An incredible antique cabinet card (from bondman2 @ eBay
) showing a home decorated for newlyweds.
Note the old paper lanterns and the plethora of handmade signs — most of which resemble tombstone R.I.P. notices.
Additional seller notes:
Cabinet Card photograph circa 1890s-1900, measures 6″ x 7″, marked “This was taken when Ben Shriner was Married-Mrs. Joyce Roth, RD 6, York, Pa.”
Hubby and I enjoy the hell out of reruns of Soul Train.
Rediscovering lost musical loves and finding new-to-us artists to hunt for, like Johnny ‘Guitar’ Watson
But we also play this game when we watch reruns of Soul Train. The Soul Train Game is to guess the year of the episode before the credits roll and reveal the answer.
Amazingly, hubby always wins — even though he was an underage kid when most of these shows aired.
You’d think I’d have the advantage; not only was I buying plenty of records and tapes, but soon I was out dancing in (and dressing to kill for) the club scene too. But no, hubby, the stay-at-home-young-pup wins.
I’d like to think it’s a matter of me over-thinking my answer (I lived in the Midwest, so how far behind were we in the fashions?). But the simple fact is, he is smarter about this stuff. I’m greatly disadvantaged because I don’t think in terms of years; I view life and history as “chapters” and “episodes,” and am hard-pressed to name dates. His knowledge of technology and historical time lines beats out my real life experience — at least in this case.
(In fact, I always turn to him to help me date any antique or vintage collectible — even clothing — because he’s so damn good at this stuff.)
But I have another point to make, another story to tell, so I’ll move along…
The other day, hubby and I were joking about the Soul Train Game, and Destiny, the 13 year old, asked us what we were talking about. Have you ever tried to explain Soul Train and American Bandstand to a teenager of today?
She couldn’t fathom the idea of kids wanting to watch a bunch of kids dance on TV, let alone that those dancing kids had groupies and fan clubs of their own.
So how could we move on to the issues of race and lip-syncing — often with a microphone from the future, with a fake short cord that wobbled about. But we did. Because that’s the kind of context geeks hubby and I are.
Honestly, I think Des understood the race issues and the faux Microphone Of The Future better than the concept of turning on the television to watch a bunch of kids dance.
I’m sure getting over this speedbump of understanding is thwarted by her preference for Goth-kid-attire; she’s not interested in finding out the latest trends in fashion.
I’m sure the fact that learning dance steps is only relatable in terms of the uncoolness of line-dancing in phy-ed — or today’s shows which emphasis professional dancers, oft paired with celebrities. Destiny’s clearly not thinking she should bust a new move on the dance floor — or that watching teens dance on TV would be the way to learn. You’d Google it, right?
I guess the basic problem here is that these shows didn’t spoon-feed you the dance steps, or break down fashion into sponsored “must haves.” You watched, like a voyeur, identified what you wanted, and figured it out. So to kids today, the concept of watching teens dance on television is like watching a party through a window — only you’re allowed to go, so where’s the thrill?
And so I didn’t even try to get into Solid Gold or the Solid Gold dancers.
Even after she watched Soul Train with us (right after a Ru Paul’s Drag Race episode) it didn’t seem to make sense; she made it through the hour of Ru Paul, but only 20 minutes of Soul Train.
Explaining teenage dance shows to kids today is like explaining the joys of watching fuzzy YouTube clips of a kid & his light saber dancing to Star Wars to the kids of yesteryear.
Since I love old beauty tips and their cultural context, I was intrigued by A Slip of a Girl’s posts sharing clippings from the March 1831 issue of Atkinson’s Casket (aka The Casket). In that same issue, found via Google Books, I found this great article on painting on glass — but I wanted more.
In another issue, from 1832, this incredible review of Frances Trollope‘s Domestic Manners of the Americans (1832):
Mrs. Trollope has treated America with the same liberality, and her success in depicting the character of our people, has been nearly as great as captain Hall’s. An unsuccessful speculation in Cincinnati, awakened, it appears, the indignation of Madame T. and she forthwith—with the assistance of the notorious Fanny Wright, with whom she travelled, and whose abominable doctrines she appears to have imbibed—resolved to glut her revenge by writing a book. No doubt she is now satisfied, for she has the pleasure of seeing it stated in print, sanctioned by her name, that the Americana are the most illnatured, ungenerous, wicked, illiterate and vulgar people on the face of the earth ; that their moral sentiment is less elevated than that of the savages, and that the half-horse and half-alligator population of the Mississippi Valley, are as uncouth and as barbarous as a nation of Ourangutangs.
Mrs. Trollope, however, certainly unwittingly, pays American ladies, a very high compliment. Having fixed upon the society of Almacks as the criterion by which to examine the character of our ladies, she finds that they are all utterly destitute of polish; of that easy, lady like deportment, by which English ladies are distinguished throughput the world, and entirely ignorant of those amiable accomplishments in maneuvering, &c. which give her own countrywomen so strong an influence over their husbands. Our ladies are too modest in their behaviour and dress, to meet the views of Mrs. T. ; in company they want loquacity ; they seldom visit theatres; they arc respectful to their husbands, and indefatigable in instructing their children ; they are but indifferent dancers, and speak Italian shockingly incorrect ; and finally they are not carried away with foolish and ridiculous fashions. All these are serious faults in the opinion of the immaculate Trollope, and she vents her spleen at them in no measured terms.
Trollope’s sentiments seem very much to echo those of this article from 1907 — so much so, that I double-checked that Trollope was indeed deceased in 1863. However, as this article, titled British Cockney Writers, shows, this apparently was quite the trend during this period.
Included in this issue of Atkinson’s Casket are some excerpts or “extracts” — of which I found the following quite amusing:
The ladies have strange ways of adding to their charms. They powder themselves immoderately, face, neck, and arms, with pulverised starch; the effect is indescribably disagreeable by daylight, and not very favorable at any time. They are also most unhappily partial to false hair,which they wear in surprising quantities; this is the more to be lamented, as they generally have very fine hair of their own. I suspect this fashion to arise from an indolent mode of making their toilette, and from accomplished ladies’ maids not being very abundant; it is less trouble to append a bunch of waving curls here, there and every where, than to keep their native tresses in perfect order.
Though the expense of the ladies’ dress greatly exceeds, in proportion to their generalstyle of living, that of the ladies of Europe, it is very far (excepting in Philadelphia) from being |n good taste. They do not consult the seasons in tne colors, or in the style of their costume; 1 have often shivered at seeing a young beauty picking her way through the snow with a pale rose-colored bonnet, set on the very top of her head: I knew one young lady whose pretty little ear was actually frost-bitten from being thus exposed.— They never wear muffs or boots, and appear extremely shocked at the sight of comfortaole walking shoes, and cotton stockings, even when they have to step to their sleighs over ice and snow.
They walk in the middle of winter with their poor little toes pinched into a miniature slipper, incapable of excluding as much moisture as might bedew a primrose. I must say in their excuse, however, that they have, almost universally, extremely pretty feet. They do not walk well, nor, in fact, do they ever appear to advantage when in movement. I know not why this should be, for they have abundance of French dancing masters among them, but somehow or other it is the fact. I fancied I could often trace a mixture of affectation and of shyness in their little mincing unsteady step, and the ever changing position of the hands. They do not dance well; perhaps 1 should rather say, they do not look well when dancing; lovely as their faces arc, they cannot, in a position that exhibits the whole person, atone for the want of tournun-. and for the universal defect in the formation of the bust, which is rarely full, or gracefully formed.
PS Apparently this had all been previously published in The Saturday Evening Post; the connections between and history of The Casket and The Saturday Evening Post are well documented here.
Glowing Doll Danielle says she was “totally gob smacked” watching Freddie Mercury’s “sexy mustachioed housewife” in Queen’s I Want To Break Free.
In her post, Danielle also wrote:
I love drag queens because they can dress like women but without all of the pressure to look pretty or be sexy. I know there are plenty of women who dress like drag queens but they are few and far between and they tend to be Pop stars.
Umm, I could be wrong here, but I’m pretty sure the sole point of being a drag queen is to look pretty and be the (supposed) feminine ideal of sexy.
I think part of Danielle’s confusion here — and there’s plenty to be confused about traversing those fine, slinky, and slippery lines between drag queens, female impersonators, transgendered folk, cross dressers, fetishists, etc. (note: no mention of gay folk here) — is mistaking Mercury’s artistic gender-bender performance for Mercury being a drag queen.
Freddie Mercury in drag is not Freddie Mercury, Drag Queen.
The simple & pure existence of a mustache sort of illustrates that point — and my point about a boundary pushing performance.
Danielle gets close to those distinctions when she writes the following (exactly as typed at her blog):
To me anyway, Drag culture is as much about attitude as it is about aesthetic. It seems to exude a sort of ‘Don’t give a fuck’ attitude which I think everyone could benefit from. Ultimately there is a humour born from sadness underlying the aesthetic. The theatricality used as a kind of armour against a world that is so un accepting of others.
If I could be a part of either world I just feel that I would be freer some how. I find myself, inpsite of a vast collection of clothes and accessories, dressing drably from day to day. I guess I fear judegement by small minded people and on a deeper level just want to dissapear sometimes (hard to do with electric coloured clothes, spiked accesories and gigantic hats).
The mythical non-mustached Drag Queen Mercury, like other Drag Queens, probably would have had a female name and completely distinct female persona to go with it. And none would have seen drag as an armor but as flamboyant exhibitionist expression — that people would still sling arrows at.
Mercury in drag wasn’t exactly like Travolta in Hairspray; Mercury’s dress was a theatrical application, use of imagery to make a point. Or at least a slightly different point. And the whole point of Freddie Mercury et al and their obvious appearance as men in women’s clothing (along with other things in this video and aspects of Mercury’s life) was to expose absurdity, especially the norms of “normal,” to break free of everything — everything except that vacuum, that is. *wink*
So, like Stacy (who gave birth during The View), I’ve spent the last few weeks as a Brand Ambassador for The View and thought I should share some of my thoughts on the experience. I’ve blogged about a few of the shows, but I think the most interesting conversations were those I had with friends and family.
Most of my closest friends are internet friendships — not only because my life as a freelance writer keeps me glued to my monitor, but because these friendships have been formed on mutual interests and issues. As a result, we all seem to have the same likes and dislikes about The View — most especially our feelings regarding the ladies of The View. For example, we love and trust Whoopi, Joy, and Barbara as steadfastly as we pity and mistrust Elisabeth and Sherri. However, I have several family members who feel exactly the opposite.
Perhaps most interesting is that after all these years of watching, after all the Hot Topics discussion, we each continue to remain rather married to these feelings, beliefs and attitudes despite our firm belief that it’s through this discussion, both the ladies on the show and our less public personal conversations, that we not only can but will learn, grow and change.
Yet, I remain as heatedly fixed on Hasselbeck’s righteous fear-based stupidity (yes, “stupidity,” because she cannot claim ignorance) applied as fear mongering to limit and control others as I’ve always been.
Heck, I still get hot about Hasselbeck‘s confusion between love and sex, her insistence that fairy tales are sex education, and her preaching that the only way we can be saved from the realities of the world we all live in is to stick our heads in the sand — including forcing everyone to join her under said sand and limiting the rights of others even further; she discriminates and insists we all do it with her! That was years ago and my ire won’t die. Not until such stupidity is gone and done.
But neither does the support of Hasselbeck’s position.
