Getting friends in to musicals is hard because when they ask what it’s about you have to be like “15 year olds having sex” or “a plant from outer space that takes over the world” or “teenagers killing people for fun” or “Alexander Hamilton”
“7 minorities deal with crushing poverty and the looming specter of death by being a dick to their landlord”
“Sesame Street, but like… for adults”
“This one time in the 1830s a bunch of college students decided to fight the entire French government and…it didn’t go very well.”
“Argentinian gold digger teaches her country the joys of fascism.”
“Disfigured guy in the friendzone thinks his student owes him a relationship for teaching her how to sing.”
I legitimately think a good portion of the posts here are meant as humor, but the text receiver mistakes it as a serious thing. I don't think guys actually do this seriously. Right?
A couple weeks ago The Mary Sue announced they weren’t going to cover “Game of Thrones” any more after yet another female character being brutally raped. The thread is still being invaded by trolls periodically, and there are more than 12,000 comments on the article, which is a site record and probably an internet record. (12K comments because a single website said “We’re not going to recap or promote this show any more.” Baffling.)
Tons of trolls have thrown out the “but THINGS WERE JUST LIKE THAT BACK THEN!” argument ad nauseum. Which is total bullshit, of course. Now with the season finale of “Outlander” (which, spoiler, also included rape) the trolls are coming back.
I just want to ask, why is it whenever producers/directors/writers want to demonstrate “gritty historic realism” it’s ALWAYS RAPE? It’s always sexual violence toward women/girls.
You know what would be gritty historic realism? Dysentery. GoT has battles and armies marching all over the place. You want to show “what things were like back then”? Why aren’t we seeing 500 guys by the side of a road puking and shitting their guts out from drinking contaminated water while the rest of the army straggles along trying to keep going? Or a village getting wiped out by cholera? Or typhus, polio or plague epidemics?
You want to show what it was like back then for women? Show a woman dying of sepsis from an infection she caught while giving birth. Show a woman coping with ruptured ovarian cysts with nobody know what it is. Breast cancer that the audience will recognize immediately but the characters think is some mark of the devil or some shit.
But no, it’s always rape. And we all know why that is. Because these douchecanoes that do this, though they’ll deny it, think rape is sexy. Because they can’t make a modern set story where women get raped in every god damned episode without being called monsters. So they use “but but historical realism!” to cover their sexism (see “Mad Men”) and misogyny. Then they tell us “That’s just how it was back then!” with the clear implication “Shut the fuck up bitch, because that could be you and you should be thanking me that it’s not.”
Can we propose a rule for “realistic” historical fiction/fantasy? Twelve graphic cases of dysentery for every one graphic rape?
^^ I like this idea.
You know, they could deny that they find rape sexy, and they might even believe their own denials. But the point is that they clearly don’t think of rape as something distasteful enough and disgusting enough to omit.
And you know what, I’m not even gonna insist on the dysentery. Just this: if you’re going to include rape on the basis of historical accuracy, none of your female characters are allowed to have shaved legs or armpits. And all of your characters have to have terrible teeth – yellowed and worn and crooked, because nobody’s getting braces or regular visits to the dentist – with at least a few teeth blackened or missing for every character over the age of thirty.
Of course, if your reaction to blackened teeth and hairy armpits is “ugh, no, sure it might be historically accurate but it’s gross, nobody’s going to want to watch that" and you don’t have the exact same reaction to rape, you might want to think about why that is.
Not to mention that some of the societies portrayed, or inspiring similar fantasy settings, actually had STRONGER protections against and consequences for rape than the ones we live in today.
Accounts from Vikings’ contemporaries recount a lot of raiding, but not a single case of rape. Viking law didn’t treat rape as a property crime, and the penalty for it was outlawry, which was essentially a death sentence. Medieval English law prescribed that rapists be castrated and blinded. And the sagas contain vanishingly few references to rape (and violence against women is usually followed with comeuppance–often death–for the perpetrator).
TL;DR: History wasn’t one giant rape-fest, and in fact, members of the cultures high fantasy is usually based on may have actually been more disapproving of rape than we are today (imagine trying to pass a bill making rape a capital offense today!).
These writers include rape because they like writing about rape, not because history dictates it.
brief quibble: poor people in pre-industrial societies had much better teeth than poor people today, because they didn’t eat or drink refined sugars, only fruit sugars and the occasional bit of honey. european peasants would have crooked teeth, by hollywood standards, but by and large white and healthy teeth, even into old age. peasant girls would have had very nice smiles.
and very hairy armpits.
While we’re at it, can we expand this rule to every “gritty”, “realistic” fiction thing? Because post-apocalyptic fiction does this exact nonsense too.
