forever annoyed by (dutch) fashion historians perpetuating this whole "women had to become more independent and started working in factories during the first world war because of the men going off to fight the war and that's why fashion became more relaxed and comfortable" thing because

fashion started becoming more relaxed and comfortable from 1910 onwards, so, you know, several years before the war even started

the netherlands was neutral during WW1. our men did not fight. they were here. doing their usual jobs afaik.

women have been working in factories since the mid 19th century at LEAST. this is not even just a dutch thing, women were working in factories all across the western countries, if not everywhere.

EZRA KLEIN: You’re an anarchist. How do you define anarchism?

NOAM CHOMSKY: Anarchism, the way I understand it, is pretty close to a truism. That’s it. And I think everybody, if they think about it, will accept at least this much. We begin with assuming that any structure of authority and domination has to justify itself. It’s not self-justifying. It has a burden of proof. It has to show that it’s legitimate. So if you’re taking a walk with your kid, and the kid run in the street, and you grab his arm and pull him back, that’s an exercise of authority. But it’s legitimate. You can have a justification.

And there are such cases where there is justification. But if you look closely, most of them do not. Most of them are what David Hume, Edward Bernays, Walter Lippmann, Adam Smith, and others have been talking about over the centuries. Namely, illegitimate authority. Well, illegitimate authorities should be exposed, challenged, overcome. That’s true in all of life. We’ve talked about a few cases. Like, say, the workplace, where it’s illegitimate, should not be tolerated, wasn’t tolerated, until it was driven out of people’s heads by force and violence. Well, OK, what’s anarchism? Just pushing these questions to their limit.

EZRA KLEIN: Who decides when authority is legitimate? In some of the more classic theories of democracy, if you have the consent of the governed and the exercise of authority on their behalf is legitimate. I think there are many of those cases that you wouldn’t agree with. So under anarchism, how are those decisions made?

NOAM CHOMSKY: Here, we go back to the first question you raised, about the unique human properties, like the capacity for thought. You have to think it through. There’s no algorithm. Life is too complicated for simple algorithms. You take a look at the situation, think it through, deliberate it with others in a free society, where people have access to information, have gained control of their lives. They think it through and decide. Take the case of subordinating yourself to a master for most of your waking life. Well, workingmen, in the 19th century, young women from the farms, factory girls that were called. They did think it through.

And we can see what their thinking was by reading the very eloquent and forceful literature that they created. They bitterly attacked the imposition of what they called monarchic rule in the workplace, where their basic rights were taken away by subordination to a master, which they regarded as not fundamentally different from slavery, except that it was maybe temporary, you could get free of it. The working people held that we should move towards, what they called, a cooperative Commonwealth, where people control their own lives. Workers should control the enterprises in which they work. Their conception was that anyone who appropriates the labor of someone else is in a position of illegitimate authority.

//

EZRA KLEIN: Well, let me offer one of the stronger justifications for capitalism because I agree with you that idea of freedom is so narrow as to be a mockery. I think the stronger arguing people make for different forms of capitalism or mixed economies in the way we have them now is it the same incentives that in many cases do lead to exploitation and do lead to inequality also drive technological and organizational innovation. And from generation to generation, it’s those technological innovations, those organizational innovations that really change living standards. And it’s not the government doesn’t have a role, but that role is more basic. They fund basic research. And then the market drives that it forward. And that it’s a trade-off worth making because we’re supercharging human beings drive to status and drive to attain and harnessing it to create the technology that moves our species forward. How do you think about that?

NOAM CHOMSKY: I think it’s just false. I mean, I spent my life in the main research institution in the world, MIT and research labs. You just go into a research lab. People aren’t working, maybe people are working 80 hours a week. But it’s not to make money. They can make a lot more money elsewhere. It’s because of the excitement of the work. The challenge of solving problems. That’s what drives people. It has no relation to the incentive to gain power. Yes, both are incentives, but they’re totally different.

And I think if you look at your children, you mentioned this constant why, why, why — yeah, that’s what people want. They want to understand the world. They see problems, the problem can be, let’s say, finding how the Covid virus works. That drives people to work hard because they want to understand it. They may not make any money out of it. And most of them, never do. I mean, we have a distorted system, which encourages them to try to make money out of it, but that’s not what’s driving it in the lab.

Or it can be terrible mechanical things. I can’t get anything to work. So my car isn’t working. I take it to a mechanic. He see something’s wrong, sees a problem, wants to solve the problem, takes skill, takes kind of intelligence I don’t have. But just the interest in solving the problem drives it. Of course, he gets paid, but that’s part of the structure of the outside system. I don’t think that’s the driving force. You look at the development of technology, that’s the way it happened.

Take, say, the internet. It was actually going on in the labs where it was. And people were really interested in the problem of working out modes of interconnection at first among scientists and more broadly. Most of them are unknown and didn’t make any money out of it. Same with the development of computers, same with almost all technological development, even to the famous levels. And take, say, Einstein working in the patent office in Switzerland, thinking about what would you observe if you were traveling at the speed of light. He wasn’t doing it to make money. That’s the way everything from your children up to advanced research works. That’s where technological development and scientific development takes place.

Why Friedrich is Poor (Louisa May Alcott and equal marriage)

Whilst the biggest crime that the adaptations do is to make it seem that Amy and Jo are always arguing over Laurie. In the book Jo never wants him, and Amy doesn’t want him either when he is being lazy and unproductive. In an article called ‘Happy Women’ which Louisa wrote about a year after Little Women was published, Louisa writes that accepting a false idea of love just because you are lonely is self-deceiving. Isn’t this what happens in Little Women? Jo considers Laurie’s proposal because she is lonely; perhaps the reason why Louisa rejected Laddie Wisniewski was because she was still in love with Henry Thoreau. Henry, like all the Transcendentalists, believed in self-reliance; I think the best way to describe Henry’s relationship with money is that he was a minimalist; he also came from the working class – his father had a pencil factory where Henry worked from time to time. He was also a teacher and occasionally a gardener, a hunter and a naturalist – and a writer; and of course Henry was a Transcendentalist philosopher like Friedrich. In Little Women’s saga Henry is constantly present, specially in Little Men where Louisa describes his love for simplicity, when she writes about Friedrich’s love for the natural world. In the 19th century some religious organizations considered the Transcendentalists heretic, because they almost had a pantheistic belief that Nature was the most perfect expression of God. One of my observant blog-readers said that if Friedrich was based on someone who Louisa was in love with, that explains why Louisa was frustrated by the fans who were demanding that she married Jo to Laurie. Louisa never really liked Little Women; she considered it as one of her worst novels. I think the observant blog-reader is right that Louisa wrote a lot about herself, and therefore the success of Little Women would create very conflicted feelings. I and my friend Emily talked about this in our ‘Laurie’ episode; in the 19th century Laurie was a super-popular character, and perhaps one part of that popularity was because he was wealthy. Every time that Louisa was asked about the real-life Laurie, she would always speak very highly about Laddie to the public; but then in her private letters she was not so happy with him. So why is Friedrich poor? He is poor because he is Jo’s equal, and therefore they shared their similar views on self-reliance and can build their life together. This is what Louisa writes in the ‘Umbrella’ chapter; Friedrich says “I could not find the heart to take you from that so happy home until I could haf a prospect of one to gif you, after much time, perhaps, and hard work. How could I ask you to gif up so much for a poor old fellow, who has no fortune but a little learning?" "I'm glad you are poor. I couldn't bear a rich husband," said Jo decidedly, adding in a softer tone, "Don't fear poverty. I've known it long enough to lose my dread and be happy working for those I love, and don't call yourself old – forty is the prime of life. I couldn't help loving you if you were seventy!" In Jo´s boys, which is the last little women book, Jo and Friedrich are making out, and he is seventy! The book that was Louisa’s personal favorite was ‘Moods’, a story that she began to write when she was 17, and she revisited it several times during her life. If you want to read about Louisa’s love life and relationships, ‘Moods’ is pretty explicit, and Jo’s and Friedrich’s age difference in the book is 16 years, which was also Louisa and Henry’s age difference. When it comes to the adaptations, they don’t usually pay much attention to wealth and class; Laurie’s missing character arc is a prime example of that. That Fritz is poor or not is often pretty vague – same with him being an immigrant, for example in Greta Gerwig’s film there was an earlier script where Friedrich was written to be German and Jo’s father gives a speech about the USA being built upon immigrants, which is true, but then in the final script, and then in the final film, Friedrich is vaguely European and the part about immigrants was turned into a joke. The only film where Friedrich is clearly poor is the 1994 film. Gabriel Byrne´s clothes; in the film they look really nice but they don’t look new. The 1978 series is the only adaptation which shows that Friedrich is applying for jobs after Jo has returned to Concord, and there is a scene where he gets the  job and he is building courage to travel to Concord and tell about it to Jo. But the musical is probably the best when it shows that not only does Fritz has a good effect on Jo and her writing, but she has a positive effect on him and his life, in a wider sense.

Check out the full episode here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7MFlz8-ubY&ab_channel=SmallUmbrellaInTheRain-LittleWomenChannel

Shit that fucks me up #1 - Toxic Masculinity and being a “man”

Gotta have some way to organize my random thoughts here. I’m going with the obvious thing - Shit that fucks me up (STFMU). This is about me and my experiences. It is not my intention to discredit or question other human experiences. Sharing in the hopes of connecting with others who may have feel similar in their own skin. There are things here that others may define as triggers so read at your own risk (rape, abuse, and this fucking world). ---

Here is me being vulnerable.  I am putting myself out there by discussing masculinity and how I often do not identify with the larger concept of “being a man” in any positive way. You can call it toxic masculinity if you prefer. It’s acceptable shorthand for something that is just as nuanced and difficult to wade through as anything gender related.  I read this article on The Atlantic yesterday and there were some things that really resonated with me and my experience as a man/male (he/his/him). You can read it here (sorry there is a pay wall if you read more than 4 articles a month) but I will also be quoting some of the article below.  If you have time to read the article I’ll wait. It’s a bit long (many articles on The Atlantic are) and kind of academic at times. It’s okay if you don’t agree with everything in the article. Just read it.  Done? Okay let me set the stage a bit for how this shit fucks me up. ---

I’m male. I have always identified as a male/boy/man in my life. Unfortunately my experience with other males/boys/men has been mostly negative. It started at an early age when I had a hard time connecting with other boys my age. I was not interested in typical “male” interests like sports, violence, competition, and achievement. I had few (usually 1 or 2) friends at any one time and they typically had some kind of unhealthy power dynamic over me where I was subservient to my “friend” in some way.  I have some thoughts on reasons why this happened. The short version is I lived in poverty (often extreme) and I was searching for help and support in order to survive. At home I had abuse (mental, physical, verbal), drugs, addiction, and neglect. It was not a safe place to be so I did whatever I could to not be there. It was not unusual for me to eat maybe one meal during the day (typically what I could get from others at school or their home). Winter was the worst as we often did not have heat. Some of my “friends” used this as a way to hold power over me and make demands of my personality, time, and attention. Imagine finding yourself in this situation - you have to actively work to not be yourself in order to appease others for your very survival. Of course as a youth I didn’t identify it this way - my “friends” were just bossy or demanding. All of my male role models were basically assholes who did not give a fuck about anyone except themselves. This was a huge part of the 80′s zeitgeist in popular culture at the time as well. In some ways nothing has really changed. “... when asked to describe the attributes of “the ideal guy,” those same boys appeared to be harking back to 1955. Dominance. Aggression. Rugged good looks (with an emphasis on height). Sexual prowess. Stoicism. Athleticism. Wealth (at least some day).“ Under this common definition of “masculinity” I do not see myself. I am loyal, honest, caring, and sweet (to those I love). I love my body though I am non-athletic and have been most of my life. I am an attentive and talented lover but I have had very few sexual partners in my life and never saw them as moments of “conquest”. I was dirt poor most of my life but now live comfortably in my own home with my long term partner. So while not “wealthy” it is far beyond anything I could have imagined I would have in my life as a boy. Stoicism I have down. That one was easy. For me it’s just a nice way of saying “I have completely disconnected from my emotions and not having feelings or emotions is the best way to be a man”. I believed that for a very long time - it’s only in the past 2-3 years I have begun the work of breaking that down and reconnecting with my own emotions. It’s all tied up in trauma, depression, and anxiety so it takes a bit of fucking work but it’s very much worth it. If you are a man/male who thinks it is normal to not have emotions (or that emotions make you feminine/weak) please listen to me - THAT IS BULLSHIT. YOU OWE IT TO YOURSELF TO HAVE EMOTIONS.