So does The View really do what we all believe it will?
Perhaps not — if the only way one measures the importance of such talks is a change in position. But if you consider the benefit of talking in other ways…
Most of the time we take the high road and agree to disagree, taking it to the extreme of avoiding such conversations out of respect. But the cost of doing so is that we avoid the issues.
With The View, we have a frame for the conversation, a table to sit at, and, perhaps best of all, a time frame for discussion. If we listen and talk with each other and then move along to the next thing — be it an issue we agree on, a celebrity interview, or some shopping thing — we have set limits and prove that we can discuss, agree to disagree, and still connect on other issues. Our conversations can be challenging but our relationships need not be challenged.
This, however, is thwarted by The View‘s time slot.
Too many people work days when The View airs. Watching “together” even though miles apart isn’t the only problem; TiVo space and hours in the day not being infinite, intentions of watching later may pave the road to hell. Even watching episodes online is problematic… Even if these family members of mine use the internet (and many of them don’t use it beyond email & photo sharing), it’s just not the same viewing experience.
Maybe ABC should consider giving The View an additional evening showing. Who wouldn’t rather watch it than another same-old Jay Leno dealio?
*****
As a Brand Ambassador for The View, I am a participant in a Mom Central campaign for ABC Daytime and will receive a tote bag or other The View branded items to facilitate my review; as you can tell from my long-winded posts about The View, the tote or whatever I may get is not my priority, but I mention it to be ethical.
The ladies of The View were not immune to the irony of having a show about infertility one day after the show with Nadya Suleman aka the Octomom. In their Hot Topics discussion (always my favorite part of the show), Whoopi noted it and there was brief discussion on why Suleman arouses so much heated debate.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKBVeL5VJi8
At first I was surprised when Hasselbeck defended Suleman — I expected her to be a hard-line republican on the welfare business at the expense of fetal life, even though that fetal life was a medical “opt in” not a manual one — and by a single mother yet. And I was more than a bit surprised by Whoopi as well. I wasn’t surprised at her talk of responsibility in having so many kid so much as what was missing from the conversation.
See, what bothers me the most about all the Octomom haters is the lack of compassion and tolerance. Not just for the buckets of crazy that motivate having so many children, but for outrage expressed at her while folks like the Duggars (of 101 Christian Pups & Counting) continue to skate — even past Jon & Kate Plus 8 before the marital drama. I vented about all this before, but here it is again:
Before watching the Dateline interview of Nadya Suleman, my only interest in this story was the passing thought of, “Will this family replace Jon & Kate Plus 8??” I honestly had no idea of the squawking & hostility towards this mother of six who just gave birth to octuplets. In fact, I was surprised to hear of it — and that’s what drew me towards the show.
(Personally, I’d like to lay a large part of this concerned indignation from our nation on the bitterly infertile; but even the fertile seem to be pissed off. So it’s larger than that… Hit a larger American nerve.)
What I saw was an articulate young woman who managed to keep her own anger at bay, who seemed understanding and forgiving of people who do not accept her decision, and was composed yet passionate as she tactfully mentioned her beliefs about the sanctity of life. But it was her earliest statements, regarding other large families, which seemed to lie at the root of all of the hullabaloo.
When two parent families give birth to &/or adopt other children, people seem to respect them. We’re fascinated, yes; we’ve got television shows, both series and ‘specials’, dedicated to such large & extraordinary families. But we treat them with respect in those shows.
However, few seem to respect this woman. As they said on Chelsea Lately, single, unemployed moms who aren’t entrenched in their community church aren’t cute. Funny? Sure. But too true; and that’s what’s not funny. As were the comments Chelsea Handler made tonight (Tuesday, February 10th) about a new mom having a French tip manicure — seeing those nails near such paper-fragile premature baby skin made me whine and wince. And yes, there are some questions about where the money for manicures and whatever is going on with mom’s new lips… But would these statements be made with such heat about other new moms?
Would we trust the judgment of children? When her older children are questioned on Dateline, they mention ‘squishy’ (aka crowded living space) and crying babies. Those may be true things, and even un-coached or non-parroted statements they heard from adults; but are children known for their unselfishness? Not all children welcome additional siblings period. Does that mean parents or persons considering becoming parents take the advice or sentiments of their children to heart and not increase their family’s size because their children complained?
I’m no pro-lifer, but as the mother of special needs children are the plethora of haters (& Dateline) actually saying that it is irresponsible for a family to increase in size because they have special needs children? And sure, special needs kids come with extra bills — but I don’t see anyone worried about me and my family struggling to care for my special needs kids… Where’s the concern for us?
I’m not saying I think Ms. Suleman has all answers or answers that I’d like to hear when it comes to caring for her children; but then, see, that’s the point: This is not my family, these are not my questions to answer, I am not the judge. I’m not a Christian, but I think that’s supposed to be the Christian way; to leave the judging to God.
This is not to say that I, or anyone, shouldn’t care about the welfare of this family, these 14 children — but then most of the people worried are freaking out about the word ‘welfare’ so maybe I shouldn’t use that word…
We currently have no test or licensing practices for parenthood; even adoption has few rules if one has enough money. And don’t let money fool you either; money doesn’t free any family from neglect and abuse — which is what most everyone is talking about in defense of their questioning this woman’s right to a large family.
But it seems to me, too much emphasis is this woman’s single status. It seems to be the bottom line of all the upset reminding me of the old fuss about Murhpy Brown having a baby; a big moral debate about choosing to be a single mom.
Have a two-parent family who keeps popping out children because they don’t believe in birth control, and few take them to task for their lack of common sense, even when they live on the government dole, or in a house that is ‘squishy’. Extra points if they evoke God a lot. And when they have specific religious or church affiliations, no one dares to really berate them because they have religious protections & a coven of church brothers and sisters.
You want examples? Fine. Those annoying Duggars (of 17 and Counting) take their kids to a “wild life refuge” and allow/encourage their kids to feed animals pasty white bread from their mouths, run & chase animals despite the “do not chase the animals” signs — and when asked, bozo dad Duggar says he wasn’t worried about his kids. Apparently God will protect his kids from his own stupidity. Plus they do all sorts of impractical and stunting things to their kids in the name of religion — so we aren’t supposed to judge. Even my beloved Kate of Jon & Kate Plus 8 totes & promotes her faith.
Most egregiously of all, the Murphy family, headed by John and Jeanette Murphy, who, already the parents of four, opened up their home — aka privately adopted — 23 children with Down Syndrome and were the subject of Our 27 Kids. If you want to talk about what’s fair to the children you already have, where’s the outrage that they placed upon their young biological children (two who existed before they began adopting, and two born after) the burdens of special needs siblings? It’s not just the daily grind either — it’s for the lifetime of those children they’ve adopted. As a mom who has had to deal with the safety of one child’s future — aka legal guardianship — in light of other children’s needs, I can’t imagine saddling children with 23 such responsibilities.
But we don’t talk about these issues. Or their economic dole. The Murphy’s admit they too take food stamps, like Ms. Suleman; Jon & Kate likely don’t need them due to their TV deal, their church, etc.; and I bet the Duggars took food stamps & more — at least before the TV deal — and their children, ill-prepared for the real world, are destined to return to such public assistance in the future. But we don’t talk about them because these are two parent families who evoke the name of God & their idea of His vision of morality when speaking of their large families. In the case of the Gosselins & the Murphys, their marital status is a tacit approval of God for most of the gossip-mongering public so ready to judge Suleman.
I guess Suleman should get all kooky with an old time religion and marry a man; preferably the man who biologically fathered her kids — the man her mother claims offered to married her. Then would everyone just shut up about her — or at least just talk about the blessings and realities of raising so many tiny babies? Judging isn’t going to diaper and feed those eight babies. Or her six other children. Nor is is going to help a new mom with her stress. It’s just empty finger pointing.
Well, it’s not completely empty finger pointing… Every finger pointed at Suleman has three more fingers pointed back the the finger pointer. And maybe those people should start there, looking at what makes them so judgmental.
Whew. I’m glad to have that all off my chest. Again.
But back to The View.
(Not that this whole discussion wasn’t about The View; it was. Like I said, Hot Topics is my favorite part of the show, primarily because it’s just like how women talk. But it’s time to leave the Octomom alone and move along.)
Yesterday’s episode was a “special episode” about infertility. While I am not without my sympathies for this issue (something my sister and most of her friends have had to deal with), I am waiting for today– Friday’s — Hot Topic fallout regarding the segment with Bill and Giuliana Rancic. (I know it will be there — especially as Joy mentioned it on her HLN show this evening.)
The short version, for those too lazy to click the above link and watch, it that Giuliana stated that her doctor advised her to gain 5 to 10 pounds to assist conception — and Giuliana resisted.
Now I get that her career is to be a thin woman-child waif on the red carpet etc., and that such a gig requires her to be thin, plus lose an extra 10 for the camera. But her reluctance seemed to have exposed a resentment that she should have to do such a thing in order to have a baby — as opposed to the more sane response that her career ideal weight would be so low that it would interfere with her basic biology.
Giuliana and Bill are both to be admired for sharing their intimate problems for, as they state, the ability to remove the taboo from fertility issues. So I don’t want to sound too harsh or kick folks when they are already down. But…
Giuliana’s statements regarding her earlier career-formed impressions that as a 20-something watching 40-somethings having babies had led her astray, given her the wrong impression about how much time she and her biological clock really had. So perhaps it’s time for Giuliana to see that she too is sending unfortunate messages to women.
By resisting those baby-needed 10 pounds, by emotionally fearing the horrid industry standard of “fat” rather than be horrified by just what those standards do to her and other women who aim to be so slim, she is not only receiving the wrong message, but sending it too.
She would do herself and those who view and idolize her better by accepting the literal baby fat and making a stink about the fictitious and unhealthy standards.
*****
As a Brand Ambassador for The View, I am a participant in a Mom Central campaign for ABC Daytime and will receive a tote bag or other The View branded items to facilitate my review; as you can tell from my long-winded posts about The View, the tote or whatever I may get is not my priority, but I mention it to be ethical.
I don’t think I can let Black History Month go by without mentioning 1938’s The Toy Wife.
Primarily the movie is the story of Frou Frou (played by Luise Rainer), a woman found to be so guilty of a frivolous nature, so childlike in her approach to life, that she must suffer the wrath of The Motion Picture Production Code (aka the Hays Code or Hollywood Code). But I think any woman or thinking man who watched the film will see that others are not only guilty of perpetuating her frivolous nature, but of exploiting it as well — especially those who claim to love her.
In many ways, Frou Frou, the character, reminds me much of Norma Jean Baker, or at least the creation of Marilyn Monroe… A woman literally and figuratively corseted by the studios to be “feminine charms personified,” who was then resented and mistreated by the very persons who had shaped her. (Any feminists reading here likely can feel the echoes of such things in their own lives.)
Jaynie’s done a great job in her review of the movie, so I’ll leave it at that and get onto the other thing to note about this film: the racial issues.
Heck, slavery and racism are so prominent in this film that it’s used as proof of Frou Frou’s poor frivolous and immature state.
Her inability to manage her household and slaves leaves her poor husband dealing with bickering slaves; leaving us to conclude that Frou Frou is so childish, she cannot even manage the childish Negros.
Sure, The Toy Wife is a period piece set during the Civil War on a plantation — with all that implies. But unlike Gone With The Wind, The Toy Wife shocks with insights into the treatment of slaves.
