you've lived in. And that's not accurate. If you're filing as a spouse from within you need a police report from every state. If you're filing as an independent you only need the FBI clearance. Oh really? Yes. Because I've asked several times and I've gotten different answers every time. It's only for a spousal application that you need police clearances from every state. Why would they care about the... We have no idea. No idea. We actually... I always assumed that if you had and obviously I guess I'm assuming incorrectly that if you had a criminal conviction in a state that the FBI would know about it. I thought there was this whole thing... I forget what it's called, it's the whole... The big network, yeah. I think they just want you to believe there's a big computer somewhere. And NFCS or something like that? I think it's called National... Something. National crime, something, something. I know what you're talking about. Yeah, so I figured you apply through... or you get a clearance from the FBI then you're cleared for the country, right? But apparently not. But I don't understand why somebody who's already in the country living with a Canadian spouse has to have these state by state clearances but yet somebody who's a total unknown coming in from the outside doesn't. Not that I'm complaining personally. Yeah, because you would think, you know, a Canadian has married them. Well, never mind. I guess I kind of want to bring this to a close because we've sort of taken up a lot of our time here. And I wondered if... I guess the way to bring it to a close for our purposes would be to ask you what kind of mis... I mean how does the media cover immigration in your opinion? Do you see a lot of misinformation? Do you see a lot of good information out there? I don't see a lot of good information. There's a lot of... It's not misinformation per se. It's more what's left out because I've seen articles that will talk about immigration but they only refer to one type of immigration without identifying it as such. So it makes it sound like every single method of immigration is the same as this. They also talk about... It's the flavor of the mind. This year we need nurses. This year we need engineers. But what they don't talk about is if you're an engineer and you're coming to this country, you can't get work unless you're part of an engineering organization or engineering... Like a union or kind of... What do you call them? I know what you mean. A professional organization that certifies you. Yes, yes. You have to have some sort of professional certification. Exactly. And you can't get into that group unless you have Canadian experience. But you can't get Canadian experience unless you're certified by this group. So it's a catch-22. Yeah, this would be a logical impossibility. Basically. And what we've seen... Actually, my husband was an employment counselor for a while and saw this quite frequently with people who had these great skills in their own country and came here because Canada said, oh, we desperately need you. And then they couldn't work when they got here. And what was offered to them was unpaid internships or extremely low-paying, entry-level positions where they really took advantage of the fact that these people weren't certified within Canada and were stuck in this catch-22. And that's true for a lot of different occupations that are on the certified occupation list that Canada puts out. You have to meet. You have to be on this list in order to qualify, to get the points to qualify to come here. But the list isn't updated often enough. It's got the weirdest things on there. And it's not a realistic list. But I think they either just updated it or they're planning on updating it soon. I was just on the website a couple of weeks ago and it looked like it was a little different. So I think they might have recently updated it. Or at least within the last year because I haven't looked at it for over a year. But I'm not 100% on whether it changed or not. I was sort of... See, this is an interesting thing too because I can go to that list and figure out about a half a dozen different occupations that if I took my work experience and my education and juiced it in one direction or another, it would fit. Because there's nothing that fits it perfectly. I have to admit, I tell people that all the time. If you're a XYZ software technician trained in this specific area but you've got education in IT, look on the list and see if what you've done in your job experience can slot you into another occupation choice which may give you more points. I have helped people do that before and found things that up their points a little bit but still met all the qualifications. They had that education and they essentially had that kind of experience. Yeah, it's really malleable. You can really squeeze yourself into quite a few different boxes. But then there's other people who are very talented, very well educated but don't have experience in any of the careers that are on the career list. But given the opportunity, they could find a job in Heartbeat. But because they're not on that authorized list, they're here. They're not here, sorry. Christian got bent out of shape on a TV interview once about this brain drain and he even said you know, the so-called brain drain that is not taking into account the immigrants who are coming into Canada with those skills. Well, I very much appreciate your time. Oh, thank you. Bringing together the hairdresser and the associate probably isn't as difficult as it sounds. The reason that I thought the two segments went together well is I think that there is a lack of looking at image management as part of impression management. Goffman addresses it a little bit in that quote that I read earlier about the body being the peg upon which we hang certain things in order to impress other people. But there really hasn't been a lot about the physicality, the technology, the business, if