“... young men described just one narrow route to successful masculinity. One-third said they felt compelled to suppress their feelings, to “suck it up” or “be a man” when they were sad or scared, and more than 40 percent said that when they were angry, society expected them to be combative.“

Emotions are not weakness. You are not weak for having them, feeling them, or connecting with them. There is great strength in connecting with yourself and understanding your emotions. Don’t let anyone tell you different. They are delusional at best and actively trying to harm you at worst.

“While following the conventional script may still bring social and professional rewards to boys and men, research shows that those who rigidly adhere to certain masculine norms are not only more likely to harass and bully others but to themselves be victims of verbal or physical violence. They’re more prone to binge-drinking, risky sexual behavior, and getting in car accidents. They are also less happy than other guys, with higher depression rates and fewer friends in whom they can confide.”

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How did we get here!? Have men always been this way? What about the good ole masculinity of ye olden times? It was a simple time where men were men right? A man’s man? “According to Andrew Smiler, a psychologist who has studied the history of Western masculinity, the ideal late-19th-century man was compassionate, a caretaker, but such qualities lost favor as paid labor moved from homes to factories during industrialization. In fact, the Boy Scouts, whose creed urges its members to be loyal, friendly, courteous, and kind, was founded in 1910 in part to counter that dehumanizing trend. Smiler attributes further distortions in masculinity to a century-long backlash against women’s rights. During World War I, women proved that they could keep the economy humming on their own, and soon afterward they secured the vote. Instead of embracing gender equality, he says, the country’s leaders “doubled down” on the inalienable male right to power, emphasizing men’s supposedly more logical and less emotional nature as a prerequisite for leadership.”

Take a minute to read that and really take it in. Like many things in the US (and the world) the effects of industrialization and war shaped our current version of accepted masculinity. More specifically the leaders of this country (and leaders in other countries) used their positions of power to strengthen men and this new masculinity in our institutions. Then we were taught that this was the “right way” to “be a man”. FUCK. THIS. SHIT.

“Today many parents are unsure of how to raise a boy, what sort of masculinity to encourage in their sons. But as I learned from talking with boys themselves, the culture of adolescence, which fuses hyper-rationality with domination, sexual conquest, and a glorification of male violence, fills the void.“

Here we have the core of what I experience as a man when it comes to the current socially accepted version of masculinity and why it fucks me up. I don’t identify with any of this shit! It does not feed me. It does not make me feel fulfilled and happy. It doesn’t make the world better for anyone it simply dehumanizes us all. 

“In a classic study, adults shown a video of an infant startled by a jack-in-the-box were more likely to presume the baby was “angry” if they were first told the child was male. Mothers of young children have repeatedly been found to talk more to their girls and to employ a broader, richer emotional vocabulary with them; with their sons, again, they tend to linger on anger. As for fathers, they speak with less emotional nuance than mothers regardless of their child’s sex. Despite that, according to Judy Y. Chu, a human-biology lecturer at Stanford who conducted a study of boys from pre-K through first grade, little boys have a keen understanding of emotions and a desire for close relationships. But by age 5 or 6, they’ve learned to knock that stuff off, at least in public: to disconnect from feelings of weakness, reject friendships with girls (or take them underground, outside of school), and become more hierarchical in their behavior.“

I’m not going to get into the topic of my own father (that’s another post in this series for sure) too deeply but I will say I completely identify with these ideas. Emotional distance, only expressing anger, telling me having emotions was weak. This was reinforced societal norms throughout my youth through today. Don’t talk about your problems or feelings. Ball them up inside. Wall yourself off from the world. Connections = weakness that others will exploit. You must control every situation and hold power over others. FUCK. THIS. SHIT.

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So when did I wake up? When did I start to see through this shit in some way? When my younger sister was born. It was really obvious to me that she was treated in a different way and expectations of her as a girl/woman were not the same as the expectations others had for me. Mostly I just saw the negatives in this. It took me time (and lots of communication and experiences with my partner and others) to recognize the root of this was more fucked up socialization. 

“Girlfriends, mothers, and in some cases sisters were the most common confidants of the boys I met. While it’s wonderful to know they have someone to talk to—and I’m sure mothers, in particular, savor the role—teaching boys that women are responsible for emotional labor, for processing men’s emotional lives in ways that would be emasculating for them to do themselves, comes at a price for both sexes. Among other things, that dependence can leave men unable to identify or express their own emotions, and ill-equipped to form caring, lasting adult relationships.”

Read this carefully. Nobody is responsible for your emotional well being but you. If you are a male/man this is especially true - females/women are not responsible for managing your emotions and your reliance on them to take care of this is a form of abuse. They are not responsible for your emotions. YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR YOUR OWN EMOTIONS.

It can be really hard to see this. It was a blind spot for me for way too long. Don’t let it be one for you. Connecting with and taking responsibility for your emotions is one of the biggest things you can do to improve yourself as a human being. If you are sad you can cry. If you are happy you can laugh. You have a wide range of emotions and they don’t all lead to frustration or anger.

“As someone who, by virtue of my sex, has always had permission to weep, I didn’t initially understand this. Only after multiple interviews did I realize that when boys confided in me about crying—or, even more so, when they teared up right in front of me—they were taking a risk, trusting me with something private and precious: evidence of vulnerability, or a desire for it.“

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Okay so putting aside all of the reinforcement we get from our parents and institutions and our lack of emotional vulnerability why do we all buy into this dumb shit? Who convinced us all this is what masculinity is? And why do we listen?

“What the longtime sportswriter Robert Lipsyte calls “jock culture” (or what the boys I talked with more often referred to as “bro culture”) is the dark underbelly of male-dominated enclaves, whether or not they formally involve athletics: all-boys’ schools, fraternity houses, Wall Street, Silicon Valley, Hollywood, the military. Even as such groups promote bonding, even as they preach honor, pride, and integrity, they tend to condition young men to treat anyone who is not “on the team” as the enemy (the only women who ordinarily make the cut are blood relatives— bros before hos!), justifying any hostility toward them. Loyalty is paramount, and masculinity is habitually established through misogynist language and homophobia.”

Sounds familiar right guys? Don’t kid yourself. This is what being a man looks like in almost all situations in which we feel “safe” to express our self right? You are either with us or against us. Anything different or anyone questioning this behavior must be “othered” as they are clearly not “on the team”. FUCK. THIS. SHIT.

This was my entire experience as a youth. As someone who did not fit into this group (nor wanted to) I was immediately “othered” and deemed a “pussy” or “fag” or “homo” or “weirdo”. My friend group reflected this - mostly others who also were “not on the team” like women, gays and lesbians, and men who also did not identify with this version of masculinity. Which just made it easier to group us all together and identify us as the enemy. 

“Just because some young men now draw the line at referring to someone who is openly gay as a fag doesn’t mean, by the way, that gay men (or men with traits that read as gay) are suddenly safe. If anything, the gay guys I met were more conscious of the rules of manhood than their straight peers were. They had to be—and because of that, they were like spies in the house of hypermasculinity.” Without the ability to connect with and express my emotions I often reacted in anger. I started fights. I got violent (with words and writing mostly). I returned this “othering” and treated them all as the enemy. I had other reasons for this (being abused by men as a boy) but at the crux of the issue I had no trust for men. This helped me connect with women and my gay friends as they also experienced this distrust in similar (and different) ways. 

Years later I found myself in a job where I managed a group of men (100 or more at any time) working as a team (video game industry) and totally unable to connect with any of them as a human let alone a man. It was at this time that I realized this was a problem beyond my own experiences and when I started to understand my own participation in this system. 

I tried to question things as they came up. I tried to hear my teammates and help them navigate this murky sea of masculinity to find their own place in it. Most people didn’t want to participate. They learned to keep their mouth shut if I was within earshot of their typical “bro talk”. They learned to act differently around me so as not to incur my wrath (using my anger and position of power to punish them for being sexist, racist, or intolerant). I felt powerful and I tricked myself into thinking I was making a difference. I was wrong. 

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“Recently, Pascoe turned her attention to no homo, a phrase that gained traction in the 1990s. She sifted through more than 1,000 tweets, primarily by young men, that included the phrase. Most were expressing a positive emotion, sometimes as innocuous as “I love chocolate ice cream, #nohomo” or “I loved the movie The Day After Tomorrow, #nohomo.” “A lot of times they were saying things like ‘I miss you’ to a friend or ‘We should hang out soon,’ ” she said. “Just normal expressions of joy or connection.” No homo is a form of inoculation against insults from other guys, Pascoe concluded, a “shield that allows boys to be fully human.”

It wasn’t long before my “making a difference” spread into our hiring, training, and management of the team. I brought in women who wanted to work in the game industry. I tried to shut down any of the bro culture bullshit that came up and used it as an opportunity to teach other men why it was fucked up. It worked for some (maybe 5-6 people out of hundreds) but the majority either quit or tried to get me fired. Most did not change their behavior in any way. 

The women said they knew what they were getting into. I don’t believe they knew what it was like to actually be in the middle of the situation. I assume women in the military probably have a lot of experience like this. In short - it’s fucking toxic and disgusting. Like other males/men they too have to fall in line and “become one of the boys” or risk being antagonized and ostracized for being “different”. It’s Lord of the Flies. It’s fucking mob mentality. It’s masculinity at it’s absolute worst. And this was in a “progressive” creative city working for a small company with a woman CEO. Men simply don’t give a fuck and it’s almost always easier to go with the flow. FUCK. THIS. SHIT.

My first experience with a trans individual in a work setting occurred was while I was managing this team. One of our long term employees made the transition and I had to watch how they were treated by the “bros’. Jokes were made, memes were shared, snickering and fucked up behavior was rampant. I had to talk to, discipline, and fire many individuals. These were men I thought were “on the team” and working to be good examples of masculinity. I should have known that was just part of the act - their way of surviving and showing subservience to me as a man in a position of power over them. My trust was further eroded in masculinity. 

Putting yourself over others is not power. It is dehumanization and it stems from hate. We can be different without being better or worse than someone else regardless of who they are. Not everything has to be a competition. It took me way too long to undo the damage done to me by these ideal of toxic masculinity. You can do it too - you just have to start today. 