We see the traditionally accepted sanitized version of supposed mutual devotion and affection between master and slaves, both on individual bases and and in groups — such as when the mistress of the household stand on the magnificent steps of her plantation mansion and leads the slaves in prayer.
We see Frou Frou slap her slave, something which tells as much about the immediate situation straining their close relationship (you know how women are so willing to slap one another’s face when we get peeved *snort*) as it depicts slave relations.
But we also see and hear family slaves threatened with whippings and being sold, the rather nonchalant pronouncement of such things by white folks punctuates their manipulation and mastery of human beings — exposing the very same frivolous, spoiled, childlike assumptive behavior that Frou Frou is charged with.
But perhaps most shocking is the story of Frou Frou’s devoted personal slave. Played by Theresa Harris (more here), this slave hasn’t any name — they just call her “Pic” (or “Pick”) short for pickaninny.
We discover this supposedly amusing fact when Frou Frou returns home after years away, being schooled abroad. One by one the female slaves identify themselves — including both Maries who individualize themselves as “Brown Marie” and “Yellow Marie.” You will see and hear it in this YouTube clip (at roughly 37 seconds) but Pic’s story, which should immediately follow once the young woman is spotted beneath the stairs, has been (curiously and infuriatingly) omitted.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5DUso6KmQlQ
So while The Toy Wife offers a sad story of womanhood, it also offers an historical slice of southern pie that’s hard to swallow.
But you should watch it. It’s a wonderful film, capturing so many moments of truth… Even if a lot of them are ugly and painful.
In her post, Phony Feminists and Super Bowl Commercials, Karen Townsend says that the “outdated, outmoded, out of touch [with the] feminist movement” females who’ve “loudly bellowed” in a “snit” that CBS — a network which has blocked other advocacy groups from such an opportunity — would give a radically anti-choice group like Focus on the Family a platform to expose its extreme agenda to millions of people have “hijacked a perfectly good movement have brought shame to those of us who are feminists.”
They have given the term a bad name.
What was the snit about? CBS allowed the showing of a message ad, not allowed before in Super Bowl time. The message? A pro-life testamony given by the mother of widely known college quarterback, Tim Tebow. The silliness of the brouhaha was evident, once the audience actually saw the commercials. Not only were they so benign that if you were not paying attention you may not have realized what the message was-
I hate to interrupt Townsend, but as this is writing, not speaking, and it’s easier to read if I respond to points as they occur, I will interject. Spelling errors aside (it’s “testimony,” not “testamony”), it’s not wise to label something as a “brouhaha” or “benign” when your evidence is that the message isn’t discernible to those who are not paying attention; “not realized” is the definition of not paying attention, and inattentiveness is quite often a danger to one’s health. The only “silliness” here is that her last statement completely refutes the former statement.
Townsend continues:
…now they are complaining that one of the ads promotes violence against women. Why? Because in one of the ads – they were run in a bit of a story line – Tebow appears to tackle his mother and then she bounces right back up. Obviously done in a campy kind of humor, the loud in the feminist movement have been reduced to whining over a non-act. There was nothing to their concern over a pro-life message ad, so they had to do something to attempt to save face.
They are shameful and not at all effective.
Personally, as a subscriber to several “feminist” and/or pro-life newsletters, I didn’t read any such commentary regarding the campy tackle violence. And Townsend didn’t link to any such statements, let alone from any organizations. (I’m sure I could Google for such things — but then this conversation would veer off-course.) But I can tell you that personally, my ire over the ad aside, I am a feminist with a sense of humor who did see the mother-son tackle as “campy.” And I’m a survivor of domestic violence and other violent acts directed at me because I am a woman. Many feminists have a sense of humor. Even about “touchy” issues.
Townsend says those of us who were offended by the ad — or, more specifically, the hate group which sponsored the ad being allowed to spew its tainted philosophy while other groups are not allowed to use the network’s time and powerful audicne pull for their messages — are “shameful and not at all effective.” That’s a two-pronged argument; with neither prong supported.
To stand up for what we believe in, to point out unethical practices — especially those which will limit our message, is not shameful. (The misogynistic, unhealthy, fear-based, hate-filled, discriminatory, and down-right mean “focus on the family” that the Focus on the Family organization has is what is shameful. That organization is unmistakably not only anti-choice, but anti-birth-control and anti-sex-education, as well as anti-gay.)
Since Townsend did not define what “effectiveness” would be, it’s difficult to debate her. Obviously the campaign to motivate CBS to reject the commercial was unsuccessful. But such a “brouhaha” has also helped expose the lies in the ad. And overall the “loud bellowing” has done what Palin et all do for the far right: motivated the base. Hardly ineffective.
Townsend continues:
Sad, really. Many women who have come before all of us worked very hard to make the lives of us better today. We stand on their shoulders. These women make a mockery out of serious women everywhere.
Despite my early mention of a sense of humor, I am indeed a serious woman. A woman, even a feminist, can possess both traits.
And I thank the women and men who came before me, working to ensure that both myself and Townsend would have the right to be heard, among other things.
Unlike Townsend, I believe in a woman’s fundamental right to control her own body. I also believe in a woman’s fundamental right to control her own soul. So if, in the act of controlling her own body, she uses birth control or aborts a fetus or otherwise exercises a legal right which is revealed in some afterlife to have been a sin against a god, I trust her to handle that too.
I would just agree to disagree, but how can Townsend or anyone else say that feminists such as myself “have given the term a bad name” when they themselves seek to limit the rights, the equality, of women?
Seeking prohibition on female autonomy, free will, and health is not “feminism.”
Townsend finishes her post with this parting shot which exposes her ignorance of the actual issue at hand:
Hey, did I miss all the outrage by the loud over the Go-Daddy commercials? Now, those are demeaning to women.
The point of our “snit” was not the demeaning sexual message, or even the message of anti-choice; it was the unethical practices of CBS. First to allow such advocacy on the network when other ads from other organizations with a different point of view or agenda are not allowed. Second to allow false advertising.
Such unethical practices should offend everyone, especially those in a capitalistic society, where the free hand of the market is supposed to dictate fair play; if an organization has the funds for the ad, they ought to be able to buy it. Or, if the network’s policy is slanted or assists a specific agenda, it out to be stated clearly so that the consumer can make a clear choice about consumption — surely that’s one choice you can agree to.
Related video (or read Davis Fleetwood’s response to the Tim Tebow SuperBowl Ad):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bg9rcZxYQ1M
Even though I acknowledge that there are less and less actual piggy banks being made now, I’m not sure how I feel about the Discovery Deluxe Touch Screen ATM Machine:
Equipped with its own ATM card, simply insert it into the machine then touch the screen to enter your personally created secret pin. Viola – now you can make deposits, withdrawals, even view your balance, anytime!
On one hand, I see the cool factor. And if personal savings banks are supposed to A) teach children how to be accountable for money and #2, remind adults to save their pennies, then this certainly is a modern tool for those things.
But such things are cold and impersonal.
…Hmmm maybe that’s part of the lessons we need to learn about money and banks.
Carry on, ATM bank, carry on.
Back In the 80’s — during that feminist backlash — career gals (such as my mother & her friends) and women pursuing education for careers (like myself) removed their now defunct ERA buttons and consoled themselves as well as one another with cute pin-back buttons which extolled the virtues of leaving housework behind in the dust.
The popularity of gloves is said to have begun in the 16th century when Catherine de Médicis, queen consort of Henry II of France, jealous of well-dressed men whose wardrobes included gloves, began a campaign to make them part of ladies’ fashion. Catherine’s powers were noted in many areas, including fashion; not only did she succeed in making gloves popular, but after it was discovered that both she and the recently deceased Jeanne d’Albret shared the same glove supplier and perfumier, it was rumored that Catherine had killed Jeanne via poisoned gloves (an autopsy revealed otherwise, but it says something of Catherine — and the popularity of gloves; this story is included in Alexandre Dumas’s 1845 novel of the French Renaissance, La Reine Margot).
By the mid-nineteenth century gloves were de rigueur, making it more than unseemly for a woman to leave the house without wearing gloves — but out-right indecent. Heck, a proper lady wouldn’t be seen barehanded even indoors.
Antique Personal Possessions quotes this letter to The Queen from 1862:
In every costume but the most extreme neglige a lady cannot be said to be dressed except she is nicely and completely gloved; and this applies equally to morning, afternoon, dinner, and evening dress.
Of course it was also unladylike to wear soiled gloves. Glove cleaners were sometimes used (by cheating cheapskates), but as kidskin (and doeskin) gloves were preferred, most cleaning products failed to clean or effectively hide marks on leather. So gloves were purchased by the dozens and stored in the essential glove box.
Along with gloves themselves and a scented sachet to perfume the gloves, glove boxes held materials essential for putting gloves on: glove stretcher, glove button-hook, and glove-powder shaker.
These glove-powderers contained glove powders which not only were to aid in the easing on of tight gloves, but which were often sold as softening and bleaching the hands. Can you imagine what ingredients these powders had? Lead was an incredibly common ingredient in powders and cosmetics of all sorts — how rapidly such chemicals would adhere to and be absorbed by warm moist hands. Obviously Catherine de Médicis needn’t have added anything unusual to Jeanne d’Albret’s gloves if she wanted her dead; but by the same token, Catherine was slowly killing herself as well.
The wearing of gloves, of course, was yet another social rule which distinguished between the working class and the wealthy. Wearing pretty light-colored gloves kept pretty light-colored hands easily discernible from tanned working hands; making the wearing of gloves vital for those with (or seeking) social standing.
The wealthy not only could afford the gloves but the leisure time to wear them — even if wearing gloves kept their hands nearly as useless as if kept in handcuffs.
Certainly this glove-wearing business was far more debilitating than corsets. Which is why I’ve always rather viewed antique glove boxes as little coffins.
If you’ve been following along with my corset history workshop, you’ve read about the debunking of the science behind death-by-corset claims and seen some of the evidence why science and medicine was manipulated due to social hysteria; but what we are now left wondering is just how early feminists were swayed into backing the anti-corset science.
