Arzner’s films were sharply distinctive from her peers because of how she portrayed her female characters, relationships between women, and heterosexual relationships. In Christopher Strong (1936), Katherine Hepburn plays “an independent female pilot, as a woman over twenty-one who has never had a love affair.” who falls in love with the married and high-class Sir Christopher Strong. Towards the end of the film, Strong's wife Elaine appears to both acknowledge and forgive Cynthia for the affair, turning conventional views of female relationships on their head. Rather than pitting the women against each other, Arzner interrogates typical views of women and their relationships to each other by showing a genuine moment of connection between Cynthia and Elaine. However, her love affair with Christopher Strong is ultimately her undoing and she dies in a suicide plane crash, pregnant with his child.

source: https://www.womeninblog.com/

FLAPPER FANNY SAYS, by American cartoonist, Ethel Hays (1892-1989).

W.K. Haselden in the Daily Mirror, October 3, 1935

Vintage wind-up toy bear (USSR, 1920s-30s)

Vintage butterfly faires..

Recovery is slow going ❤️‍🩹 🦌📻

Illustrations from Aristophanes' Lysistrata by Norman Lindsay (1930)

Thylacines sunbathing at the Hobart Zoo By: Unknown photographer Unknown year

"most allegedly haunted houses turn out to have gas leaks!"

no they don't. you are merely skimming the surface of mundane shit that can be wrong with old houses with your one puny little explanation that only fits a very small number of cases. try harder

morocco by saravel, 1939.

ice cube perfume bottle!🧊

Daily News, New York, New York, June 14, 1931

Wet Veil, c. 1937

Photography: Erwin Blumenfeld

I'm so tired of cis people asking stuff like, "Why would Texas want a list of trans people who legally changed their names?" or "Why would Florida want a list of college students who have seeking gender affirming care? We can't figure it out."

It's eliminationist.

Ken Paxton wants a list of trans people who have changed their name in Texas so he can reverse all of those decisions (and that's the most charitable interpretation). Ron DeSantis wants a list of college students who have sought affirming care so he can force them to detransition.

Oklahoma introduced a bill to forcibly detransition people under the age of 21 (ironically doing what they accuse us of doing, forcing someone to live as the wrong gender). Texas has a new bill that will ban gender affirming care for every Texan of any age and makes it a felony for doctors to provide it. Multiple states either have passed or will pass bills that will ban legal name changes. Some states have slipped in language to anti-drag bills (which are horrific enough on their own) that ban anyone from displaying, presenting, or dressing outside their "biological" gender (one state has language about "DNA gender") in public.

It's about legally and morally mandating trans people out of existence.

Plain and simple. It's about making sure that trans people can not exist. Period. It's not about restrictions, or "think of the children!" It's about eliminating us from public life and then eliminating us from private life so that we have a choice of either die or conform.

When will y'all realize this isn't some wedge issue or a political football that they'll just give up on if they lose an election or two. These are ideologues who are singularly focused. They don't care about the marketplace of ideas. They don't give a shit if they get mocked on lefty Twitter and the late night shows. They only care about one thing: gaining and then wielding power to achieve their goal of eliminating trans people (and then gay people, and then women who don't conform to their gender standards, ect).

If you give them that power they will use it.

gotta add another noir variant to the gang

The Crimson Clown's Threat - art by John A. Coughlin (1931)

Few American writers and entertainers have managed to have careers as wild and scandalous as that of Mae West.

A vaudeville performer since childhood, she developed a distinctive sexy stage persona and signature sauntering walk that was inspired by the likes of Julian Eltinge and Bert Savoy.

In 1927, she opened her first play, Sex, which she both wrote and starred in. It centered around Margy, a high-end sex worker, and Clara, the stuck up society lady who was the mother of the man Margie falls in love with. Ticket sales were strong, but city officials were upset about the play's risqué content. West was eventually arrested, tried, and sentenced to ten days in jail for obscenity.

While incarcerated, she told reporters that she'd worn her silk panties in jail, instead of the "burlap" that was usually given to prisoners. The scandal of it all sent ticket sales through the roof.

Her next play was set to be even more controversial: it was called The Drag, and it had an entire cast of homosexuals. The end scene was a massive and spectacular drag ball. The show went for ten performances before it was shut down by police.

Police threatened to shut down all of Broadway if The Drag continued to be performed, so it was cancelled. However, a censored version with a now heterosexual protagonist called The Pleasure Man was allowed to perform a year later.

Eventually, West would make her way to Hollywood and become one of the most iconic stars of the 1930s.

In 2019, The Drag was performed for the first time in many decades at Gay City in Seattle, and has since then been performed several times across the U.S.