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Beyond the negative effects this version of masculinity has on us as males/men it also fucks up our interaction with women and sexual partners and it’s certainly done so to me. I’m actively working on unfucking my fucking and aware that many of my heterosexual ideals of sex stem from the same shit I have been actively fighting against most of my life. Connecting emotionally with your sexual partner takes things to a completely different level.

“It’s not like I imagined boys would gush about making sweet, sweet love to the ladies, but why was their language so weaponized ? The answer, I came to believe, was that locker-room talk isn’t about sex at all, which is why guys were ashamed to discuss it openly with me. The (often clearly exaggerated) stories boys tell are really about power: using aggression toward women to connect and to validate one another as heterosexual, or to claim top spots in the adolescent sexual hierarchy. Dismissing that as “banter” denies the ways that language can desensitize—abrade boys’ ability to see girls as people deserving of respect and dignity in sexual encounters.”  

This is the first thing that comes to my mind when I hear the term “rape culture”. As men we are taught that to be masculine is to claim “wins” in sexual conquest. Sex is property and we can collect it. Even if it’s with our long term partners or spouses. Ever tried talking to men about this? Ever questioned others on how it’s fucked up? You probably heard about how it’s all in jest. Just a joke! I’m just joking!  “When called out, boys typically claim that they thought they were just being “funny.” And in a way that makes sense—when left unexamined, such “humor” may seem like an extension of the gross-out comedy of childhood. Little boys are famous for their fart jokes, booger jokes, poop jokes. It’s how they test boundaries, understand the human body, gain a little cred among their peers. But, as can happen with sports, their glee in that can both enable and camouflage sexism. The boy who, at age 10, asks his friends the difference between a dead baby and a bowling ball may or may not find it equally uproarious, at 16, to share what a woman and a bowling ball have in common (you can Google it). He may or may not post ever-escalating “jokes” about women, or African Americans, or homosexuals, or disabled people on a group Snapchat. He may or may not send “funny” texts to friends about “girls who need to be raped,” or think it’s hysterical to surprise a buddy with a meme in which a woman is being gagged by a penis, her mascara mixed with her tears. He may or may not, at 18, scrawl the names of his hookups on a wall in his all-male dorm, as part of a year-long competition to see who can “pull” the most. Perfectly nice, bright, polite boys I interviewed had done one or another of these things.”

Let me be clear in case you are confused. This shit isn’t funny. Laughing at other people’s misfortune is a long standing human tradition yes - and it still dehumanizes everyone involved. That doesn’t make me laugh but maybe you are still amused? Why?

“At the most disturbing end of the continuum, “funny” and “hilarious” become a defense against charges of sexual harassment or assault. To cite just one example, a boy from Steubenville, Ohio, was captured on video joking about the repeated violation of an unconscious girl at a party by a couple of high-school football players. “She is so raped,” he said, laughing. “They raped her quicker than Mike Tyson.” When someone off camera suggested that rape wasn’t funny, he retorted, “It isn’t funny—it’s hilarious!”

The classic toxic masculinity force field present in my life has been the “just joking” phrase with the ultimate no consequence phrase “it’s hilarious!”. Say something you don’t want to manage the consequences for? Just a joke! People still question you or your morals after saying some heinous shit? No.. it’s cool... it’s hilarious! You just gotta laugh! FUCK. THIS. SHIT.

“Hilarious” is another way, under the pretext of horseplay or group bonding, that boys learn to disregard others’ feelings as well as their own. “Hilarious” is a haven, offering distance when something is inappropriate, confusing, depressing, unnerving, or horrifying; when something defies boys’ ethics. It allows them to subvert a more compassionate response that could be read as unmasculine—and makes sexism and misogyny feel transgressive rather than supportive of an age-old status quo. Boys may know when something is wrong; they may even know that true manhood—or maybe just common decency—compels them to speak up. Yet, too often, they fear that if they do, they’ll be marginalized or, worse, themselves become the target of derision from other boys. Masculinity, then, becomes not only about what boys do say, but about what they don’t—or won’t, or can’t—say, even when they wish they could. The psychologists Dan Kindlon and Michael Thompson, the authors of Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys, have pointed out that silence in the face of cruelty or sexism is how too many boys become men. 

I feel like I may have already gone too far into this dark hole of shit that fucks me up around toxic masculinity. I hope I didn’t lose you. I hope you have questions and thoughts about how this impacts your life. Perhaps ways that you make a change today to fight against this bullshit. You may be asking yourself “what can we do!?” At the end of the day its up to males/men to change this culture. It’s not about self-hate or self-abuse. We gotta name this and own it. We need more men to step up and say ‘It doesn’t have to be like this”. Our collective mental health requires us to be more flexible and connected to ourselves and emotions. We need to find ways to deal with our anger, frustration, and desires in ways that don’t hurt ourselves and others. We need to teach ourselves (especially youth) that it isn’t enough to only talk about things we shouldn’t (and hopefully won’t) do. 

If this shit fucks you too you can do something about it. Start with yourself. Question these things when they come up. And not only when you feel “safe” to do so. Do it consistently in ways that are non-confrontational (they will probably lead to confrontations with most men anyway - sorry). Be okay with not always “winning’ in these situations. You’ll be surprised who you might connect with in the process. Hopefully one of those people will be yourself. 

Why Octavia E Butler’s novels are so relevant today

It’s campaign season in the US, and a charismatic dark horse is running with the slogan ‘make America great again’. According to his opponent, he’s a demagogue; a rabble-rouser; a hypocrite. When his supporters form mobs and burn people to death, he condemns their violence “in such mild language that his people are free to hear what they want to hear”. He accuses, without grounds, whole groups of people of being rapists and drug dealers. How much of this rhetoric he actually believes and how much he spouts “just because he knows the value of dividing in order to conquer and to rule” is at once debatable, and increasingly beside the point, as he strives to return the country to a “simpler” bygone era that never actually existed.

More like this:

-        The 1968 novel that predicted today

-        The fiction that predicted space travel

-        The story of cannibalism that came true

You might think he sounds familiar – but the character in question is Texas Senator Andrew Steele Jarret, the fictional presidential candidate who storms to victory in a dystopian science-fiction novel titled Parable of the Talents. Written by Octavia E Butler, it was published in 1998, two decades before the inauguration of the 45th President of the United States.

Like much of her writing, Butler’s book was a warning about where the US and humanity in general might be heading. In some respects, we’ve beaten her to it: a sequel to 1993’s Parable of the Sower, Parable of the Talents is set in what is still the future, 2032. While its vision is extreme, there is plenty that feels within the bounds of possibility: resources are increasingly scarce, the planet is boiling, religious fundamentalism is rife, the middle classes live in walled-off enclaves. The novel’s protagonist, a black woman like the author herself, fears that Jarret’s authoritarianism will only worsen matters.

Fourteen years after her early death, Butler’s reputation is soaring. Her predictions about the direction that US politics would take, and the slogan that would help speed it there, are certainly uncanny. But that wasn’t all she foresaw. She challenged traditional gender identity, telling a story about a pregnant man in Bloodchild and envisaging shape-shifting, sex-changing characters in Wild Seed. Her interest in hybridity and the adaptation of the human race, which she explored in her Xenogenesis trilogy, anticipated non-fiction works by the likes of Yuval Noah Harari. Concerns about topics including climate change and the pharmaceutical industry resonate even more powerfully now than when she wove them into her work.

And of course, by virtue of her gender and ethnicity, she was striving to smash genre assumptions about writers – and readers – so ingrained that in 1987, her publisher still insisted on putting two white women on the jacket of her novel Dawn, whose main character is black. She also helped reshape fantasy and sci-fi, bringing to them naturalism as well as characters like herself. And when she won the prestigious MacArthur ‘genius’ grant in 1995, it was a first for any science-fiction writer.

Octavia Estelle Butler was born on 22 June 1947. Her father, a shoeshiner, died when she was very young, and she was raised by her mother, a maid, in Pasadena, California. As an only child, Butler began entertaining herself by telling stories when she was just four. Later, tall for her age and painfully shy, growing up in an era of segregation and conformity, that same storytelling urge became an escape route. She read, too, hungrily and in spite of her dyslexia. Her mother – who herself had been allowed only a scant few years of schooling – took her to get a library card, and would bring back cast-off books from the homes she cleaned.

An alternate future

Through fiction, Butler learnt to imagine an alternate future to the drab-seeming life that was envisioned for her: wife, mother, secretary. “I fantasised living impossible, but interesting lives – magical lives in which I could fly like Superman, communicate with animals, control people’s minds”, she wrote in 1999. She was 12 when she discovered science fiction, the genre that would draw her most powerfully as a writer. “It appealed to me more, even, than fantasy because it required more thought, more research into things that fascinated me,” she explained. Even as a young girl, those sources of fascination ranged from botany and palaeontology to astronomy. She wasn’t a particularly good student, she said, but she was “an avid one”.

After high school, Butler went on to graduate from Pasadena City College with an Associates of Arts degree in 1968. Throughout the 1970s, she honed her craft as a writer, finding, through a class with the Screen Writers’ Guild Open Door Program, a mentor in sci-fi veteran Harlan Ellison, and then selling her first story while attending the Clarion Science Fiction Writer’s Workshop. Supporting herself variously as a dishwasher, telemarketer and inspector at a crisp factory, she would wake at 2am to write. After five years of rejection slips, she sold her first novel, Patternmaster, in 1975, and when it was published the following year, critics praised its well-built plot and refreshingly progressive heroine. It imagines a distant future in which humanity has evolved into three distinct genetic groups, the dominant one telepathic, and introduces themes of hierarchy and community that would come to define her work. It also spawned a series, with two more books, Mind of My Mind and Survivor, following before the decade’s end.

With the $1,750 advance that Survivor earnt her, Butler took a trip east to Maryland, the setting for a novel she wanted to write about a young black woman who travels back in time to the Deep South of 19th-Century America. Having lived her entire life on the West Coast, she travelled by cross-country bus, and it was during a three-hour wait at a bus station that she wrote the first and last chapters of what would become Kindred. It was published in 1979 and remains her best-known book.

The 1980s would bring a string of awards, including two Hugos, the science-fiction awards first established in 1953. They also saw the publication of her Xenogenesis trilogy, which was spurred by talk of ‘winnable nuclear war’ during the arms race, and probes the idea that humanity’s hierarchical nature is a fatal flaw.The books also respond to debates about human genetic engineering and captive breeding programs for endangered species.

In her author photos, Butler appears a serious woman with an exceptionally penetrating gaze. At a talk she gave in Washington DC in 1991, later reported in the radical feminist periodical, Off Our Backs, she offered a fuller description of herself: “comfortably asocial – a hermit in the middle of Los Angeles – a pessimist if I’m not careful, a feminist, a black, a former Baptist, an oil-and-water combination of ambition, laziness, certainty and drive”.

That certainty and drive can be seen in papers from her archive, now housed at the Huntington Library. In 1998, some motivational notes written on the back of a ring-bound writing pad begin “I shall be a bestselling writer!” She goes on: “I will find the way to do this! So be it! See to it!” Elsewhere, she’s to be found urging herself to “tell stories filled with facts. Make people touch and taste and know. Make people feel! Feel! Feel!”