The answer, as always, is seen in context of the period. The Industrial Revolution saw a resurgence in Puritan ethics — urged on, whenever possible, by science, finding or leveraging particular strength in Social Darwinism. In The Debate Over Women’s Clothing: ‘Rational’ or Lady-like Dress, Justina Rodrigues explains how fashion fit in:
After 1850 the racial degeneration argument was strongly argued by social Darwinists. They contended that fragile and “wasp” waisted women would generate a debilitated race. Women, as a result, could no longer fulfill their natural, maternal roles because of the pernicious habit of compressing their stomachs. Their histrionics went as far as to suggest that England would be filled with a new inferior race. <41> It was a widely held belief that the coarse working poor were in danger of taking control from the weak middle-classes. <42> Darwinists also argued that “rational” dress made a civilized and intelligent society; they claimed that anthropological studies of primitive cultures proved that “backward” and “barbaric” people wore meaningless ornaments like bangles, bracelets, earrings, and the like. These dress reformers argued that ladies’ dress should evolve to the “superior ‘rational’ men’s standard.” <43> Mrs. E. M. King, secretary of the Rational Dress Society, was influenced by this trend. In her book entitled Rational Dress: Dress of Women and Savages she likened “savages” to fashionable women. <44>
Feminists were naturally drawn not only into science and social Dawinism, but regarding the matter of what Lelia A. Davis would, in her 1894 pamphlet, call “A Question Of The Day,” the question of women’s dress was motivated by three social changes:
Naturally, suffragettes and feminists would question the fashions of their time, but they didn’t all join groups such as the Rational Dress Society. Justina Rodrigues again explains:
The movement for women’s rights was loosely associated with the Rational Dress Society. Feminists agreed with doctors, social Darwinists and conservatives that lady-like dress was unhealthy and implicitly immoral, but differed in their views on restricting women within the boundaries of the home. Prominent feminists who were more concerned with women’s rights did not make dress reform their major cause. Indeed, Josephine Butler-by far the most well known Victorian figure of the women’s rights movement-was always immaculately lady-like in her dressing. <61> Mrs. Butler, being a product of the Victorian age, although a woman ahead of her times, could have been a believer of the mainstream Victorian notion of respectability in lady-like clothes. On the other hand, like Emily Davis, founder of Girton College, Mrs. Butler was concerned at being stereotyped as one of the “shrieking sisters” — loud manly looking female activists. <62> Some of the arguments that feminists made were that in order to achieve equality of the sexes, male sexual appetites should be controlled and lady’s fashion should be less distinct from man’s. Others stressed looking attractive as opposed to looking sexually attractive [an ambiguous directive, one might say]. <63>
The Rational Dress Society did not gain a large following and efforts by dress reformers saw pathetic results. ….Lady-like dress did not yield to critical ideology but rather prevailed in its own right.
Corsets were an early form of body modification, temporary cosmetic surgery, providing women breast augmentation and liposuction in the waist and stomach area. However, while it’s easy to blame corsets for holding stomachs in as well as holding women back, it’s clearly not that simple.
The prevailing science that feminists wished to lean on was bad — and likely motivated by fear-based beliefs directly opposed to feminist ideology. The early feminists were living in a misogynist society, they were held by patriarchal stays which used the corset to control and interpret female dangers — including the dangers of women encroaching into male spheres via male modes of dress. Who wouldn’t want to cast off the corset, at the same time shirking the psychological shackles that the very debates conformed to? And what male wouldn’t prefer she literally stay in her place?
Ultimately, however, the female identification with (and desire to conform to) beauty standards was clearly stronger than any of it. And while the fact that corset boning lead to marital boning is largely a biological imperative, that sound science is, by-and-large, currently not accepted by today’s feminists.
While I do not suggest that women should whittle away our waists as we while away our days in the constriction of too-tightly-laced corsets, I do believe there is good reason to at least examine the claims and assertions made about corsets by the 19th century medical community and the suffrage movement.
But if the medial claims weren’t true, if they were as exaggerated as the corseted female form, why?
While many state that Victorian fashions for women were used as a means of control (and admiration through objectification) of women in a male dominated society, there is evidence to the contrary. In fact, many in 19th century, responding to fears of poverty and moral decay brought about by the Industrial Revolution’s over-crowding of cities, cried in outrage over the corset — but they saw the corset as impure and promoting impure behaviors among women (ever responsible for all of societies ills).
Victorian phrenologist Orson S. Fowler, an American, warned that wearing a corset excited dangerous “amative desires” by pressing blood to bowels. In Intemperance and Tightlacing, he argues that this made blood become “impure and corrupt,” caused “disease to the brain,” and inevitably led to “impure feelings” as “weak-minded” ladies were, obviously, easily prey to temptation. Illustrations mocking the too-trusting, if not cuckolded, husband conveyed such possibilities.
Perceived as (and raised to be) innocent, Victorian women on pedestals were void of any “animal feelings” such as sexual love, but this “special nature” made her a trusting, giving and warm person which, combined with her lack of intellect, made her not only prey to sexual seduction, but once introduced to such ‘sins’ she would be insatiable.
Such views of women convinced Victorian professionals that corset wearing led to such sins as hyper-sexuality and masturbation. In A Textbook on Sex Education (London, 1918), Walter Gallichen wrote:
The early wearing of stays is said to cause precocious sexuality. When it is known that a degenerate cult of tight corset wearers exists in England with a journal devoted to their craze between tightlacing and sex hyperaesthesia [heightened feeling] seems to be well established.
Ahh, so now the corset wasn’t just about seducing men, but ourselves. We were deemed dangerous dames because, poor things that we are, we’re too weak to resist sexual desires. We’d easily fall for any man, any time, any where. Worse yet, what if we opted to masturbate?! Men, as always, feared our ability to make choices. (In truth, what need do multiple-orgasmic creatures have for inconsiderate three-huffs-and-puffs-to-climax lovers who seek to control us?)
So, just how would you stop a corset-wearing woman from screwing around and diddling herself? Well, you get her out of that corset by any means possible — including scaring the crap out of her with exaggerated (or completely falsified) science.
According to this article on the brothers Lucien C. and I. DeVer Warner, founders of Warner Brothers (now Warnaco) knew the power of medical alignment selling foundation garments:
It took a couple of doctors to sell women on the idea that “rearranging” the human body via the old-fashioned corset was not practical. Doctors Lucien C. and I. DeVer Warner put their heads together and came up with a corset to fit a woman’s body, unlike other Victorian undergarments which “tied” her in.
They weren’t the first to sell corsets with doctor names, but they were among the first in the U.S. to push the “new” corsets; I’m sure it was made all that much easier (and profitable) with medical science telling those frightening anecdotal stories of death by too-restrictive corset.
Just where did the feminists fit into all of this? Well, that’s for part three.
It’s fashionable these days for folks to denounce the historical use of corsets as akin to Chinese footbinding — an early form of plastic surgery.
Corsets and tight lacing are said to have controlled women to their physical detriment; corsets have been blamed for breathing problems, broken ribs, curvature of the spine, hunchbacks, prolapsed uterus, miscarriages, hysteria and other mental illness, fainting spells, epilepsy, and even fatalities. Supposedly, in 1859, a 23 year old Parisian woman at a ball was “proved to be the envy of all with her thirteen inch waist; two days later she was found dead.”
As one who has held antique corsets in her hands, I find some of this a bit hard to swallow. Holding antique corsets which have been worn, one sees the evidence that the human body is not so easily molded; along with stretched fabric and folds from human flesh, there are torn seams and broken boning, all proof that female forms made the corsets conform to them.
But you don’t have to take my anecdotal word for it; there’s an ephemera trail of advertisements to prove this too. This 1874 ad for Thomson’s undergarments features The Unbreakable, which by its claim that it “greatly reduces the risk of fracture, while permitting the use of most highly-tempered steel,” proves that women’s bodies forced damages on corsets and their structures.
But you don’t have to take this to heart either — you can, at least for now, remain as firmly fixed on the idea that corsets were bad as you believe the horrible contraptions were on the female forms they mangled. You wouldn’t be the first…
In 1653, Dr. John Bulwer wrote in Anthropometamorphosis, Man Transform’d (aka The Artificial Changeling, London 1650), that ‘straight lacing’ was said to be the cause of “stinking breath” leading to “consumptions and a withering rottennesse.” (Bulwer also was anti-circumcision, but that’s another ‘piece’ altogether.) However Bulwer’s B.S. (consumption, for example, was tuberculosis and not caused by corsets; halitosis is rarely, if ever, a result of stomach issues, rottennesse or otherwise), is generally aimed to ridicule and condemn female vanity and following of fashion than it is aimed at helping physical ailments.
Fashion, especially women’s dress, has always reflected the the morals, values, and dynamic changes of society. And fashion (as well as its icons) have also been used to sway public opinion and create changes in society to reflect new norms. Which part of this rule, reflection of or tool used, is the corset?
Am I to believe that by the late 19th century the medical community — which was still neither treating female patients nor studying their physiology — suddenly cared about women? Even if they seemed to agree with the feminists of the time, the suffragettes, they seem too much like the proverbial odd bedfellows to me…
Let’s start by looking at the facts about where the so-called medical evidence of health problems from wearing corsets (such as in The New York Medical Journal, November 5, 1887) came from.
Fact: It was (and still is) easier to obtain permission to study the bodies of the lower and working classes. As with any ‘scandal’, the wealthy have the privilege of privacy — both in their lifetimes and afterwards. Not only are the wealthy protected from any examinations, but from stories about their lives and deaths — real or fanciful. Publicity could and would bring lawsuits. The poor or not-wealthy have less might to preserve any rights; prostitutes and others who either dropped dead on the streets or otherwise would have had their bodies dumped in pauper’s graves (and mass burials) have virtually no rights at death. These are the bodies science used. As a result, the information available would be skewed at best, completely false at worst..
Fact: The health of the lower classes was (and comparatively still is) horrible. Among the anecdotal examples of the corset as undergarment of death and destruction:
These stories are horrific, yes; but are they accurate?
Clearly dead women had health problems, but from corsets alone? When you read such things (which are said to be documented in Fashion and Fetishism by David Kunzle), you simply have to consider the alternatives to “the corset did it.” These deaths are more likely attributed to general health problems of the poor and working class. Diseases such as TB, syphilis (and other STDs), reproductive problems from multiple pregnancies, dietary deficiencies such as rickets, etc. were incredibly common.
It’s more than possible that these stories have been exaggerated or even made up (Who would question the ‘findings’ or rush to the defense of a prostitute or a chambermaid?) to further an agenda. But if the stories were made up, why? What was the motivation, the agenda?
Come back Monday, for more…
In the June 26, 1950 issue of Newsweek, a report on Smithsonian ethnologist Dr. Kalervo Oberg’s trip to Matto Grosso. Among the horrible delights, calling members of the native Nhambicuara “the most miserable and impolite even to rudeness.”
They eat snakes, bugs, rats, and cashew nuts (unsalted). Their animosity toward the white man is understandable, since the Nhambicuara are about to die out from such civilized sickness as tuberculosis and syphilis.
In order to get y’all to read the article, Newsweek captioned the following photo: The jakui: A man’s instrument.
Does that still compel you to read the article? (Click to see a larger scan, if needed.)
About 15 years ago, I sent a letter to Disney (on behalf of my Disney stock-owning and Disney-loving daughter) demanding that they diversify their stock of Disney characters and stories.
Among other things, I suggested they make stories about adventurous mice, a la The Rescuers, who either didn’t all sound like white folk or who helped more than white children — both maybe. And I said they ought to include princesses of color in their films — and that maybe these princess didn’t have to be exclusively limited to exotic locations, like Princess Jasmine.
Since this letter of mine, there has been Pocahontas & Mulan, each’s ethnicity presented as exotic and distant via the pageantry of location and historical period as Jasmine. But now there’s the first black Disney princess, Princess Tiana in The Princess & The Frog.
(I know this sounds like one of those new Windows 7 commercials — but If I had any affect on The Mouse, it took 15 years to get past the corporate layers of white defenses.)
Tony Award-winning actress Anika Noni Rose is the voice of Princess Tiana and she’s excited, telling People magazine, “This feels amazing. Not only is [Tiana] the first black princess, she’s the first American princess. So, the scope and the significance is larger than people even realize.”
Apparently Rose is so excited that she’s forgotten that Pocahontas was a Native American. While the ‘princess’ title may be debatable and the treatment of Native Americans is deplorable, is Pocahontas’ status as American really questioned?
If your daughter is a Disney princess fan — and you meet the other requirements — maybe you’d like to be on The Tyra Show:
Does your little girl love Disney princesses? Is she eagerly anticipating the arrival of the first black Disney princess, Princess Tiana? Have you always wanted to take your daughter to Disney World but have never had the means? Do you have an emotional story to share?
