That floral freeway headdress: what an image! I read this as a celebration of constriction: the visible demands that this absurd headdress exerts upon the body and mind of the woman modeling it, the knot of freeway overpasses and underpasses, the snarl of traffic. Is the aestheticization of these multiple levels of constriction perhaps an act of cultural self-justification and defense against critique?
We ("we") southern Californians circa 1962, the argument might go, we bear up so gracefully under the pressures of self-presentation and built environment and mobility. Can you really ask much more of us -- socially, economically, environmentally? I mean things are tough enough as it is -- look at what we're dealing with, headdress-wise.