Butler died in 2006, following a fall near her home in Washington state. Though she had begun suffering from writer’s block and depression, caused in part by medication for her high blood pressure, she’d continued to teach, and in 2005, had been inducted into Chicago State University’s international black writers hall of fame. She published a novel that year, too, Fledgling, whose vampire heroine must avenge a vicious attack, and rebuild her life and family. By then, her books had been translated into 10 languages, selling more than 1 million copies altogether.

In the years since, her fanbase has only grown. It turns out that she didn’t invent the campaign slogan beloved by Trump. It was used by Ronald Reagan in his 1980 presidential campaign, and later by Bill Clinton, although later he described the phrase as a “racist dog whistle to white southerners”. Nevertheless, as Tarshia L Stanley, dean of the school of humanities, arts and sciences at St Catherine University, notes, when readers spotted during the 2016 US election that Butler had chosen the slogan for Jarret, it “jarred people into recognising that she’s been doing this work all along. She’d been trying to tell us that if we do not make changes, this is what’s going to happen. She constantly gave that message: this is the logical conclusion if we keep treading down this path. I think when people saw that phrase, it started a whole new group of people reading her work.”

Butler’s work is today the subject of fan fiction, television adaptations (there are at least two in the works), and lively attention on college campuses, where it’s read from perspectives as varied as critical race theory, Afrofuturism, black feminism, queer theory and disability studies. Stanley, who last year edited the essay collection Approaches to Teaching the Works of Octavia E Butler, is also president of a society dedicated to the author. Its membership is broad, she says, but the most gratifying surprise is how many young people Butler’s work is engaging. At the inaugural conference, there was even a panel of high-school kids.

What would Butler have made of the present political moment in the US? “I don’t think she would have been surprised”, Stanley says. She puts Butler’s ability to envisage our future down to a deep understanding of human nature – knowledge gained from having the role of outsider foisted on her in girlhood. This she backed up with research, reading journals including Scientific American, listening to lectures, travelling as far as the Amazon. For Stanley, the one lesson to take from Butler’s work is hope. “World building is huge in her canon, and so there is always hope that since we built this world, we can build another one.”

There’s a scene in Parable of the Sower when the best friend of heroine Lauren Olamina insists “Books aren’t going to save us”. Lauren replies: “Use your imagination,” telling her to search her family’s bookshelves for anything that might come in handy. “Any kind of survival information from encyclopedias, biographies, anything that helps you learn,” she goes on. "Even some fiction might be useful".

Butler’s novels are just that kind of fiction. The child who began writing as a means of escape, ended up crafting potent calls to socio-political action that seem ever more pertinent to our survival as a species.

Parable of the Sower, Parable of the Talents, and other books by Octavia Butler are published by Headline.

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Meet the Sisters Making Revolutionary Chocolate in Ghana

Priscilla and Kimberly Addison are using bean-to-bar chocolate to celebrate the heritage of their ancestral home—and shift the conversation around a controversial crop.

— By Shane Mitchell | MAY 14, 2021 | Saveur.Com

Food is more than what’s on the plate. This is Equal Portions, a series by editor-at-large Shane Mitchell, investigating bigger issues and activism in the food world, and how a few good eggs are working to make it better for everyone.

“African art and culture are at the forefront of what we do,” says Priscilla Addison. “We want Ghana to be known for its chocolate, not just its cocoa beans.” Along with her younger sister Kimberly, she founded ‘57 Chocolate in 2016, when they relocated to the capital city of Accra to be closer to their parents.

“Craft chocolate like ours gives you an experience rather than just something sweet to munch on,” says Kimberly, who left her tempering room still wearing a hairnet to join our overseas video call. “And we’re trying to alter the narrative. There’s been lots of stigma against ‘Made in Africa’ products. We want to change people’s perceptions and prove that high quality can come out of the continent.”

Starting a bean-to-bar chocolate business in Ghana wasn’t the sisters’ original career trajectory. Kimberly, 31, studied French and international relations with a concentration in social justice at Boston College; Priscilla, 33, majored in French and international development, with a focus on food security, at Dickinson College in Pennsylvania. Both were interested in non-profit sectors addressing women’s education, human trafficking, value chains, and agriculture. But then a visit to one of Switzerland’s largest chocolate factories inspired their venture into confectionery.

“Work brought me to Geneva, where our parents were living at the time,” says Kimberly. “And my dad talked to us about entrepreneurship, and the potentials of going back to our native country.”

“I remember telling him, okay, when you officially retire, we’ll move back to Ghana with you. About two weeks before leaving, a group of friends from church invited me on a chocolate factory tour. Part of the exhibition was a display showing where beans were sourced—Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire—and that was the aha! moment.”

Once they returned to their homeland, the sisters started small. Really small. Roasting raw cacao with a standard kitchen oven in their Accra home. (Craft chocolatiers use the term “cacao” for the unfermented pod and beans, and “cocoa” after the fruit has been processed.)

“At the time, we were using a hairdryer for winnowing,” says Kimberly, referring to the process of removing the outer chaff from the cacao. “Rolling pins for crushing beans. We had our tabletop grinder, and needed a bowl and a spatula for tempering. When it comes to chocolate making it’s kind of like an orchestra: Not one piece of equipment is the most important, because they all do their part.”

Priscilla chimes in. “And electricity! We were getting up at three in the morning to use the machines because, initially, when we moved to Ghana, the lights would go off quite frequently.”

Early in the 19th century, Portuguese colonists introduced cacao, a tropical fruit from the Americas, as a cash crop on the island of São Tomé in the Gulf of Guinea, a transit point for ships engaged in the Atlantic slave trade. But it was a Ghanian agriculturalist named Tetteh Quarshie who is credited with bringing the pods to mainland West Africa around 1876. The export of cacao from the Gold Coast began by 1893; today, Ghana and neighboring Côte d’Ivoire produce nearly two-thirds of the global cocoa bean supply, in an industry worth more than $100 billion in annual sales. Most of this crop is dedicated to commodity chocolate: candy bars produced by multinational corporations like Hershey and Mars. While the cacao being raised on small-plot farms in equatorial Ghana usually winds up on supermarket shelves in Europe and North America, many of these growers had never tasted a chocolate bar themselves.

That is, until Kimberly and Priscilla Addison came back.

“Straight from the bat, we went to farmers,” says Kimberly. “Obviously, we hadn’t lived in Ghana for some time, so we explored in the field, and that’s how we started sourcing.”

Priscilla adds, “When Kim and I visit the farms now, we always bring bars of chocolate so that our business partners know what their cocoa is being used for.”

Bite-sized pieces from ’57 Chocolate are stamped with Adinkra symbols, visual representations of philosophical ideas at the core of life in Ghana. Genevieve Leloup

The cacao grown for ’57 Chocolate is interplanted with plantain and coconut trees on two small family farms, each less than three acres, in the Eastern and Western regions. (Hints of coconut are decidedly present when a chunk of the sisters’ dark chocolate melts on your tongue.) The beans are sun-dried and fermented before arriving in Accra. Additional drying takes place at the ’57 Chocolate facility, which now employs 10 people in a larger production space, where the Addisons currently produce about 1,000 bars per week. Kimberly’s favorite is the dark chocolate bar with sea salt; Priscilla’s go-to is milk chocolate with almonds and sea salt, or sometimes the moringa-flavored white chocolate with toasted coconut. They also make bite-size pieces stamped with Adinkra symbols, visual representations of philosophical ideas at the core of life in Ghana. Duafe, a wooden comb, stands for femininity and beauty. Denkyem, the crocodile, represents cleverness. Aya, a fern, means independence; the ’57 in the company’s name refers to the year Ghana became a republic, breaking away from British colonial rule. The Addisons are also in the process of developing their own farm to build a stronger supply chain for Pan-African chocolate.

Knowing where your food comes from is a vital part of educated consumption, especially when it comes to chocolate. A forced-labor suit currently awaiting an opinion in the U.S. Supreme Court alleges two major American food conglomerates—Nestlé USA and Cargill—knowingly aided and abetted human rights violations for profit in the West African cocoa supply chain. The U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of International Labor Affairs estimates that up to 1.56 million children may be engaged in hazardous work on cacao farms in Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire alone. Some experts believe helping farmers out of poverty is a key part of the solution, and last year the two West African governments established a benchmark premium for cacao futures, intended to increase prices to enable growers to send their children to school rather than work in the fields. Big Chocolate doesn’t like the price hike, but which mass market or artisan candy bar makers want to be accused of child enslavement or other exploitative practices?

Accountability is a core value for the Addisons, along with other bean-to-bar makers practicing sustainable farming and direct trade ethics in Africa. Some include Beyond Good in Uganda and Madagascar, and MonChoco Artisan Chocolatier in Côte d’Ivoire. Kokoa Kamili collaborates with 2,000 small-hold farmers in the Kilombero Valley of Tanzania’s Morogoro Region to supply raw organic cacao to international bar makers like Original Beans.

We want to revive our country’s consciousness of taking natural resources and transforming them into finished products. So that’s exactly what we’re doing with the cacao bean, and we wanted to inspire the youth to continue to do the same.” — Priscilla Addison

“When we first arrived, there were a lot of European chocolates in stores here,” says Priscilla. “A lot of people thought those were superior. We want to revive our country’s consciousness of taking natural resources and transforming them into finished products. So that’s exactly what we’re doing with the cacao bean, and we wanted to inspire the youth to continue to do the same.”

One of their most compelling Adinkra chocolates is stamped with the Sankofa bird, its beak arched towards its tail feathers. This imagery is closely associated with the proverb: “Se wo were fi na wosankofa a yenkyi.” (It is not wrong to go back for that which you have forgotten.)

Or, for the Addison sisters, returning home to grow the future they envision.

story time: i went to a museum today about textile technology, and there was a seamstress who worked there as a volunteer (finishing the textile they crafted there on the old machines and stuff for the museum shop), and she saw how interested we were so she started to give us a little tour even though she wasn’t a guide

and she told us all this crazy stuff about what textile can do and how it supports us in so many more ways than you think at first, but what stayed with me most was this: so the city where this museum is, ghent, has two rivers and there were a lot of factories along these rivers (we’re talking about 18th-19th century btw), but sometimes the boats had to be pulled through the river via ropes and stuff from the land, over so called ‘trekwegen’, small roads on the riverbanks. and we were all like ‘oh yeah, we’ve heard of them, horses or other work animals used to pull the boats along these roads’, but no, apparantly WOMEN did that. and not just women, but PREGNANT WOMEN, like can you imagine??? they weren’t allowed to work in the factory when they got pregnant, but no work meant no money which meant no food for the 14 children you already had at home, so they went to pull these boats across the river, and only later they were replaced by horses

but like, i still can’t grasp this! i mean, nowadays pregnant women can’t even lift a box that’s too heavy or shouldn’t be lifting their bags full of groceries, and these women two centuries ago were pulling FUCKING BOATS WHILE THERE WAS A BABY IN THEIR BELLY!!! so i swear to god, if i see one more man even THINK that women are the ‘weaker’ sex, i’ll fucking punch these facts into his face

The Secret History of Women, Told in Earrings

LUCCA, Italy — Atop a rustic wooden table, hundreds of earrings sat in pairs — museum-worthy jewels, most from the 18th and 19th centuries — laid out in the sunroom of the converted church that Annette Klein shares with the famed Italian photographer Massimo Vitali.