Emmy Award Winning Talk Show is looking for deserving moms and daughters who love Disney Princesses! Daughters should be ages 7-11. Must be available Tuesday, November 17 and the following Thursday to Friday.
My kids are all past Disney princess, but my niece isn’t (and my nephew is half charmed by them, half held hostage by his older sister’s demands). But even if there weren’t Disney kids in my clan, I’d still be glad to see an African American Disney princess. Because fairy tails may not come true, but believing in the magic of them is so much easier to do when folks look and sound more like you; not to mention what this does to those with delusions of white superiority.
From the June 26, 1950, issue of Newsweek, results of Gallup Poll regarding “how well informed the average American is on terms and phrases appearing regularly in the news.”
The result: 94 percent understood the term “flying saucers”; 68 per cent, the term “bookie.” But only 26 per cent knew “bipartisan foreign policy,” and 5 per cent, “Point Four.”
So, the titular meaning of the 95% of Americans in 1950 means that I didn’t know what ‘Point Four’ was. (I did, however, know the rest of the terms, thank-you-very-much.)
While I was not alive in 1950, one would think I could be excused for my ignorance; but it turns out I shouldn’t be — ignorant, I mean. I might still have an excuse…
‘Point Four’ refers to President Truman’s fourth point in the foreign policy objectives he stated in his inaugural address, January 20, 1949. Seeing as this fourth proposal, announced as the Bold New Program, was not only the foreign policy equivalent of the New Deal but based on similar conservation, rural rehabilitation, public works, and economic development strategies, it seems I should have been taught this in school. Especially as Point Four is what inspired president John F. Kennedy to lay the foundations for the Peace Corps in his inaugural address, January 20, 1961.
Why did my public school education insist upon making me an Ugly American, omitting foreign policy and our connected world history instead of including it in discussion of domestic policy and affairs?
One of the sins of the recently House passed health care plan is that it denies poor women access to the constitutionally protected right to abortion, thus screwing with their right to self-determination. From the National Organization for Women:
The Stupak Amendment goes far beyond the abusive Hyde Amendment, which has denied federal funding of abortion since 1976. The Stupak Amendment, if incorporated into the final version of health insurance reform legislation, will:
- Prevent women receiving tax subsidies from using their own money to purchase private insurance that covers abortion;
- Prevent women participating in the public health insurance exchange, administered by private insurance companies, from using 100 percent of their own money to purchase private insurance that covers abortion;
- Prevent low-income women from accessing abortion entirely, in many cases.
If that’s all you needed to hear, then contact your representative now (and, if you’re so inclined and able, join &/or donate to NOW too).
If you need a little more convincing, I present to you bits of what I wrote last year for Poverty Blog Action Day:
Years ago, when I lived in Wisconsin, I ran a single mother support group. One of the issues that reared its ugly head was the matter of choice and poverty; specifically as it related to those receiving government assistance.
“Welfare” is a dirty word, loaded with connotations about “laziness”, “sexual promiscuity”, “race”, “stupidity” — and “evil manipulation”. As a white woman on welfare at the time I’d seen it first hand. It was horrifically ugly. …But none more offensive to me than the matter of what happens to a woman on welfare who becomes pregnant.
At that time anyway (I have not bothered to see if this still exists in Wisconsin, but *do* know that it still exists in other states), a woman on welfare usually received health insurance through the state. It was the same insurance state employees had — but with one special, dirty, caveat: women on welfare did not have the right to choice.
Women on welfare were not allowed abortion services/coverage.
State employees would have them covered, but not the poor, lazy, sexually promiscuous welfare women.
Why? Because women on welfare lack the moral fiber to make such decisions.
Further angering me, is the fact that the media, and Tommy Thompson, went on & on about how the fine people of the state of Wisconsin were tired of paying for the free-loading welfare queens. They bitched about having to pay for someone else’s brats. They bitched we didn’t work enough. But mainly they bitched about how we got filthy rich off the system, sucking at the state’s teat as we popped out more & more babies for the extra $17 a month.
OK, I can no longer swear it was exactly $17 — but I did do the math at the time and the ‘extra’ amount didn’t even cover diapers (which, by the way, are like condoms and cannot be purchased with food stamps).
But in any case, and despite ‘everyone’ wanting us off welfare, women on welfare were not allowed abortions unless they themselves came up with the $300-$700 the procedure cost. When you can’t afford what you have, how are you supposed to come up with that amount cash? From the guy? :snort: Are you serious? The whole welfare system, and the majority of our society, does not hold men accountable for such things as a woman’s pregnancy. While you debate, insist, demand and cry, the fetus grows… And your window of a safe procedure closes.
Now, if you can’t afford the abortion, imagine how well you do supporting another child.
It’s poverty by entrapment.
Just when you might see light at the end of a day care required tunnel, just when you might have thought you could turn this corner and be the next Horatio Alger story, you realize you’re back where you started. No. You’re back where you started minus 100 steps.
And ‘society’ isn’t just requiring mothers to sacrifice themselves for a new child, but to sacrifice their other children as well.
While uppity citizens like to deny the realities of what happens to a woman in this country when she ‘finds herself pregnant’ and condemn her to her scarlet letters (an ‘A’ for adultery and a ‘W’ for welfare), the fact remains that the woman who finds herself pregnant is at the mercy of their wickedness. While religious groups like to scream that they won’t pay for the ‘murder of an unborn innocent’, they do so for government workers.
Poverty is more than an economic line, it’s a barrier to choice. And what’s worse, at the root of all this evil is the false preaching & mean-spirited perpetuation of the stereotype that all poor women are dumb, loose, and morally bankrupt.
No one can pretend they do not know the realties of being pregnant here in the US. No one can feign ignorance to the ties between parenting and poverty. Yet they willingly turn their blind-eyes, let moral-deafness protect their delicate ears, and continue to abuse the poor women and families of this country.
If you don’t believe me, how about some facts from experts?
Co-authors Elizabeth Oltmans Ananat, Jonathan Gruber, Phillip Levine, and Douglas Staiger can show you the importance of the phenomenon of selection (meaning how, on average, children’s outcomes may have improved because they were more likely to be born into a household in which they were wanted) in Abortion and Selection. From the digest at the National Bureau of Economic Research:
Taken together with earlier research results, the authors’ findings suggest that the improved living circumstances experienced by children born after the legalization of abortion had a lasting impact on their lifelong prospects. Children who were “born unwanted” prior to the legalization of abortion not only grew up in more disadvantaged households, but also grew up to be more disadvantaged as adults. This conclusion is in line with a broad literature documenting the intergenerational correlation in income and showing that adverse living circumstances as a child are associated with poorer outcomes as an adult.
So, if you can’t support women and their original sin, I’ll use the cry conservatives do, “Think of the children!” — and by that, I mean the millions here, not the children-in-waiting called fetuses. You do this by admitting women — all women, including the poor — have the right to self-determination and the constitutionally protected right to abortion. These are the very things the Stupak Amendment strips away.
This week’s Monday Movie Meme is Deep Impact: Movies That Have Changed Your Life:
Our blogging buddy Cardiogirl wanted to know if we had ever covered movies that changed our lives or our world view.
Fundamentally, I don’t believe movies — or any media, for that matter — makes people do anything. I don’t think films have changed my life. Or yours. Enhanced your life, sure; if you’re lucky (and smart), movies have provoked thought; but primarily, because people mostly choose what they watch and therefore their selections are based on notions previously held, films confirm what you & I already know or believe.
Seeing that in pixel-ized print makes me rethink why I bother writing then… Rather depressing. So I take another look at the challenge. “What movies had such an impact that they caused a change in our behavior, beliefs, or exposed us to a new passion?”
Ah, that last one — that’s the ticket! Movies and media can expose us to new passions. They can, if we are open to learning, educate us and inspire us to find out more about something we were ignorant of before — and that may include facts or plights presented in such a way that they open our eyes to a new position or point of view.
In that sense, Debra Chasnoff‘s documentary, Deadly Deception: General Electric, Nuclear Weapons, and Our Environment, opened my eyes and I changed my behaviors; to this day, I won’t buy anything made by GE. Not even a light bulb.
And if I’m forced to buy a GE product because it’s the only option on the shelf, I rant about babies born without skulls.
And then there was Mississippi Burning. That film had a profound impact on me spiritually. (Please note that this is not a review of the film, nor a commentary on it’s historical accuracy or depictions of reality; just about my personal epiphany.)
Prior to renting the film (shortly after it’s home video release) I had known of the events it was based on, namely the real-life murders of three civil rights workers Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman and James Chaney; as I said, we are drawn mainly to those things we know &/or already believe in, so I was drawn to a film about civil rights, equality, and humanity (and its converse). But after inserting the tape, once seeing the date on the screen, “June 21, 1964,” in white letters on a black screen, I was shocked. That date was news to me.
I know I didn’t know that exact date because I would have remembered it; it’s my birthday.
The fact that I was being born while those men were murdered shocked me; the next few minutes of the movie blurred (don’t worry, I rewound it and starting the film over) as I checked in with my spirit, my soul… And then, in a moment of crystal clarity, I knew.
I knew that my profound pain and connection with civil rights issues wasn’t just because I was a nice person or something. It was more than that.. Deeper. It was due to the fact that I could not join my house of flesh on this plane while those souls suffered their way out of it and not be touched by it.
You can call me crazy for such thinking; many do. And you’d be correct to hold me accountable for such thoughts, not those who made the film. Because I still argue that these films didn’t change me; I changed me.
Yes, the facts opened my eyes — because my mind was open to being informed — and I took action (or belief) because my values (and sensitivities) dictate I must. And so I have to take as much — or more — responsibility for my actions than I’m willing to give to media creators for their efforts.
If all of this seems contradictory, or like I’m splitting hairs, it’s because I think we need to draw these lines for ourselves.
I am thankful my college professor showed us Deadly Deception; and I feel blessed to have learned a fact that somehow clarifies spiritual holdings in Mississippi Burning. I admire all involved in those projects greatly (and those sentiments are equal to the feelings of mourning sickness both projects inspire). But if I hand over the responsibility for my actions to anyone, I run big risks. So do you.
We run the risk of expecting people to plop things in front of us, rather than owning our responsibility to be seekers.
We run the risk of relaxing our personal accountability for our own actions, placing blame & credit alike on others for what we ourselves do or fail to do.
So splitting these hairs isn’t cosmetic or even a matter of semantics; it’s about ownership of our actions, beliefs, and passions. This distinction between ‘media which moves us’ and the actions we opt to make is incredibly important.
‘They’ can bombard & pressure us all they’d like, to buy shoes, kill people, vote for candidate A, believe the religious rhetoric of god B, drink beer, mutilate ourselves in efforts to be ‘beautiful’; but we make the choices. We must accept our personal accountability for those choices.
We consume media, and we are what we eat; but in this case, we need to know that we digest in order to properly digest it. And to digest it, we must be diligent in our seeking and consumption of media; as equally open to ideas and points of view that counter our own as we are critically thinking about what we see/hear/read.
Great films, or crappy ones, great books or crappy video games, do not make us do things. We do.