you will, the material business of creating an image in order to manage the impressions of others. I was going to ask you about that. You mentioned that Goffman had written about it. Is there a lot of other literature on the subject? There really isn't. There is a professor named Rose White who is working on a book and I think she has been for several years now and I'm not sure that it's finished but I hear her talk about it every once in a while when I'm at conferences or on listeners where she's looking at hair and she's been examining hair sociologically from a number of different angles. I know that she's been looking at the politics of hair, what hair symbolizes and how hair has been used by people to make political statements. I also know that she's looked at it from a very gendered perspective, taking a look at what women do to their hair, how hair kind of controls women's lives and so forth, including things like the removal of hair, which women are always fighting the battle and the society to shave or pluck or whatever. But I don't know that she actually looked at it using Goffman. I'll be interested to see the book when it comes out because to me I would think that that's very much a part of what hair is in sociological terms. I know that there are some young scholars who are coming up who have looked at tattooing and body piercing in the realm of presentation of self. The idea of making certain social statements by decorating the body in certain ways. But I don't really know of a lot of people who are looking at this in sociological terms. I think there's been some cultural studies stuff about this. You consider market research to be sociology? Well, I do, but I'm not sure the marketers do. I think there's a bit of overlap anyway. And I assure you there's been a bunch of market research done about this. Oh, God, yes. And I think that market research is probably one of the more interesting places to get sociological information. The only problem with marketing research is that it's done in order to mess with the market. We'd be hard pressed to say, you know, people use makeup because they want to and the market research has figured out how they want to and provides it or people don't really want to use makeup but the marketers have manipulated us into wanting to use makeup. So it begs the question sometimes when you look at market research, how much influence the research itself has on the end product of the research. I remember you were asking during the interview whether there were people who came into the salon wanting nothing but a wash and a cut. The people who thought that washing their hair was upkeep enough. Well, even for those people, there is a huge, shall we say, market available. Yeah, it ain't just soap. Well, it is just soap for the most part. But it's perfume soap and soap that makes your hair feel finer or keep more body or detangles. It's soap that... Different size containers. Yes, different size containers. Prettier smells than others. Some are reputed to create orgasms. Or implied anyway. And they are branded, branded, branded. Oh, yeah. And that's just if you use shampoo. Yes. No conditioner, no cream ruts. No leave-in treatment sprays. No hair sprays, no gels, no molding cream. I mean, the list goes on forever. And that's just here. So at what point do you cease to be the one doing the managing of your image and become the one who is being managed? At what point do you go from subject to object and is there a path back? I don't think you can ever know. I remember seeing something. There was a television show that ran for some time about 420-somethings living in New York that was immensely popular. And someone was saying that it was unrealistic that somebody of the female characters, modest means, would have a $100 hair dill. Someone responded to the original correspondent saying that he lived in New York and that he knew a very few women, financial status notwithstanding, who would spend less than $100 on their dill. So at what point does one cease to be the one doing the image and become one who is managed via the desire to manage one's image? At what point do you go from subject to object and is there a path back? Who knows? I mean, I can't answer that question. I don't think anybody can answer that question. I think that marketing manipulates this to such an extent that even if you think that you're acting from your own desire, you probably aren't. One of the things that I do want to stress, though, is what Goughman is talking about in this. And that is that all of this stuff is made up in the back region. You know, we think that we're back here creating this image ourselves and presenting it out in the world. But what Goughman is suggesting is that this is in fact a social arrangement and it includes a team of people. And so back regions like hair salons are your bathroom. Is the salon backstage? Yes. Or front stage? It's backstage, I think, in Goughman's ideas. There is some front stage part to it. But I think that when he talks about making an impression, it's okay to walk in the salon looking like a dog and walk out looking great. Not that I don't know women who don't fix their hair before they go to the salon. They do exist. But for the most part, it's meant to be a backstage area. Technology in the backstage. There's a social context to this backstage just the way there is a social context to the front stage. The props that you take to the front stage, the image that you put together for the front stage is done with a group, with a team of people. Some of them more confident than others. You know, I talked to David about the fact that people give their hairdressers all sorts of information that don't normally give strangers that they talk about their emotional lives. And I think one of the reasons why they let their hair down, sorry for the pun, when they're at the hairdresser is because it is a backstage region. You've let somebody in on the secret