“I’ve been arranging these all morning,” said Ms. Klein, waving a hand above the pieces she has been collecting since childhood.

Sorted by provenance, style and era, the display represents just a fraction of the more than 2,000 pairs of earrings that Ms. Klein possesses — a collection that she keeps in a local bank’s vault and that she had agreed, for the first time, to show a visitor. Each style, as Ms. Klein said, is a time capsule of fashion, setting and the state of the day.

Standing by the sunlit table, she began talking about pieces from late 18th century France, the turmoil of that era laid out in jewels: first, the ornate pendant styles known as girandole and pendeloque, with their stone-encrusted drops imitating the kind of flamboyant diamond earrings worn at Versailles; then, post-Revolution, the poissonières, a simple hoop style with a light smattering of stones, so named because they were said to be favored by fishermen’s wives — a working-class style for anti-royalist ears. (The earliest pieces in Ms. Klein’s collection are from 1750, a single pair of sailor’s hoops for men.)

Ms. Klein — whose ink-black hair and ink-black clothing set off the 1870 parure of pastel Delhi miniatures that she wore — circled the table and lovingly cradled her treasures in turn: the piqué earrings, gold details set into tortoiseshell drops, typical of the kind of jewelry made by 18th century Huguenots who were exiled from France and fled to England; the neoclassical portrait earrings that depicted women, with real jewels set into their enameled miniature likenesses; and early 19th century chandelier-style earrings, with hooks to attach them to wigs and foiled glass stones designed to dazzle in candlelight. 

There are messages in jewelry — sometimes explicit ones, said Ms. Klein, whose research makes her a kind of social historian via earrings.

She displayed what she called “a collector’s must”: Stuart crystals, whose faceted clear stones sat atop miniature carved skulls. They were a subtle royalist signal of support for the Stuart dynasty after the 1649 beheading of King Charles I of Britain and the rise of Oliver Cromwell. Then there were a pair known as “hands of love,” in mother-of-pearl, just one of many Victorian era styles in which the design or a particular combination of gems were meant to convey a message. A post-Victorian pair from 1910 proclaimed suffragist support, with the cause’s colors rendered in peridot, quartz and amethyst drops.

The materials used to make earrings also tell stories of society, commerce and aspirations. Ms. Klein carefully picked up a pair of 19th century Chinese imperial court jewels created with tian-tsui, an inlay technique using the kingfisher’s electric-blue feathers that was so popular it nearly drove the rare bird to extinction. And she effused over a straw-colored folkloric-looking set crocheted of horsehair (crocheting was a favorite past-time of housebound British women in the late 1800s). “I’m not interested in the bling-bling,” she said. “I’m interested in the history, in what the pieces tell me.”

There also were Grand Tour souvenirs from Venice: the baroque finials of the city’s architecture depicted in earrings of pumice paste that, Ms. Klein’s research disclosed, were passed off to unwitting visitors as the lava of Mount Vesuvius. And opposite on the table, London souvenir earrings in flashy mirrored glass from Vauxhall, one of the first 19th century factories to turn out affordable machine-made jewelry.

Ms. Klein, who is a native of Cologne, Germany, earned her doctorate in theater history, studying costumes and sets. Today she tracks the period and significance of jewels by studying paintings (“I see an artwork and can say if it’s 1820 or if it’s 1825 because of the jewelry and the fashion”) or investigating the jewelry entries in museum databases. And, she added, “reading, reading, reading,” including poring over favorite vintage titles like the 1934 “Il Costume Popolare in Italia” by Emma Calderini, which depicts regional dress and jewels around Italy.

“And I’ve been collecting since I was a child, so I’ve had a lot of time to learn,” she said, beaming as she uncovered a blue velvet jewelry box, its tufted rows holding 100 dainty little earrings without mates, which was her earliest collection. “My little orphans,” she called them, and a fat, silvery, one-eyed street cat who has adopted her home as his own slid smugly by her feet.

“I think I was born with a gene called ‘antique earrings’,” Ms. Klein said with a laugh.

She began collecting, Ms. Klein says she believes, perhaps at age 5, finding cheap single earrings on family outings to flea markets. Then an aunt gave her a jewelry box from America, with its drawers stuffed full of old costume pieces, and Ms. Klein declared her affection by wearing the entirety of her sparkly regalia on her Catholic school uniform — a crime of vanity promptly forbidden by the nuns. “I think that’s where it all started,” Ms. Klein said of her passion for jewelry.

The earring collection has remained her private obsession, even as she created an extensively detailed catalog of the pieces. But this year she began posting images of her earrings, paired with portraits, on Instagram.

Ms. Klein said she had yet to find another soul as fixated as she was on earrings but, she added, “Instagram was the first chance I had for recognition, and it went down like honey.” 

As the companion of a renowned artist, Ms. Klein has often found herself overshadowed, even when many publications wrote about the church that the pair have occupied since 2012. She directed its renovation and design, with interiors that blend antiques and contemporary furniture by Edra, a furniture company based in Pisa.

Ms. Klein’s office, in the former sacristy, has an 18th-century linen closet that holds her library; and, above the family heirloom table that serves as her desk, hang a dozen 19th-century paintings of unknown women. The portraits “are not precious, but they interest me,” she said. “They tell me something about how strict the women’s lives were, how miserable. It’s hard to find a portrait of a woman from the 19th century where she’s happy.”

Ms. Klein hopes, someday, to bring these women’s existences to light with an exhibition of her jewelry. “I want it to be strongly connected to women and to what the times meant to them,” she said. For now though, the collection, with all its intimate histories, remains under lock and key.

If you are in search of  small gold hoop earrings then please contact us and send your queries.

*Actual* AP U.S. History responses:

I have narrowed this down as much as I can, but here are some of my favorite answers to ever be given by poor, brain-dead AP students on the official exam (it's a lot to read but I promise you won't regret it) On the unity of the American Revolution: -Luckily they picked Washington who was not the biggest crayon in the box but was still a great leader -The Boston Tea Party was a public relations disaster -The snake showed all Americans that they had to join into one big orgasmm [sic] to be free -Not quite a melting pot, but a smorgisbord [sic] -We all seen this as an unjustice [sic] On the Reemergence of the Two-Party System: -As long as there are tests like this one, there will be prayer in schools -Hamilton once said, "the masses are asses" -At the dawn of time, God created light. He then proceeded to create night, day, and the Republicans; or so they thought -Andrew Jackson was the champion of the one suspender man -The opposing views fed the opposing views On the Post Civil War effect of technology on the Plains Indians: -Various spellings of buffalo: buffaloo, buffaloa, buffaleau, buffulu, buafflo, buffulaloe, there were dozens more but you get the idea -People were eager to leave Europe to avoid flesh-eating diseases. In France, children were eating from trash cans and living in cardboard boxes -Col. Custard did it in the prairie with a rifle -Technologically the Indians were deprived. There was at best one radio for an entire village. -In the 2nd half of the 19th century, the plains Indians were definitely affected because in that time period the Plains Indians were all dead -Many pesticides worked against the Indians, especially DDT -Along came hunters like Buffalo Bill who probably killed more buffaloes than Colonel Sanders did chickens -The only place for the Southerners to go was West, over the Alps -Indians needed more time to develop nuclear weapons like the whites had -No matter where the Indians moved and settled, the white man protruded -The purpose of the Moral [Morrill Act] was to prevent sex west of the Mississippi -Indians lived in reservoirs -Technology was foreign to the Native Americans. There ain't much use for a TV in a teepee On the Roaring 20's: -The car was so popular that it even led to unsatisfied wifes [sic] and women into using it as a means of escape -The Probation Movement actually caused more crime -The roaring 20s was when Elvis Presley came out with a song called "Hound Dog" -The 20s was an era of booze, boobs, and big bucks -Women were aroused by refrigerators -Neil Armstrong was a famous musisian [sic] -The Great Depression came in the 1920s and so people had nothing to eat. They would eat soap while watching TV. That's how soap operas got their nickname. -Films were racy and provocative and gave women a sexual identity denied in the past. This can be seen by the flashers (women who paraded in the city streets and would flash their private parts). Talk about roaring, these women were lions. -The 20s was like breast milk gone sour -Cars were whore houses on wheels On miscellaneous topics: -The Missouri Compromise involved some state. I'm not sure which- it's either Kentucky or Tennessee. -The U. S. Gov't sent Stalin to get Texas from Mexico -Germany's economy after the Treaty of Versailles was as impotent as Bob Dole without viagra -The U. S. main goal in WWI was to force the Germans to give us their supply of hot dogs, bratwurtz, and beer -The world was not safe for anyone except flappers after WWI -In the 60s, the 1st woman was appointed to the Supreme Court, Amelia Earhart -Women committed adultery and men had to put up with it -Women were getting screwed in more ways than one -Women burned their bras to show that they could support themselves -In the 60s the Harlem Renaissance gave openings to groups like Langston Hughes and ZZ Top -Death was a common setback for workers -Strikes gave coroners more work -The French lusted after the beaver -Christopher Columbus discovered America in 1492. Right? Wrong- I'm not sure when it was -The Spanish 3 Gs: God, gold, and glory. The French 3 Fs: furs, fish, and fucks -The Spanish spread diseases like smallpox and catholicism -Furs were to the French then as Beanie Babies are to some now -Maine would enter the Union as a free state; they did not use slaves on lobster boats -Women were encouraged to join the Army, throw up their hair, and show a little leg -Without women's suffrage, I would probably not be able to write this essay. I would be married, at home, taking care of my kids, and cooking my husband dinner. -During this time, Lespians [sic] came out of their nests -Women are social creatures, as evidenced by their tennis outings and book clubs -Factory machines were very dangerous. Women's big hair got caught in the machinery, leading to scalps of hair torn from heads, clothes ripped from bodies, and limbs on the floor

Breast Cancer – True Secrets of Understanding and Healing

A great deal of research has been devoted to the treatment of cancer in the last 60 years. High tech treatments are now being developed which can increase survival rates and reduce the terrible side effects of the highly toxic drugs and radiation which are the foundations of most medical cancer treatments. New surgical techniques including arthroscopic have greatly aided doctors in removing tumors. Indeed, medical science has every reason to be both proud and optimistic about the prospects of cancer treatment in the 21st Century.

But very little research has been done on the psychological causes of cancer. Why, for example, are certain cancers like breast, colon, and prostate cancer such epidemics in our society? This kind of research could not only help us to change the structures of our culture to greatly reduce the incidence of such diseases, it could give us a wealth of information on how to cure these afflictions. As a hypnotherapist who has specialized in accessing these underlying causes for 25 years of work with cancer patients I have discovered some important answers to this question.

Take breast cancer. According to recent research one out of every eight women will suffer breast cancer in her lifetime. 20 years ago that figure was one in ten. To describe this as a growing epidemic is a serious understatement. But it seems to me that not enough doctors and scientists are asking “why breast cancer?”

Let me illustrate this with a medical mystery from the past. In 19th century England, during the peak of the first industrial revolution, it is estimated that over 75% of deaths were attributed to a single disease: consumption. We now know that this epidemic was directly created by the acid-filled coal smoke that poured out of the chimneys of England’s factories and homes, combined with a virulent strain of tuberculosis which thrived in the cold damp climate, overcrowded tenements, and polluted air of England.