I have a modest collection of vintage vanity items. (My collection and I have even been featured in Collectors News magazine.) And indeed, I’ve often wondered about the vast popularity of Rachel as a powder shade. I’d rather believed the hype that this particular shade was named after a popular actress at the time — but in Antique Personal Possessions, Silvia Druitt gives another possible reason:
In the very limited colour ranges obtainable then and up to the 1930’s, one frequently finds the colour Rachel. This takes its name either from the actress of that name, or, more probably, from a certain Madame Rachel who set up a Salon in New Bond Street, London, in 1863, and had a great success. Alas for her many clients, most of whom wished to keep their visits dark, her most lucrative profession turned out to be a sideline in blackmail. After mulcting many, she ended her career as a beauty specialist in prison.
The blackmail was possible because at that time, colored cosmetics were not for ladies, only for prostitutes and/or actresses — the latter of which was equally reviled and in fact, the words ‘actress’ and ‘whore’ were synonymous to many. This whore/Madonna beauty thing is partly why I began collecting/studying such things, so how intriguing to discover Madam Rachel!
For more on Madam Rachel, I send you to Madame Rachel: Beautiful for Ever at Victorian History, and to Internet Archive for The extraordinary life & trial of Madame Rachel at the Central Criminal Court, Old Bailey, London : on the 22 23, 24 & 25, September, 1868. (If the link doesn’t work; search Archive.org for “Madame Rachel at the Central Criminal Court” and you’ll find it.)
I now eagerly await the publication of Helen Rappaport’s Beautiful for Ever: Madame Rachel of Bond Street -Cosmetician, Con-artist and Blackmailer for more information on this woman who spurned society and spawned so many powdered faces.
The piece, a little beauty titled “Woman’s Dress and Women’s Homes,” in which an Englishwoman ever-so-politely snarks about the mode of American dress, was written by Anna A. Rogers (originally in the Atlantic and then published in the November 4, 1907 edition of The Fargo Forum and Daily Republican). In the article, Ms. Rogers quotes an unidentified Englishwoman who had apparently spoken to an unidentified “writer in one of our western cities especially given over to the national passion for dress.”
The authenticity, sincerity, and/or seriousness of this piece is up to you to decide; as is Ms. Roger’s intent. But comments like “a slovenly ‘slavey’ attends the door,” sure are telling enough on their own.
This little bit of joy was discovered via the many hours I spend nerdily reading antique newspapers on microfilm at the Fargo public library (because, as they say, “Library, library, more than a book!”), and so my cost was free — unless you count my taxes, which I am most happy to see go to the preservation and presentation of such things.
Greeting cards are primarily a female thing; I don’t think any sane person would argue this. But I feel the need to elaborate anyway.
First by boasting mentioning my past professional work in the greeting card biz with the fabulous Kat Caverly of NoEvil Productions (makers of Greetums), and so asserting my insider knowledge.
Second, by sharing the anecdotal evidence of how this past summer my 13 year old daughter, who spent an hour or more with her grandparents looking at and selecting greeting cards for our annual family birthday party (which combines all five of our May 30 – June 29 birthdays), was brought to tears upon the discovery that the nine year old boy had casually tossed his birthday cards into the waste can in his bedroom just a few days later. (Hey, he’s nine; I’m just happy they made it into the proper receptacle rather than being strewn about the floor.)
And third, the strong female demographic is well documented in The Very Best from Hallmark: Greeting Cards Through the Years, by Ellen Stern.
Since greeting cards are the commerce of females, you can learn a lot about women from the history of greeting cards; perhaps doubly so:
“What we make is bought to be given away,” says Bill Johnson, the member of Joyce Hall’s ingenious and loyal band who was head of public relations from 1966 to 1985. “And that’s a lot different than women’s shoes. When you buy shoes, you only have to please one person. When you buy a card, you have to please the sender and the recipient.”
Seen in that light, it’s difficult not to take a dim view of The Very Best from Hallmark: Greeting Cards Through the Years author Ellen Stern’s comment, on page 82, regarding the “poor working girl” cards.
As early as 1910, Marie Dressler was singing “Heaven will protect the working girl.” A lot she knew. The working girl has always been the very model of self-reliance… and self-pity.
“Self-pity?” Why is it that such woman-to-woman commiseration is so poorly understood, yet the author admits such commiseration in the Hard Times chapter devoted to greeting cards of The Great Depression, saying, on page 129, “During the depression, it was a plight to be shared. Not even greeting cards could escape the reality of rumbling stomachs and tattered clothes.” Certainly working women would like to acknowledge to one another their own workplace plight.
Also the demeaning use of “working girl” rather than “working woman” shows something of Stern’s stance; even if the old cards referred to adult employed females as “working girls,” Stern could have expressed her regard for the phrase with quotes surrounding the derogatory phrase.
Stern’s sentiments about self-pitying working women may be accurate based on what’s observable in the book, but wasn’t she herself in 1988 a working woman willing to commiserate and understand the cards presented? Was she getting paid 100% of her authorship dollar that a man who wrote this book would have? Or maybe Stern agreed with the sipping coffee, legs up on desk, images of “girls” at work. Wartime cards were of a battle understood; but I guess the battle of the sexes, of equal respect in the workplace, of equal work for equal pay, was a battle Stern wasn’t into.
But perhaps most intriguing of all are the plethora of lingerie themed cards.
You might be tempted to pass them off as simply risque — sexist use of the female form for men; but remember, greeting cards are a woman’s thing, bought by & given to other women. And so maybe it seems a women’s lingerie thing you wouldn’t understand…
While Hallmark was run by a man — or men with a few “poor working girls,” and can be seen as The Man, you can’t deny the serious dedication the company had to targeted marketing. They spent oodles of dollars and gobs of time focused on what sold and who bought it — including focus groups of women. If women weren’t buying the charming illustrations of women in their dainties and picture-laden puns of underthings, Hallmark wouldn’t have made them. Let alone so many of them.
And heck, I’ll admit I’m charmed by such illustrations & puns.
So one has to at least include the probability that women’s adoration of the female form, our so-called bisexuality or ability to be more fluid in our sexuality, has been around for a long time and perhaps has as much to do with “sex sells,” sexist ads, and our culture’s consumption of pornography as the patriarchy does.
The Very Best from Hallmark: Greeting Cards Through the Years, by Ellen Stern, is not a collector’s guide, really; there are no prices or discussion of the secondary market at all. However, savvy collectors and historians who view the world through pop culture vision glasses can learn much from this out of print book published in 1988, which is approaching collectibility itself.
Collectors who are lucky enough to find their cards represented here may ascertain their card’s publication date. Or identify potentially rare cards, such as those which were pulled as failures — like the time Hallmark inadvertently used an X-ray of human bowels rather than the intended heart X-ray for its “heart’s in the right place” card. (Pulled cards would mean fewer in circulation and even rarer finds for collectors — worthy of higher prices, certainly.) But mainly, collectors will gain more insight into greeting cards — in general, and, especially, the Hallmark variety.
(Clearly The Very Best from Hallmark is a corporate sanctioned publication, but I don’t think anyone can challenge Hallmark’s market share superiority or the company’s longevity — both of which speak to the book’s genuine insight into a culture that buys so many greeting cards.)
Ellen Stern’s introduction to the book gives a very brief history of the greeting card along with a rather erratic telling of the story of Joyce C. Hall, Hallmark’s founder. I realize Stern’s job of taking centuries of greeting card history and stuffing it — along with greater detail of the Hallmark company specifically — into a mere 12 pages (including space for images) is no small task; but something’s wrong when I have to re-read paragraphs over again to understand what she’s saying. However, when Stern gets into the aspects about the workings of Hallmark, from art department design to product marketing, she shines.
Here are a few gems:
On a trip to New York in the 1940s, accompanied by Hallmark’s head of corporate design and a couple of artists, [J.C. Hall] would visit Lord & Taylor, Bloomingdale’s, and Bonwit Teller — and there be ushered out because the group was taking too many notes on colors, styles, and windows displays. Everywhere he roamed he analyzed, assessed, and appreciated the wares and wonders…
I do this myself; but as I do my note-taking without entourage, I’ve never been escorted out.
In the 1940s and fifties, in department stores and card shops, Hallmark clerks adhered to a dress code — wearing only black, brown, navy, or charcoal gray — so as not to compete with the merchandise.
As a person who’s served a long retail sentence, I find that fascinating — and wonder why they changed the policy.
Dean Walley was a journalism major at the University of Missouri before joining Hallmark. Now one of the senior writers, he’s also the man who offers a marvelous course in American manners — and manners of speaking — to the artists and writers. Projecting slides of old cards from Hallmark’s archives on a small screen, he will rhapsodize on a colloquialism here, chuckle at an antiquated idea there, applaud an adjective, blast a dialect. He loves the high-falutin’ use of the word “grand,” the bravado of “staunch,” the evasiveness of “To a certain cheerful someone.” His sentimental olio embraces cards of every era, every province: a bluebird of the twenties chirping “Please Hurry Back,” a Dutch girl saying “To mine friend,” a tippler saying “Happy Birschday to You,” greetings to the dentist, a quack from Donald Duck. The point is that Hallmark writers must keep up with the language as it changes.
If you collect or read any vintage printed matter &/or antique publications, you know how true — and puzzling — this is; language is often as ephemeral as old paper itself. (Oh, how I’d love to dish with Dean Walley!)
And that’s all before we get to the over 750 images of vintage Hallmark cards.
Looking at the images, I reaffirm my love of vintage illustration. But it’s not all charming — or at least not all simply charming. There are things to note about our culture here.
Some of these things are noted by the author, like on page 45 where among the images of vintage greeting cards (birthday cards from the 1930s, shown at left) the author observes, “You couldn’t get a drink, but you could still say ‘Hell’ on a greeting card. By the fifties, it would be just the opposite.”
There have been many changes in deed; and our general history has been documented in this specific form of ephemera. In the forward, Stern has this to say:
The ups and downs of our economy, our hemlines, and our mood: such is the grist for the Hallmark mill. The days of our lives, as you will see on the following pages, are reflected in the cards of our days. Prohibition, fitness, the income tax, Vietnam, the G-man, the G.O.P., women’s suffrage, women’s lib, the radio, the jukebox, the computer, talkies, hula hoops, the Atom bomb, the gray flannel suit, the mini skirt, My Fair Lady, Huey Long, Mickey Mouse, the TV quiz show, the fireside chat, the Duchess of Windsor, Miss Piggy, Sputnik, the beatnik, Charlie Brown, Charles Lindbergh, canasta, Mussolini, rationing, cowboys, hippies, hillbillies, bobby soxers, flappers, the Dionne Quints, Valley Girls, the airplane, the blackout, the Crash. The seasons come, the seasons go, and Hallmark is up to the minute.
“Actually, says Bill Johnson [head of Hallmark’s public relations from 1966 to 1985], most cards reflect more everyday life than national events. And a national event does not in itself bring about a card. Most are ignored by the greeting card industry. It would be a folly to pretend that by looking at cards from 1920 to 1935, say, you’d get a full idea of what was going on in America.” But you get a pretty good one.
I think that’s true. Especially what Johnson says. But it’s here that we learn some things which are (rather miraculously) not noted by the author.
As you critical thinkers probably have noticed, there’s not a damn mention of civil rights. I didn’t not present them; they are not in the book (even though Beatniks garner two pages worth of attention).