that your hair is not naturally curly, that it isn't naturally blonde, that it isn't... But it isn't your hair at all. And now that you've let them in on that secret, that they are part of your backstage team. The cat is out of the bag, yes. Yes, yes. Getting back to more formal approaches to image management. Is image management something that is localized? Very. And to what degree? Yeah, this is exactly what Goffman is getting at, is that impressions are managed on the basis of anticipating what the audience will think of you. If you're going to a job interview, you anticipate what the prospective employer thinks of you. If you're going to work, you anticipate what the boss and what your fellow workers are expecting of you. What Goffman is saying is people don't have perfect information socially. They are guessing. Impression management is about guessing correctly what other people will think. It's about evoking a response in your audience, guessing what you need to do to evoke that response. And so that's why he talks about credited and discredited impression management. A credited impression management is one that the audience gets what you're trying to do. The discredited impression management is when you've attempted something that the audience doesn't get. A friend of mine, Laurel Tripp, went to Raves and did sociological research in Raves. She went in and watched the way that old-time ravers who had been there long before it was hip to go to a rave treated the newcomers. It was pretty easy to spot the newcomers because the old-timers showed up in baggy clothes that would let you sweat because you came there to dance. That was the whole purpose of being at the rave was to hear the really, really fast music and dance to that music. And the new-timers came dressed up in clubwear high heels and short skirts where the men came dressed up in nice shoes. They came in order to be looked at. And that was not the thing that a raver was supposed to do. A raver was supposed to come looking like they're comfortable so that they could go ahead and dance. The people who showed up looking kind of like they were going to a disco were discredited. They had guessed wrong. They knew what a rave was and it assumed it was something like a disco. And they had the wrong information and they showed up and when they showed up they were labeled as outside. Their performance was discredited by the people who were there. And this level of impression management can get very, very specific in certain cultures. One of the things that hung up punk in the mid-80s was the appearance of the trendies. There were people who would show up wearing the clothes and the hardcore the punks who had supposedly been there all along all along that one is never sure lost their minds because on one hand they wanted to be iconoclasts very badly. They didn't want you to think that they cared what you thought of them. But at the same time they were confronted by this other by the gaze of the other as it were and inescapably they found the way to existential hell. How does a matter of principle as one dress when one simultaneously wants to be differentiated and authentic mirrors of oneself and at the same time to convey with perfect sincerity that one does not care about the generalized other. Right away they were on the horns of a dilemma. How do I dress to look like I don't care how I dress? Which is an amazing conundrum when you think about it. I remember John Lydon saying that nobody at the art school would talk to John nobody at the art school would talk to Sid and they didn't exactly like each other either but nobody else would hang out with them so they wound up hanging a lot. The thing about the iconoclast position is that sometimes it works. Sometimes people believe you are sincere about simply not giving a darn and they leave you alone. One runs the risk of being a well understood intellectual as opposed to the misunderstood variety. So punkers basically didn't go along with each other at all? Well they couldn't seem to make up their minds. That was one more bit of iconoclasm. There weren't earth moffins if they didn't hug a lot. Well all those spikes and everything it would be kind of dangerous to hug each other. Bashing foreheads into each other doesn't count either but yeah they resisted that as well. They really were nihilists or trying to be nihilists anyway they aspire to be nihilists. It's an interesting thought because it shows when people talk about image management and look at image management the first thing that comes to mind is always business. Is always this kind of faking we're doing an image management here and what we want you to believe is that we're good decent citizens and that we never screw up and that we, like David said that we take care of ourselves and all but the truth is even the people who are trying to get across I don't take care of myself and I don't give a damn it's still having to manage that image. That's not a perspective formula how do you dress when you don't care how people think about you. You still have to choose to purchase the physical piece of clothing and you still have to choose which among your physical pieces of clothing to put on today. There is still this physical reality and for some reason nihilists don't tend to be nudists. If there's a phenotype to it it's black on black with a swatch of black. Which is still an impression that's being made. You have been listening to First Person Plural because how people get along with each other still matters. First Person Plural is a show created for community radio by Carl Wilkerson and Dr. Patty Thomas to examine social and organizational issues. Music for First Person Plural is performed composed and produced by Carl Wilkerson except where noted. For more information about First Person Plural Dr. Patty Thomas or Carl Wilkerson visit our website www.culturalconstructioncompany.com or email us at fpp at culturalconstructioncompany.com