The prevalence of wool and coal dust in the filthy factories which employed children as young as six also contributed to this pandemic. Also contributing was an air of fatalism which dominated the collective consciousness of the time. Because everyone in this society saw the same thing all day long, the culture entered a kind of group hypnotic trance in which this kind of pandemic was seen as fate. It was simply assumed that most people died before forty of lung disease.

While doctors worked hard, and mostly in vain, to stem the tide of the epidemic with a number of treatments, very few had the foresight or the courage to challenge the social institutions which perpetuated this veritable holocaust. Nowadays it’s easy to point the finger at these ignorant doctors. We know that lungs are used for breathing, so we look at the stuff people were breathing in. A similarly pragmatic approach helped researchers determine the connection between lung cancer and smoking in the 1960’s. So what can we learn from these discoveries about the breast cancer epidemic of the late 20th and 21st Century?

To discover the meaning of this epidemic we need no advanced degree in biochemistry or oncology. We need simply to explore what breasts are used for, and study the way women’s breasts are being used in our culture. Obviously, the primary purpose of breasts is to feed babies. However a number of social changes over the last half century have led to a precipitous drop in breast feeding. These changes include women entering the work force in large numbers, replacement of breast feeding with infant formula, and the postponement or cancellation of child bearing by women who are career oriented. Like the industrial revolution of the 19th century, these changes have greatly improved many aspects of life, including giving women freedom to pursue many exciting goals outside of the home. I am no Taliban terrorist who would choose to roll back all the gains women have made in the last 60 years. But we have made these advances at the cost of an epidemic of breast cancer. And until now no one has been willing to see what we have created.

The research bears out this theory. Among the risk factors that predict higher rates of breast cancer we find some interesting statistics. If a woman waits till her thirties to have children, if she does not breast feed them, if she doesn’t have any children, all of these factors increase a woman’s statistical probability of getting breast cancer. Ask yourself this question: If you were a breast, and no one ever paid any attention to you, no one ever let you fulfill your purpose, what would you do?

Of course I don’t reveal these secrets unless I have an answer for them within the world of hypnotherapy. And there’s a simple answer here. While it is generally impossible to get my breast cancer clients into active breast feeding, I have found that it’s only necessary for the client to actively imagine themselves breastfeeding in order to stimulate breast tissue to repair itself. Some clients imagine the joy of breastfeeding their now grown children as infants through regression therapy. Some clients simply imagine breast feeding an inner child. Some clients are taught to hold a doll or stuffed animal and nurse it like a baby, sometimes using gentle massage on their breasts comparable to the squeezing associated with nursing. This produces pleasant tingling sensations within the breast which rapidly lead to a flow of healing hormones and blissful feelings throughout the body.

I am highly skeptical of overly simplistic theories about any disease process. So it’s important to keep in mind that only your breast knows what issues have led to its disease. Sometimes it is necessary to process feelings of loss, grief, or guilt that are associated with the client’s breasts. One client found her cancerous right breast was tired of “nursing” her emotionally immature husband, who always slept on her right side in bed. Another felt guilty about not nursing her children and needed to beg their forgiveness. One simple way to access the breast’s emotional baggage is to journey into the breast in a hypnotic state, or talk to the breast in hypnosis as if it were a person to find out what issues are haunting it. Notice that in both of these examples, the nurturing function of the breast was being twisted or neglected in some way.

The results? Stimulation of healthy circulation and activation of immune system activity within the breast as a result of all these processes have led to tumor reduction or elimination in a number of cases I have examined. Of course double blind studies in a hospital setting are still years away for this simple but effective treatment option, because there are no millions of dollars in profit to be made. So I recommend you do not wait for the medical industry to catch up with the obvious.

Remember all the doctors trying in vain to treat the consumptive patients of the 19th Century? Start creating the medicine of the future now…and let your doctor know what you are doing! Wherever possible, I encourage my clients to work closely with their oncologist. It seems to me that combining the methods described in this article with the latest in new medical treatments is the best formula for easy and complete recovery.

Source by David Quigley

from Home Solutions Forev https://homesolutionsforev.com/breast-cancer-true-secrets-of-understanding-and-healing/ via Home Solutions on WordPress from Home Solutions FOREV https://homesolutionsforev.tumblr.com/post/187173424890 via Tim Clymer on Wordpress

Breast Cancer – True Secrets of Understanding and Healing

A great deal of research has been devoted to the treatment of cancer in the last 60 years. High tech treatments are now being developed which can increase survival rates and reduce the terrible side effects of the highly toxic drugs and radiation which are the foundations of most medical cancer treatments. New surgical techniques including arthroscopic have greatly aided doctors in removing tumors. Indeed, medical science has every reason to be both proud and optimistic about the prospects of cancer treatment in the 21st Century.

But very little research has been done on the psychological causes of cancer. Why, for example, are certain cancers like breast, colon, and prostate cancer such epidemics in our society? This kind of research could not only help us to change the structures of our culture to greatly reduce the incidence of such diseases, it could give us a wealth of information on how to cure these afflictions. As a hypnotherapist who has specialized in accessing these underlying causes for 25 years of work with cancer patients I have discovered some important answers to this question.

Take breast cancer. According to recent research one out of every eight women will suffer breast cancer in her lifetime. 20 years ago that figure was one in ten. To describe this as a growing epidemic is a serious understatement. But it seems to me that not enough doctors and scientists are asking “why breast cancer?”

Let me illustrate this with a medical mystery from the past. In 19th century England, during the peak of the first industrial revolution, it is estimated that over 75% of deaths were attributed to a single disease: consumption. We now know that this epidemic was directly created by the acid-filled coal smoke that poured out of the chimneys of England’s factories and homes, combined with a virulent strain of tuberculosis which thrived in the cold damp climate, overcrowded tenements, and polluted air of England.

The prevalence of wool and coal dust in the filthy factories which employed children as young as six also contributed to this pandemic. Also contributing was an air of fatalism which dominated the collective consciousness of the time. Because everyone in this society saw the same thing all day long, the culture entered a kind of group hypnotic trance in which this kind of pandemic was seen as fate. It was simply assumed that most people died before forty of lung disease.

While doctors worked hard, and mostly in vain, to stem the tide of the epidemic with a number of treatments, very few had the foresight or the courage to challenge the social institutions which perpetuated this veritable holocaust. Nowadays it’s easy to point the finger at these ignorant doctors. We know that lungs are used for breathing, so we look at the stuff people were breathing in. A similarly pragmatic approach helped researchers determine the connection between lung cancer and smoking in the 1960’s. So what can we learn from these discoveries about the breast cancer epidemic of the late 20th and 21st Century?

To discover the meaning of this epidemic we need no advanced degree in biochemistry or oncology. We need simply to explore what breasts are used for, and study the way women’s breasts are being used in our culture. Obviously, the primary purpose of breasts is to feed babies. However a number of social changes over the last half century have led to a precipitous drop in breast feeding. These changes include women entering the work force in large numbers, replacement of breast feeding with infant formula, and the postponement or cancellation of child bearing by women who are career oriented. Like the industrial revolution of the 19th century, these changes have greatly improved many aspects of life, including giving women freedom to pursue many exciting goals outside of the home. I am no Taliban terrorist who would choose to roll back all the gains women have made in the last 60 years. But we have made these advances at the cost of an epidemic of breast cancer. And until now no one has been willing to see what we have created.

The research bears out this theory. Among the risk factors that predict higher rates of breast cancer we find some interesting statistics. If a woman waits till her thirties to have children, if she does not breast feed them, if she doesn’t have any children, all of these factors increase a woman’s statistical probability of getting breast cancer. Ask yourself this question: If you were a breast, and no one ever paid any attention to you, no one ever let you fulfill your purpose, what would you do?

Of course I don’t reveal these secrets unless I have an answer for them within the world of hypnotherapy. And there’s a simple answer here. While it is generally impossible to get my breast cancer clients into active breast feeding, I have found that it’s only necessary for the client to actively imagine themselves breastfeeding in order to stimulate breast tissue to repair itself. Some clients imagine the joy of breastfeeding their now grown children as infants through regression therapy. Some clients simply imagine breast feeding an inner child. Some clients are taught to hold a doll or stuffed animal and nurse it like a baby, sometimes using gentle massage on their breasts comparable to the squeezing associated with nursing. This produces pleasant tingling sensations within the breast which rapidly lead to a flow of healing hormones and blissful feelings throughout the body.

I am highly skeptical of overly simplistic theories about any disease process. So it’s important to keep in mind that only your breast knows what issues have led to its disease. Sometimes it is necessary to process feelings of loss, grief, or guilt that are associated with the client’s breasts. One client found her cancerous right breast was tired of “nursing” her emotionally immature husband, who always slept on her right side in bed. Another felt guilty about not nursing her children and needed to beg their forgiveness. One simple way to access the breast’s emotional baggage is to journey into the breast in a hypnotic state, or talk to the breast in hypnosis as if it were a person to find out what issues are haunting it. Notice that in both of these examples, the nurturing function of the breast was being twisted or neglected in some way.

The results? Stimulation of healthy circulation and activation of immune system activity within the breast as a result of all these processes have led to tumor reduction or elimination in a number of cases I have examined. Of course double blind studies in a hospital setting are still years away for this simple but effective treatment option, because there are no millions of dollars in profit to be made. So I recommend you do not wait for the medical industry to catch up with the obvious.

Remember all the doctors trying in vain to treat the consumptive patients of the 19th Century? Start creating the medicine of the future now…and let your doctor know what you are doing! Wherever possible, I encourage my clients to work closely with their oncologist. It seems to me that combining the methods described in this article with the latest in new medical treatments is the best formula for easy and complete recovery.

Source by David Quigley

from Home Solutions Forev https://homesolutionsforev.com/breast-cancer-true-secrets-of-understanding-and-healing/ via Home Solutions on WordPress

Part 1 Revealed – Dating, Love and Relationships

Why is finding a date, love and relationships so difficult?

In this Part 1 of our Dating Blog Post series we're going to discuss the difficulties faced when trying to find a date, love and relationships and the reasons behind it all.

Let me share a secret with you, dating is definitely not as simple as people make it out to be.

You are constantly running questions through your mind:

How am I ever going to find a date?

How to date?

How do I approach someone to ask them out on a date?

What do I say to them?

Then, Shock, Horror, they finally said yes!

What now?

What do I do on the first date?

Where do I take my date?

Does anybody have any date or dating ideas?

This is just the tip of the iceberg!

There can be tons of other hurdles in our path to dating and relationships.

What happens when I'm single and I want to date a single parent?

Is there a dating club for single parents?

How do I go about building a relationship with my partners' children?

These are just a few of the questions single parents’ battle with!

Wait, there’s even more!

What about Love?

How do I find love?

How do I love myself?

You’d better hang on to that thought because it’s an important one!

Fact is you have to love yourself in order to have the self-confidence to ask someone on a date!

We’ll talk more about this later.

In addition to this, what about relationships?

How do I start a relationship?

Will I ever get to be in a permanent relationship?

How and where do I meet girls, guys and new people to start a relationship with?

How do I find my life partner, a perfect match for me?

How do I flirt?

Worst of all, am I forever going to remain single?

Am I ever going to find my girlfriend, boyfriend or soulmate?

Has this ever happened to you?

Don’t worry, I’ve got you covered!

Quick Note:

Fact is you have to love yourself in order to have the self-confidence to ask someone on a date!

The difficulty in approaching and asking someone on a date explained.