OK, I’ll admit a “civil rights” themed greeting card is probably not too likely to become a best seller, but where are the persons of color? In the over 750 images of “Hallmark’s best greeting cards, spanning seven crowded decades of American life,” I found exactly two cards of what I’ll call non-white people — that weren’t Mussolini or other rather racist depiction of foreign public political figures. I’m sure too that Hallmark made many more racist cards once upon a time — which they were too ashamed of to share in the book — but to not address the whole issue of race is odd… At least show more than two cards with black folks, right?
Whether or not Hallmark does or doesn’t make cards which are more reflective of our society is research I’ll leave for others; but we don’t see much represented here.
Then again, perhaps that’s a problem best explained by the context of the time at which this book was published.
This 1980s book makes clear choices to mention and display the G.O.P. several times (yet I found no clear representations of the Democratic Party) and the republicans of the 80’s certainly weren’t building their platform on civil rights; ultraconservative republicans disliked Affirmative Action and, in a backlash against it, President Ronald Reagan cut funding for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the civil rights division of the Justice Department. Of course, I could be connecting some dots based on those missing dots, creating an image that doesn’t really exist, but I don’t think so. I think the G.O.P. populist pride slant is part of the book’s construction.
But that doesn’t necessarily detract from the book either. At least not if you are a critical thinker. This book may have intended to document our American history through the social connection of greeting card commerce up to its then present day of 1988, but it also documents, through its selections and omissions, a view of that once present day of 1988 which is now a part of our history.
If this is the sort of stuff that fascinates you half as much as it does me, get a copy. (The book is not as common as you might think for a 1988 title; however, it’s not as rare as the Amazon listings might indicate, so check for it at eBay.) If you’re not sure yet, stick around; I’ll be discussing some more from this book during the next few weeks. (If I make the posts really long, I know you won’t read all of it!)
I’ve been trying to ignore every impulse I’ve had to blog about the Gosselins. Sure, I’ve spat at the TV and grumbled at my pc (just ask hubby for confirmation), but I’ve put off writing about them — until Catherinette, that is.
When she tweeted her dislike of Kate, I just couldn’t refuse the bait. Witnessing how so many are oblivious to the facts here drives me crazy. Crazy enough to challenge Catherinette to a duel for Kate Gosselin’s honor. (Or, baring her “honor,” at least for some understanding.) Even though I know Catherinette’s post is likely to be far more clever to read, I challenged her. (And even the entertainment value is part of the problem; it’s much easier to impart the snark than it is to look at the real issues here. Especially if those issues have something to do with you, your behaviors, your value-laden actions.) So I probably won’t “win” this duel; not only is what I have to say far less entertaining, but Catherinette has far more vocal readers than I. But like many who have doth declared a duel, I must do it in spite of winning and simply for the principal of the thing.
First of all, we, the collective “we” of society, are partly responsible for the Gosselins being on TV in the first place. Read through any publication from the past, and you’ll see that we humans have a long history of loving to vicariously follow the lives of people we don’t know. Before film, before more timely mass communication gave us the ability to herald public figures on the national or international scene, we read the local society pages & made local celebrities out of those people in our local bergs — especially those who could travel to the big cities and see the opera or buy Paris fashions.
Unusual human drama was the stuff we entertained ourselves with during our hum-drum days and nights. We consoled ourselves as “at least not having those problems,” and puffed our chests with “proof” that the rich had more dollars than sense.
Throw children into the mix — especially an unusual number of babies — and whoa, Nellie, we’re smitten. Why else do I continue to find so much evidence of the Dionne Quints?
The Dionne Quintuplets who, by the way, grew up under the intense media spotlight yet turned out normal — and by “normal,” I mean they have as adults complained about their not normal childhoods. Children everywhere complain about their parents, the lots they are born into, even without such public interest & scrutiny.
Think I’m being cold & crass? Before their complaints, we didn’t feel responsible for literally buying their story; since their complaints, we continue to buy the lives of others.
While I’ll leave it to others to debate the “who had it worse, the Dionne Quints or Jon & Kate’s + 8?” and/or the “do the plus eight have it any worse than any child actor?” I will say that most folks justify their watching and purchasing with a “Had they not our dollars, where would they be? Had they not been born a litter of five or eight, who can say where they would have ended up…”
OK, so even if you don’t agree with the choices Jon and Kate made (and I did turn down Wife Swap), to make some money off the general public interest in their über sized family of tiny tots, you must at least see how tempting such monetary gains would be when faced with the costs and work of raising such a large family. And the decision was theirs to make.
If you don’t get it, I don’t see any way to convince you. So I’ll move along.
My next point is that Jon’s a jerk.
Even without the publicity, Jon’s a poster-boy for male jerks everywhere who eschew family responsibilities. From the beginning of the show, Jon has sat back and done very little with his kids. Even less for his wife. When people say, “Kate’s a bitch,” I say, “Of course she looks like one. What woman can shoulder what she does and not look like she’s bossy?” And I don’t just mean the number of kids.
Worse than simply lazy, Jon’s a nightmare.
Jon’s passive-aggressive behavior reads off the television screen like a text book case for psych students. He doesn’t lift a finger unless he’s told to, does a half-assed job of it (if he actually does anything) — and then he stares into the camera and plays victim to millions — millions who then view Kate, the responsible party trying to get her husband to participate in his life, as mean.
It’s crazy-making and abusive. Enough to dislike him for on its own.
But then he cheats.
Looking for escape from a reality he created, he continues to paint himself the victim while he partys-on, dude.
And then he tries to leak a story about Kate’s cheating, just to make himself look, hell, I don’t know, “better” as the victim again. *sigh*
Jon says he’s not, despite his plethora of boys toys (of the mechanic, electronic, and human female varieties) and mode of recapturing-my-youth rocker garb, having a midlife crisis. Maybe he’s not. Like drugs, a midlife crisis is not required to be an asshole; but such things help.
Meanwhile, Kate, who likely has been worried about this whole thing for years now (even if not consciously), continues to try to get what she can for her kids. Jon complains about her book tours — and some of the public bitches in agreement. But really, would you have any respect for a woman who didn’t do anything to support her kids? Why is Kate blamed for wanting to use what popularity she has & leverage it into something more? I don’t have eight children, but I continually worry about feeding & providing for the kids I do have.
And when talking heads & comedians mock the Gosselins for being out & about, not home with their kids, there are distinctions to be made: Momma’s working, daddy’s an asshat.
But even if both parents are out of the home working, leaving the kids with other childcare providers, so what? Millions of us do it every single day. So these parents have a much longer commute, traveling to the far more fashionable production coasts; the same talking heads on TV do it all the time. Does anyone wonder just who is watching Stephen Colbert’s kids? Or Nicole Kidman’s?
I’m soooooo tired of people bitching about Kate when she’s been victimized and abused here.
No, she hasn’t handled everything with as much aplomb as you’d like to imagine you would. Being the sane responsible one who looks like the problem drives you crazy — and sometimes you act like it. And divorces bring out the worst in people. Even when you are trying so hard to do the right thing.
It sucks that this drama is playing out in public, especially for the kids. But dude, let’s keep some perspective here. As a kid, you’re worried about what your friends will say or think… Your friends and the kids at school, the kids in the neighborhood, at day care, your cousins, maybe. And even without such a media frenzy, all those kids would already know that your dad’s a jerk because they will have met him — or heard from some other kid who has. Seeing Daddy Dearest on TV, boozing it up with other babes only confirms what they already know. And it helps explain why your mom is tight-lipped, teary-eyed, and sometimes failing while trying to hard to hold it together.
Give her a break.
And start with a hard look at yourself. What is it that Kate brings up in your own life, about your actions/beliefs/behaviors, which you are trying so hard not to see or be responsible for?
PS In case Catherinette should mention Kate’s hair cut…
My middle child went out and got Kate’s haircut a few months ago. Did she intend to get Kate’s haircut? I can’t say; Destiny was with her biological mom that day. But the 80’s are back, baby, and asymmetrical haircuts along with it.
Besides, if Kate’s hair is anything like Destiny’s, that haircut is completely wash-and-go. Who couldn’t use that much style with eight kids, a lazy husband, a busy traveling work life, and continual media attention?
Because my first Barbie dolls had been my aunt’s, I had a lot of the original stuff, including those (now highly collectible) palest blue whispers of chiffon pleated underpants. I remembered being struck by the incongruity of such angles — the square-ish lines of the boxy panties themselves and the triangular points of the pleats — against the round curves of plump plastic. As I slipped them over Babs’ firm flesh, I wondered what her shape would do to the shape of those panties… Miraculously, some of the pleating remained when Barbie wore them — and in fact, the pleating was fully retained once removed from the doll. These were things I was highly suspicious of.
I wondered if those puffs of pleats remained beneath Barbie’s outerwear… They weren’t really visible; Barbie did not suffer from visible panty lines either. But like that refrigerator light problem, there was no way to see-to-believe, no way to really know.
While many blame Barbie for a plethora of society’s ills, I’m not so convinced. I learned many things from Barbie, including, but not limited to, the pure impossibility of comparing myself to a doll (let alone coming up short in such a comparison).
Barbie was a doll, her movements were not only dictated & restricted by manufactured bendable knees & stiff elbows, but whatever limited movements Babs had could only be made at my whim. Her permanently arched foot did not relax when her shoes were removed, nor when she went to sleep. (This, I would learn years later as a department store sales person, was quite probably the most realistic thing about Barbie.) When I cut her hair, it did not grow back. Ever. When her leg popped-off at the hip, you could just press it firmly back into place; no blood, no guts, just the glory of fixing a problem yourself.
Barbie was not real and I knew it.
Her lack of areolas and nipples did not make me question the existence of mine. The enormous size of her breasts and their skewed proportionality did not make me question the size and proportion of my mother’s bustline, that of any other female that I knew, or my own breasts when I developed them. Barbie’s flat tummy did not make me question my plump belly or that of any other female; hers was hard unforgiving plastic, ours were flesh — as flexible, purposeful and forgiving as our arms. Our bodies existed for more than posing, for draping fabrics, for pretending. We are not dolls; we are a human.
Of course, as a child, I didn’t exactly articulate these things to myself or anyone else; these were simply the lessons of play. (Are those the ingrained messages they want to protect children from?)
OK, so Barbie’s hyper-beauty was unrealistic, so what? I had a brain. I was no more in danger from this fashion doll than boys who played smash-up with Hot Wheels cars were from driving like the world was a demotion derby they could just get up and walk away from. Kids can tell reality from pretend, especially when they have emotionally & intelligently available adults who answer questions and talk with them, not at them.
(This is not to say that Barbie, media images, etc. do not have an impact; but that’s more a matter of a collective accumulation of messages. And I’ll continue to pull at those threads.)
However — getting back to Barbie’s pleated underwear, what started all this in my mind was spotting these vintage knife pleated panties.
In jadeite green and blushy-peach, they are color variations of Babs’ fancy sheer knickers!
I instantly thought of the mysteries of those angles on Barbie’s curves, of how I wondered just how real flesh would react with those pleats… Puckers & folds in your pants or beneath a slip-protected skirt, would they be there under your clothes? Or would your flesh fill them out, curves rubbing-out the angles? If they were there, what would they feel like? Would they remain when you took those panties off? Puckers & folds, those are usually considered imperfections — yet here they are, for living humans, not just dolls.
These vintage panties are beautiful little mysteries to me. And until I find a pair in my size, this is how they shall remain to me.
