I never thought I’d live to see this again. No. Not the Grand Canyon. Not the Aurora Borealis. Shoulder pads. They’re back. Everywhere all at once – from Balenciaga to H&M – as if we’ve been dropped into an alternate reality channeling the 80’s.
The biologist Rupert Sheldrake coined a term: morphic resonance – a biological phenomenon that explains why animals suddenly all adapt a new behavior, like suddenly all the birds in England knew how to peck open milk bottles left on porches. He explained that “natural systems … inherit a collective memory from all previous things of their kind.”
So is it possible that the human collective memory has decided that shoulder pads must appear every forty years? In a recent NY Times article, top designers said they had no idea others were creating shoulder pad fashions. Was it the telepathy in the “morphic field” or simply a shift in the zeitgeist of taste? And why should I care, except that I’m wondering where my pink silk blazer that made me look like a midget linebacker went?
Because there was a paragraph in the article that leapt out at me. “There are few body parts quite as freighted with symbolism as the shoulder. Squared, they take on responsibility and life’s burdens. Bowed, they indicate humility, pain, fear, reverence. Shrugged, they signal indifference. Built up, superheroes, super villains and the superglam. They are a resting place for angels and the weight of the world.”
Our shoulders are some of the most expressive parts of ourselves. Instead of attending to the messages they are constantly sending and receiving, we simply complain about pain, our loss of neck, and of course of all the different injuries and impingements the shoulder is subject to as the result of being ignored and misused.
Francois Delsarte, a teacher of oratory in the 19th century, called the shoulders “the thermometers of the passions.” Whether we express our passions, or repress them, the shoulders are involved. I loved shoulder pads as much as I loved platform shoes – they made me bigger! (Oh dear, I hope I’m not morphically resonating platform shoes back into style.)
I recently taught a series of classes exploring our shoulders, and the biggest takeaway for all was how connected our shoulders are to ….everything.