Why is it so difficult to approach someone and simply ask them on a date?

What's holding us back?

In order to answer this, we need to take a closer look at history and the history of dating itself.

Believe it or not, dating is a brand new concept to mankind.

Hundreds of years ago you didn’t ask someone out on a date!

You simply traded or bought a wife.

Failing this you raided the neighboring village, made off with the women and Voila, you have a new partner, problem solved.

(That’s to say if you haven’t been killed by the other tribe I have to add).

Let’s fast forward to the 19th century.

People have become more civilized.

However true dating as we know it was still an unknown concept!

What has changed is the following:

Marriage was the ultimate outcome of any courtship.

Before you could start courting, the meeting of potential partners was arranged by the parents of both parties.

Long drawn out negotiations were entered into.

Marriage was a business transaction.

Love never entered into the equation.

The ultimate goal for both parties was to improve their status in life.

Back in those days, the financial and political gain to families and even nations were the two biggest driving forces behind the union of husband and wife.

Let’s jump ahead to the Industrial Revolution.

The Industrial Revolution caused an upheaval in many areas, including dating, relationships, love and marriage.

Women entered the workforce with many becoming factory workers.

Young people moved away from the parental home to work in the bigger cities and industrial towns.

The strict supervision by parents and matriarchs started to fall to the wayside.

Young people in general and more specific woman started becoming more independent.

Because young people were away from their normal family and social structure they were also lonely and started reaching out in areas previously unfamiliar to them.

Quick Note:

Believe it or not, dating is a brand new concept to mankind.

The start of WW1 signaled one of the biggest changes to dating and relationships.

All of a sudden it was now acceptable for women to attend functions unsupervised.

Dancing with complete strangers was not frowned upon, it was even encouraged.

Transport, both public and private was more readily available.

Men and woman were not bound by the parental home anymore.

Going to a dance, the movies, the beach and other public entertainment became common.

WW1 was when actual DATING as we know it first emerged.

Soon dating became a status symbol, the more dates you had, the more popular you were.

By 1945 dating, socializing and “going steady” was quite the norm in Western society.

From the above its crystal clear given the long history of mankind, dating itself is actually a brand new concept in our social development.

No wonder we still struggle to get involved in a relationship, go on a date and maybe find true love.

2 Dating truths that hasn't changed

Guess what, sadly since 1945 a couple of truths haven’t changed.

One, the concept of an arranged marriage is still prevalent among quite a lot of cultures so you are assured of finding a partner at least.

Two, there are still countless lonely people on this planet hoping and trying to find a date or get involved in a relationship.

Fun Fact: In 1956, £1 was the average cost of a first date in the UK.

This amount would have included two movie tickets, a meal, chocolates and bus fare.

In the next blog, we’re going to explore this further and reveal the single biggest thing holding us back in our dating journey.

Who knows, a first date, love and a relationship might be waiting just around the corner.

We just need to know how to best go about it.

To sum it up, in this blog series I’m going to reveal the answers to all your dating questions in more detail.

Best of all, I’m going to provide you with excellent resources which have been proven to work.

This will jump-start your dating journey so you can get into a meaningful relationship soonest.

The best way not to miss out on this valuable and free information is to simply subscribe to my YouTube channel!

You can do so by watching the video below and simply Subscribe.

In this way, you’ll be the first to know when a new video and blog is uploaded.

Moreover, I’d love to hear from you in the comment section below.

Don’t forget to Subscribe, Like and Comment on the video.

See you in the next blog post!

Quick Note:

Fun Fact: In 1956, £1 was the average cost of a first date in the UK.

Watch the video here...

The post Part 1 Revealed – Dating, Love and Relationships appeared first on My blog.

Bell, Genevieve, Blythe, M. & Sengers, P. 2005. “Making by Making Strange: Defamiliarization and the Design of Domestic Technologies”. In ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction. 12. 149-173. (my Notes)

My Notes:

What are the new terms in this text? How are they defined? Where do they come from?

In this paper, we argue that “defamiliarization” is a useful tool for creating space for critical reflection and thereby for opening up new possibilities for the design of domestic technologies. The challenge for researchers and designers is to see beyond the naturalizing of devices and experiences to their cultural roots. Online shopping - they might now shop for their weekly groceries without leaving the house or talking to anyone.

Critical approaches to technology design are therefore of both practical and political importance in the home.

To study the home is to focus on a great many areas of human life and to focus on what might seem relatively insignificant. What is glass for? What are the affordances of glass? “Glass is for seeing through and for breaking”. In this way Norman makes glass strange (glass is for breaking!), he defamiliarizes, the familiar. Defamiliarization is explicitly not a scientific method.

The American home forms a cultural anchor for much contemporary domestic technology design. They did not give the precise instructions we are used to today, but used approximate ingredients and measurements, intended to be interpreted by a housewife with a lifelong experience in cooking. The equipment of the kitchen began to change in the late 19th century, when women were introduced to the wonders of factory-made gadgets like apple peelers, which helped replace servants who were simultaneously leaving the home to work in factories. From factory farming to the microwave, the growth and preparation of food have become faster, more standardized, and more convenient.

Women saved time by buying prepared, to reach consumers directly, the concept of branding developed began to impact numerous aspects of everyday home life.

The UK- In the micro-public of the home, particularly in the relatively small domestic spaces in England, we know too much about each other. Since the mid-1990s, graduates have been warned that the “job for life” is a thing of the past and to expect frequent re-locations and periods of unemployment is normal. The society has become more and more or less and less social. Men do laundry and ironing, and they spend more than twice as much time washing up, tidying and looking after children. The only area where women do more household work than men is home improvement and decorating.

The connotations of the two styles of razor are rooted in common cultural representations of masculinity and femininity. Up until recently irons, food processors, refrigerators, and washing machines, like women’s shavers were rarely presented in the blacks and silvers of TVs, HIFIs, and DVDs.

Asia- more than 45% of Chinese households and more than 35% of Indian households are urban and the numbers are growing. The living rooms of Indian middle-class homes are a centre of social-life, a place and space where people chatter, hang-out, gossip and be together. Elsewhere in Malaysia, the latest generation of mobile phones allows their users to find Mecca, via a “m-qiblat” service; here the phone does cultural work almost unimaginable in a western context.

the impact of China’s One Child policy has been to amplify the sense of responsibility that children feel to succeed.

Designing Strange Homes:

Focusing exclusively on efficiency unnecessarily limits the design space. Domestic technologies often trade one kind of task for another (cleaning for chopping in the case of the food processor).

A Food Individualizer would be a hand-held device with a small screen that could be used to scan and display the data associated with a particular piece of food.

The target of domestic technology design is often not the user, but the consumer. We believe that users should be in control of their own activity.

Communities can support households, but they can also interfere with them.

Designers have an opportunity to alter these built-in gender assumptions and thereby support different patterns of behaviour.

Western technology design often focuses on ‘the user’ – a single individual. Non-Western contexts make clear that the unit of design should not always be the user, but can also be the household or larger, extended family units.

Porn and sex have been the most frequent internet search terms since the web became widely available. Pornography is frequently at the cutting edge of technology.

For many people, religion is a serious and central part of everyday life.

Defamiliarization is not tremendously difficult to achieve and most of us have done it before. Another is to ask the children to imagine that they themselves are from Mars and are seeing our world for the very first time.

Who are the authors? Where do they work? Who do they refer to?

Genevieve Bell, Mark Blythe & Phoebe Sengers

Research in the United States, the United Kingdom and Asia.

How does it affect your design practice? What applications do you see in your practice?

Always be aware of other countries and other cultures. You can learn a lot from them.

Vocabulary

Unexamined – ungeprüft

Propagated – propagiert

Defamiliarization – Verfremdung

Impoverishment – Verarmung

Assumptions – Annahme, Voraussetzung, Übernahme

Why You Need To Invest In A Panama Hat

http://fashion-trendin.com/why-you-need-to-invest-in-a-panama-hat/

Why You Need To Invest In A Panama Hat

With the warmer months of summer comes the need to dress cool. Lightweight cottons, linens, lairy Hawaiian shirts, swim shorts, deck shoes and espadrilles suddenly appear on city streets and seaside boardwalks.

But finding an individual style to lift you above the sartorial herd can be hard. The answer, sometimes, is a hat. Although, too often they’re an afterthought and sadly mostly look that way too. Shapeless floppy sun hats, tired old baseball caps and straw trilbies put paid to any thoughts of a stylish summer.

Luckily there is one that saves the day. The Panama hat brings an elegant boost to any summer outfit, however casual or formal. It adds a sense of real style to those sunny days, providing not only protection from the sun’s rays, but also an additional something – a welcome eccentricity, perhaps.

The Panama has been around for a long time, but how do you wear it without looking like an extra from Downton Abbey? Where did it originate and can it really be a warm-weather essential in a casual world where sportswear reigns supreme?

Selecting And Wearing A Panama Hat

Here’s a question: what do Benedict Cumberbatch, David Beckham, Mick Jagger, Anthony Hopkins, Paul Newman, Gregory Peck, Fred Astaire, Winston Churchill and JFK all have in common? The answer of course is that all have worn a Panama hat.

Mick Jagger, 1973

Until a few years ago hats were effectively dead. Few men wore them. Yet from the 19th century to the 1950s it was rare to be seen out without one. A fur felt fedora or homburg for autumn and winter and a straw Panama hat for spring and summer would be part of every man’s wardrobe. Now they are returning to popularity as men realise how a well-chosen hat can add style and personality to a look.

The traditional Panama is a fedora-style hat shaped with a central dent in the crown which is pinched at the front, with a variable width brim and made from creamy toquilla straw. But they vary in style and must be chosen carefully to suit your face shape.

Prince Charles during the British Royal Tour of Australia, 1994

A good hatter will help you choose a style and decide on quality and a colour to suit you. Sophie Dallison of Laird Hatters says, “When someone walks in looking for a Panama – we would usually ask if they are buying with an occasion in mind, whether they are looking for a traditional bleached white/black ribbon combo or a natural straw colour. A tan Panama tends to look more casual but you can easily dress it up with a suit.”

A good option is the racing trilby shape, says Dallison, “which sits between a trilby and a fedora in terms of brim width, and it looks fantastic on men and women alike.”

David Byrne of Talking Heads, 1982

How To Wear A Panama Hat

Does Your Face Fit?

Horses for courses is the rule here. Not all hats for all face shapes. Personal stylist, Sarah Gilfillan of Sartoria Lab often buys hats with her clients and advises, “A larger brim will suit a large man with a round face and a smaller brim will suit someone of a smaller stature.

Massimo Dutti

“If you have a round or square face select a hat with a lighter coloured, or narrower hat band. This makes the hat appear taller which will add some length to your face shape, so it won’t appear squashed by your hat”. Try on a few different styles and get used to wearing him.

Look Beyond The Classic

Many hatters offer styles beyond the classic cream coloured fedora style, which can carry a whiff of the drunken cricket fan. If you prefer a less restrained look, go for a hat with colour and less traditional shapes, such as a trilby (with narrower brim and high crown). Wear something that will offer a fresher look in terms of shapes and colours.

M&Co

Allon Zloof of Tom Smarte likes to find variations on the classic roots of the design of his hats, playing with both colour and shape. “Traditionally, the Panama hat was always made in the classic wide brim fedora hat shape in a natural colour with a black ribbon”. However, brands are starting to design hats “in not just the classic natural fedora [shape] but also in the trilby and pork pie styles in a combination of colours and more contemporary ribbons”.