A quick tip of my hat to Eliza at Bust Magazine‘s blog for pointing out what a hideous idea it is to make a a new younger version of the film classic Thelma and Louise. The train wreck, set to star Leighton Meester and Amber Heard, is titled Cowgirl Bandits — a title which certainly seems to sum up the producer’s ignorance of just what is truly at the core of this film.
Adding to the inappropriateness Eliza expressed, it is, in my estimation, not simply a bad idea due to the celebs involved (for I don’t view either as an actress anywhere near the likes of either Susan Sarandon or Geena Davis), nor is it a lament that classics ought to be left the hell alone (Did we learn nothing from the remake of The Women?!); no, the horror of this cinemacide goes far deeper.
What is sexy about this film (and I mean that in both the physical arousal definition of the word “sexy” and the intellectual turn-on implications of the colloquial usage) is the very thing they are undoing by attempting a “younger” version. A younger version of the film requires the characters be too young to believably have the character of the film characters.
At 20-ish, you don’t have years, decades, of boredom and abuse in a marriage — and if you even have to ask how a relationship can be both boring and abusive, then you are the “too young” I speak of — so how can you be courageous enough to walk out of it, Thelma? Courage, after all, is measured by the ability to confront a situation aware of the risks, pain, intimidation. (And how young would Brad Pitt’s character have to be– 12?! Or in this hip young version, would she hook-up with an old dude, of say 40? A Brad Pitt role reprisal?)
At 20-ish, you don’t have years of hiding out, sheltering yourself as you live in the quiet silence of a pretense that keeps you at arm’s length from any respite, a deer perpetually in the headlights, exhausted from swallowing the injustice as you remain on guard for the next attack. So how then, can you react as you do, Louise? Without your years of suffering, how can there be a sympathetic policeman?
With this pitiful remake, there’s no significant backstory for these characters because — and I know this will offend you young pups — because 20-somethings haven’t lived long enough to have such a history, a history that they have both taken part in the creation of and struggled with for years.
Thelma & Louise wasn’t about some willy-nilly drive into the vague liberation of third-wave feminism partying and screwing the way to a poetic fireball of justice; it wasn’t a movie about women willing to die in the name of feminism. Thelma & Louise was far more complicated — sad and infuriating — because Thelma & Louise were fully developed characters with backstories. And they had to be older to do that.
I know it’s a crappy photo (it’s beginning to be a habit), but at least you’ll believe me when I say that Dr. Phil’s Ultimate Weight Solution and Richard Elliott Friedman Disappearance of God were shelved as “Romance” in the thrift store. Sure, customers could have done it; but that’s no less amusing to me.
I have a habit of making stories from nearly anything. I see a person on the street, I give him or her a name, an occupation, a mood, a spouse or other family member, and a mission. In line at the grocery story, I love to watch what people are buying. A lovely, or hysterical, little vignette emerges. (One time, it was a man at 12:30 at night purchasing a huge bottle of vodka, kitty litter, and a Cornish game hen. The vodka bottle was nearly the size of the kitty litter canister. I had to keep myself from advising him not to sit down with the bottle until after he fed the cat — even if the hen was for the cat, sooner or later, a hungry cat will eat a passed out human.) Anywhoooo…
Visiting estate sales allows me to see more than things to buy; I see a life. A few objects create a sketch, a few more inks it in, and then my mind paints in all the rest. I can’t help myself. And I believe it’s not just more exercises for my imagination; I learn a lot this way.
At a recent estate sale, I discovered the recently deceased woman had been a bookkeeper, extremely active at the nearby church, and an excellent bowler. But there was more. I was lucky enough to find (and purchase) a few raunchy old pulps and a paperback on open marriages — extra bonus material included a bookmark at the chapter on renewing the contract, and a few Polaroids of the woman in her 1950’s wearing office attire in pinup poses. In order to not let her sons (who were running this estate sale) learn things they may have lived this long without knowing, I bought a whole bunch of stuff so that they’d be too busy tallying my bill to really see my items and do the math on their mom’s life.
Working at another estate, where ‘Grannie’ was moving to an assisted care facility, there was a lot of clutter. For practical reasons, it seems. Hidden in plastic waste cans, desk drawers, floor cubby-holes, were half-full (or half-empty, for you pessimists) bottles of booze. Mostly cheap sherry & brandy. So cheap was this hooch, I’d imagine you couldn’t tell one ‘flavor’ from the other — or from rubbing alcohol for that matter. Now we knew more about where ‘Grannie’ was moving and why. We just disposed of the bottles as we found them, without a comment, so as not to embarrass the family. We also found an overwhelming number of unfinished sewing and needlework projects; idol hands really might be the devil’s workshop.
I have been to more estate sales than I can count where the now-deceased elderly woman had been to art class in her younger years. Yes, she studied figure drawing — nude figure drawing. If I am lucky, I get to buy the portfolio. Often, I am not so lucky; but I do get to at least leaf through them. I do think ladies today ought to be educated thus. It’s something we, as a culture, should not have stepped away from.
This all gets me to thinking… Upon my death, at my estate sale, people will draw conclusions about me. Folks may think I took a nude figure drawing class — at least until they read the various names and dates on the drawings. They might think I had an open marriage. Lots of folks will think, due to my huge collection of pinups and vintage erotica, that I was a lesbian; people do it now. Perhaps I should leave notes.
But women do leave notes. In fact, they document their whole lives. Especially those women who were wives and mothers. There’s a certain pattern to a mom’s life, and in these homes of women who have passed on, you see the evidence of it.
There are the piles of scrapbooks, letters, photos, and correspondence of intimate connections. The trail begins with cards, notes, and photos with written clues to romance. Perhaps there are diaries. Soon there are stacks of ‘baby books’, family photo albums, depositories of greeting cards, postcards, letters and other clues of a new family and social attachments. (As the family grows, whatever personal diaries there were may now cease; she is too busy caring for her family to document and journal her own life in a diary.)
As the children get older, these scrapbooks turn into group things. Work newsletters, bowling league gazettes, church group & luncheon publications… She continues her habits of saving and, if lucky, pasting. As the children age, she becomes an empty-nester, and the social group activities are intermittently interrupted with family wedding invitations, announcements of new born babies, thank-you-for-the-gift cards, and a few obituaries here and there. Some of the wealthier women traveled, and you’ll find volumes full of travel itineraries, plane & boat tickets, postcards, photographs and other travel souvenirs. But just as the books became less and less about family, so the books eventually become less and less about the living.
Too soon the scrapbooks become filled with page after page of obituaries, memorial service bulletins, the occasional thank you card from the younger generation for the flowers… Even if the obits are punctuated with the occasional wedding and birth announcement clippings, there are no cards, or handwritten notes, just newspaper clippings. Proof that human interaction is limited, the only handwriting now is the feathery-script of the woman making the book; a single script places the dates below the clippings. The scrapbook is a one-woman — one-way — endeavor. She continues to chronicle the past rather than the now. To fill her day as well as the books, she includes newspaper articles on ‘Remember When’ and ’50 Years Ago Today’ stories. These clippings dot the obits with more socially-sterile tanned documents of death and loss…
There you stand, holding these books, this evidence of life which was cut, pasted and collected by this woman who has passed on. In some cases, all you find are the drawers and boxes of intentions — loose papers that had patiently out-lasted their acidic attacks to survive the great “some day” when they would be placed into books to tell their stories; their brittleness a testimony to the bitterness of time that ran out.
Yet, when you bring the stacks of lovingly made books &/or old saved ephemera to the living, they say “Go ahead and sell it. Or pitch it if it’s not worth anything; I don’t want it.”
I cringe when they say that.
But I do as I am told, praying that someone will come along and adopt these books and boxes of ephemera, in some fashion adopting these women & their families — if they are willing to see the dead-paper forest for the trees of individual auction-priced items.
But sometimes, it’s what you don’t find which illuminates the most about lives.
Once I was working with my mom at an estate sale. We were clearing out the master bedroom when she opened the nightstand drawer and squealed so loud that I quickly turned from the closet to look. My mother stood clutching an item in her hand, her face was flushed and her eyes begged for help. “I shouldn’t have picked it up,” she said. I came over, removed the item from her hand, and discovering one of those small clothing shavers (the kind that you use to remove pills on your sweaters etc) I said “What’s the matter with a sweater shaver?” My mother sighed, her shoulders relaxed and she said “Oh, I thought it was a… well, you know…” My mother had thought it was a vibrator.
This, of all the finds over the years, has me thinking the most: Why haven’t I ever found vibrators at estate sales?
You might be quick to say that the families had already cleared the home of such things, out of a sense of propriety perhaps. But I’ve cleaned too many nightstands, bathrooms, closets, and under too many beds. I’ve found too many family skeletons, dark secrets, and old people diapers to believe this is the reason.
I’ve found all the ephemera documenting the most intimate parts of their lives, including their love lives. What’s more, I’ve found evidence of their sex lives — be it the old letters, pulp novels, erotic works, or ‘just’ their offspring. But never a sex toy.
I find it hard to believe that loneliness, drinking, sewing, bowling, church activities, and cut & pasting from the newspaper replaces the need for sexual gratification. It doesn’t work now, at the age of 45, so why would it be enough at 92?
Do families worry more about ridding mom or grandma’s home of her pocket rocket more than they do adult publications or evidence of other bodily functions? Could it be these women really have no sex drives? Or, even though vibes and sex toys have been around for ages, were these women unaware they existed — or without means to get themselves one? Or is there some other reason I do not find vibrators when preparing for estate sales?
Requiem for a Paper Bag: Celebrities and Civilians Tell Stories of the Best Lost, Tossed, and Found Items from Around the World is a Found Anthology put together by Davy Rothbart, creator of Found Magazine. In this collection, Rothbart gave his famous hipster (I say hipster, because when a book begins with multiple references to both ramen noodles and found porn, what else can you say?) friends an assignment: Share a personal story about something fascinating that you yourself have found, or write a piece of fiction sparked by a particular find.
The resulting works are a feast for anyone who has found something and pondered the meaning or occasion of it — and yes, I mean anyone. Because you don’t have to be an ephemera collector to have found a found scrap of paper, a photograph stuck in a book, some trinket and have either wondered or even made up a story about it yourself. (And if you say you haven’t done it, I’m calling you a dirty rotten liar!)
Like any well-done anthology, each of the of 67 pieces submitted by the celebri-hipsters is, ramen noodles and porn aside, a unique little gem.
Seth Rogen’s Wet & Wild may not have been shocking to me (I’ve got my own experiences with found porn; and who would be surprised Rogen would have a connection to porn?) but, like Steve Almond’s No Panties Allowed, the narrative adds to our collective illumination into the discomforts on the way to personal discoveries about sexuality.
Byron Case’s Trash Night reads so much like a memory of my own that even though I’ve never been lucky enough to make trash picking more than an annual event, I found myself nodding and laughing conspiratorially.
Sarah Vowell’s What Else I Know About U.S. History (a written response to a scrap of note paper found by Rona Miller of South Bend, Indiana) is so very Vowell in voice, that I can hear the emo as if she’s speaking the piece — and yes, that’s a fabulous thing.
And while Bich Minh Nguyen’s quote probably remains the most poetic, it’s Heidi Julavits’ Woodstove Girl which is the most haunting for me… It lingers… I wish I knew if it was real or a fiction piece.
Overall Requiem is a tasty dish, suitable for deouring in one leisurely buffet-style meal or for savoring in snatched snack-sized portions ala carte.