Go For Quality

So the Panama can be found in all manner of shapes and colours, but what about quality? Zloof says: “There are different grades of Panama hat, which differ according to the fineness of the weave. The tighter, narrower weave is much lighter and more flexible, but requires much more time and work to create, which results in a higher cost”.

Simons

A good quality hat will, when properly looked after, last much longer than the cheaper alternative, so the investment will pay off eventually. A high quality rollable hat can be more easily stored for travel, too.

Wear The Hat, Don’t Let It Wear You

The great thing about the Panama hat is that most can be worn with anything. It will embrace both a sophisticated Riviera style with a linen suit and cream buckskin shoes as well as a very casual beach look complete with swim shorts and Hawaiian shirt. Whether you’re at The Derby or Glyndebourne, a beach wedding or a summer festival, a barbecue or a city pub, there is a style to fit you. The world is your oyster in a Panama.

How you wear it makes a difference though. Place it flat on your head for a conservative look, or throw it on at an angle for a jaunty look – but go carefully; you don’t want to look as if you’ve over-imbibed at the beach bar. Above all, wear it with confidence and purpose, like you’re not giving it a second thought.

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Fit For Purpose

Like any item of clothing, a Panama hat will look best when it fits properly – which in turn ensures it’s not going to blow off with the faintest of breezes. The hat should fit comfortably without you having to jam it on your head to make it stay put. On the other hand, it shouldn’t move around or feel as if it’s too loose, either.

“I see too many men picking up a hat that is too large or too small for them, usually because the range of hat sizes offered on the high street is too narrow,” says Zloof. “Take a tape measure, find out what head size you are and then choose your hat accordingly.”

Simons

5 Key Brands For Panama Hats

Pachacuti

The combination of its sumptuous jacquard silk band – made in Devon – with the fine llano weave make for a fedora that is refined and sophisticated. It’s handwoven by skilled fair trade producers from Carludovica Palmata with straw grown near the coast of Ecuador. A high quality rollable panama hat at a fair price, wear it to Henley, Glyndebourne, the Derby or Wimbledon or with shorts to the beach.

Buy Now: £145.00

Tom Smarte

This is hand-crafted in Tom Smarte’s UK workshop using the finest weave from the Ecuadorian toquilla plant. Lightweight, yet sturdy, it features a centre dent, a high pinched crown and an accentuated brim at the front for optimal balance between sun protection and style. Such quality deserves to be worn with a cream linen suit to a sophisticated summer event, but with board shorts on the beach at Fistral will do fine.

Buy Now: £350.00

Laird Hatters

This straw fedora is a fantastic summertime hat and offers something a little different. Lightweight and airy, it is perfect for the warmer months and is made from seagrass, giving it plenty of characterful texture. Made in the UK, it’s suitable for a day-to-day wear or a casual event – slightly more relaxed in style, it’s one for that Hawaiian shirt, although it would go equally well with a linen blazer and chinos.

Buy Now: £75.00

Christy’s

Christy’s is one of the few brands that has a hat factory in the UK. It imports its Panama hat hoods directly from Ecuador before they are shaped, blocked and finished by hand in the UK to the highest traditional standards. The cross weave offers a hat that’s slightly different, perhaps a little more casual, although it would be ideal for a beach wedding or summer party.

Buy Now: £159.20

Marks & Spencer

Not strictly a Panama hat, this offers an affordable alternative to those on a budget or who tend to leave their hats on trains or accidentally sit on them. This hand woven straw hat is lightweight, allowing plenty of airflow to keep you cool in the sun. Matched with some sunglasses and a T-shirt, it makes a perfect addition to your casual wardrobe.

Buy Now: £25.00

The History Of The Panama Hat

Although often mistakenly called a straw hat, the Panama itself is misnamed, as the genuine article originates in Ecuador rather than Panama.

Mark Rogers of Pachacuti, who works with Ecuadorian women to make hats ethically and sustainably, explains, “The Panama hat should be called the Ecuadorian hat as it originates from Ecuador, but it was first traded out to the world from Panama during the 19th century, consequently given the the misnomer. The hats are hand-woven by artisans from the toquilla straw (carludovica palmata) which grows in the coastal region of Ecuador. It’s hats woven from this fibre that are traditional Panama hats.”

Paul Newman on-set of the film ‘The Long, Hot Summer’, 1958

Dallison of Laird Hatters agrees about the origins of the true Panama and adds, “You can judge the quality of a Panama by its weave, its colour and the quality of the blocking. The weave is a determining factor – the finer the weave is, the more expensive the hat will be. Montecristi is famously known for its fine weave, with party-trick ability to roll and fit in a wedding ring. That being said there is no standardised grading system – it’s down to each producer to grade its range so, a word to the wise, be wary of Montecristi hats being offered at lower prices”.

American novelist Winston Churchill in New York City, 1916

And exactly how is a Panama made? It’s a predominantly handmade object, as Rogers explains, “First the leaves of the toquilla plant are harvested and boiled to remove the chlorophyll and then dried. The grass is then passed into the weaver’s hands, who will then split the long leaves into smaller and thinner fibres depending on the quality of hat they wish to weave. The weaver then begins the laborious process of weaving the hat which can take anywhere from a day for a standard weave sun hat to 3-4 days for a fine rollable hat. Hats like our incredibly fine connoisseur hats can take weeks to weave.”

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Written by Alana Clifton-Cunningham, The Conversation

Alana Clifton-Cunningham is a lecturer in Fashion and Textile Design, University of Technology Sydney. The views expressed in this commentary are solely those of the writer. CNN is showcasing the work of The Conversation, a collaboration between journalists and academics to provide news analysis and commentary. The content is produced solely by The Conversation.

Underpants. We tend not to talk about them but they are a fact of life (unless you go commando). Briefs have a fascinating history and are now being transformed by technology, with high-performance undies that claim to do everything from filtering flatulence to emitting soothing vibrations.

An 18th dynasty wall painting from the tomb of Nebamun in Thebes shows an Egyptian charioteer wearing a loincloth. Credit: Hulton Archive/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

The first type of underpant was the loincloth worn by ancient Egyptians. Known as a schenti, it was made from woven materials, commonly cotton and flax, kept in place with a belt. The lower classes and slaves were almost naked, so technically this loincloth was often “outerwear.” But Egyptian art from 1189 BC to 1077 BC in the Valley of the Queens shows pharaohs wearing sheer outer garments, rendering the loincloth a type of underpant.

In Europe, during the Middle Ages (500-1500 AD), underwear consisted of a shirt made of fine linen or cotton for both men and women. A form of underpant returned during the 15th and 16th centuries, when men’s leg-hose were bifurcated (split in two).

To provide extra protection for the male genitalia, a padded codpiece was added. The codpiece also served as a symbol of sexual energy, designed to enhance rather than conceal the genital area.

The unseen history of underwear

The arrival of drawers

In the early to mid 19th century, both men and women wore bifurcated drawers with separate legs — a loose type of knee-length trousers suspended from the waist. This simple style of underpant made relieving oneself more manageable, especially if several layers of petticoats or breeches were worn.

Shirt and long johns worn by Emperor Napoleon I on St. Helena island. The shirt is stained with blood. Napoleon wore it at the very end of his life. Both pieces are embroidered with the imperial initials. Credit: Photo 12

Closed crotched underpants for women (pantalettes) emerged in the mid to late 19th century. In 1882, dress reformer Dr. Gustave Jaeger argued that wearing natural woolen fibers next to the skin would help disperse bodily poisons by allowing the skin to breathe. He also felt the elasticized qualities of knitted garments were more likely to promote exercise.

Also in the 19th century, the popularity of long-legged trousers for men led to a change in men’s underpants, with hose (long johns) extending to the ankle. These were made of silk for the wealthy and flannel, or later wool, for the masses.

A photograph from around 1915 shows four men wearing long underwear. Credit: Hulton Archive/Archive Photos/Getty Images

For women in the early 1900s, getting dressed involved multiple layers of undergarments including chemise and drawers followed by a constrictive corset. During the first world war more women undertook physical labor in factories, mines and farms, and thus needed utilitarian garments.

The silhouette of outerwear such as loose trousers and boiler suits paved the way for knickers, which women began wearing from around 1916. From the 1920s, the corset was gradually replaced by less restrictive elasticated versions such as the girdle and “step-ins” gradually replaced the corset.

Latex, a rubber yarn introduced in 1930, allowed stretch undergarments to become more figure-hugging. These eventually evolved into underpant styles similar to those worn today. In 1938, after the invention of the synthetic fiber nylon, lightweight easy-to-launder underwear started to appear.

Shorter, crotch-length underpants or trunks for men appeared after 1945. In 1959, a new man-made elastomeric fiber called Lycra was invented. Combined with cotton or nylon, it was strong, stretchable and recovered well. The result was more body-conscious underpants for men and women.

A line of underwear-clad draftees wait in line to check their clothes at an unidentified military facility in a 1944 photograph. Credit: FPG/Archive Photos/Getty Images

In the more permissive 1960s, underpants became briefer for both sexes and the Y-front was largely eliminated from men’s undies. By the 1970s, underpants were virtually seamless. (The thong, or G-string, I would argue, is hard to define as an underpant — its chief popularity seems to be that it offers wearers an invisible pant line.)

Undulating futures

With advancements in fiber technologies and knitting manufacturing, underpants today can be as unassuming as a pair of Aussie Bonds briefs, or high-tech with the inclusion of haptic communication.

For instance, Sydney-born, New York-based company Wearable-X has teamed with condom manufacturer Durex to create interactive underwear called Fundawear.

Fundawear has a “vibrating touch” that can be transferred from anywhere in the world through a smartphone app. The underwear contains actuators (which are similar to the devices that make smart phones vibrate). Couples wearing it converse via the app, transferring sensations to each other’s undergarments.

New York-based company Wearable-X has teamed with condom manufacturer Durex to create interactive underwear called Fundawear. Credit: © 2018, WEARABLE X.

Meanwhile, brands Modibodi and Thinx have developed reusable underpants for women menstruating or experiencing incontinence. Manufactured from bamboo, merino wool and microfiber fabrics, the breathable and moisture-wicking layers draw fluids away from the body, securing them in a waterproof outer layer.

The fabric technology allows the underpants to be rinsed in cold water, machine-washed and, once dry, ready for reuse. Since launching in 2014, Modibodi has become an Australian market leader for reusable period underwear.

UK brand Shreddies has even developed “flatulence-filtering” underwear for men and women using carbon-absorbing cloth. According to its website, the underwear uses “the same activated carbon material used in chemical warfare suits.” Which is good to know.

Medical underwear for postoperative and postnatal patients is also widely available in Western hospitals providing infection control and wound care.

Advances in material manufacturing, additive fabric coatings and body-centered smart textile applications have the ability to monitor patient physiological conditions and offer personalized care and direct user feedback to medical specialists.

Researchers at the University of California have developed a textile-based, printable electrochemical sensor, which has the capacity to be used for a variety of medical and safety applications. The flexible textile sensors, for example, when printed onto the elastic waistband of underpants, can recognize chemical substances secreting from the skin.

Science is adding functions to underwear that could scarcely have been envisaged 50 years ago. The loincloth has come a long way.

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