“ohhh would you look at that, my pawns found jesus and now they’re all bishops”
“so i realize it looks like i’m putting a thimble on the board but actually my rooks have been using their downtime to build another rook, one that’s better, stronger, faster—”
“hey welcome back. while you left to get a snack, those six pieces you’d captured slipped their guards, tunneled to safety and emerged right in the middle of your royal palace.”
“oof, looks like you’ve got my king cornered…maybe this is a good time to mention that shortly before we started playing, my pawns and knights revolted and instituted a representative democracy. feel free to kill the puppet ruler that was the one remaining vestige of our tyranny, you cringing servant of the crown. vive la revolution!”
people will accept you saying the word they in the singular form up until they know you’re talking about someone who’s trans or nb or intersex. Like the number of times I’ve said they to my parents that I’m hanging out with someone and refer to them as them (I basically use it for most cases now) with them not raising an eye is incredible and I thought that they’d just accepted it.
But nah, I’m going out with my translady friend and I call them they and THAT’S when the jokes and the purposeful misunderstanding come in.
And I’ve seen this in dozens of other cases. So let’s be honest: opposition to they/them pronouns has shit to do with grammar. It’s entirely about policing people’s pronouns.
When I explain cultural misappropriation to children, I use the example of The Nightmare Before Christmas.
It’s effective because especially for children, who don’t have enough historical context to understand much of the concept, you can still fully grasp the idea.
There was nothing wrong with Jack seeing the beauty and differences in Christmas town, it’s when he tried to take what is unique about Christmas town away from those it originally belonged to without understanding the full context of Christmas things is when everything went wrong.
When Jack tries to get the folk of Halloween town to make Christmas gifts for children, etc., children understand that the Halloween town folk do not have the full context for the objects they are making, and they are able to see that the direct repercussions and consequences are very harmful.
what i like about this is the implication that if jack had taken the time to understand christmas town, bringing christmas to halloween town would not have been harmful. that’s how it works, folks. cultural sharing is GOOD, it’s only misappropriation when it’s done in ignorance and disrespect.
So it’s not just accidentally removing things form their context; he has intentionally disregard the meaning of the rituals he purports to be recreating, making them more fun for the recreaters but not like what the rituals are supposed to be and without the related significance.
This is the best way to conceptualize the wrong way to share culture I have ever seen and I think I finally get where people are coming from when they talk about “cultural appropriation.”
This is for all the unsung fic writers; the ones who don’t make the must-read lists, the ones who don’t get recced, the ones who don’t get hundreds of kudos, the rarepair writers out on the peripheries of fandom, the ones who toil away quietly for the handful of people who read and love them. You matter - you’re a writer too, and don’t you ever forget it. :)
Baby bird season is incoming and I’d like to remind everyone that birds do not have a significant sense of smell. Bird parents will not reject birdlets because you have handled them.
If you see smol birbs with few or no feathers on the ground, you can safely put them back into their nest, bird parents will still care for them.
If you see smol birbs with some or most feathers on the ground, please leave them there, as bird parents are probably nearby watching and feeding.
nakey bird = accidentally fell out, is cold and scared, put back in nest! if you can’t reach the nest, try to put it on a wide branch or fork so predators can’t get at it as easily.
scruffy feather bird = starting to try the fly thing, not very good at it. only put in nest/branch if predators abound, i.e. you have four outdoor cats and they’re licking their chops.
fluffy feather bird = smol fly guy! do nothing. can probably get away from predators and will flip its shit if you pick it up.
Reblogging this because I’d always heard the ‘Don’t touch a distressed bird its mom will reject it’ thing treated as fact before now, I didn’t realise it wasn’t true…
One addition: Birds of prey (even the tiny ones) do not hatch pink and naked, so if the bird is mostly fluffy with down, like a duckling, and does not have any “real feathers,” it is also helpless and needs to be returned to its nest or brought to a rehabilitator.
If you’re concerned about the safety of a fledgling bird, you can move it to cover (under a shrub or something). The parents will find it!
you can preach about slut-shaming all you want, but you can’t deny there’s something very wrong with 13 and 14-year old girls going out in skirts and dresses so short they barely cover their asses and shirts with necklines so low they show off cleave they haven’t got yet, drinking and even smoking and hooking up with guys before they even have a substantial knowledge of how sex and sexual relationships work.
my heart goes out to all the victims; the victims of the attacks on brussels, ankara, syria, paris and so many more places media doesn’t pay attention to, the people who will feel impact and so much islamphobia because of this, my heart goes out to the refugees who will get blamed
my biggest pet peeve wiht the english language is that you don’t have sin/sina
in swedish if u have two people who use the same pronoun u can always tell whos doing what bc its like ‘han tog sin väska’ (he took his[own] bag) and ‘han tog hans väska’ would be that he took the other persons bag
but in english its like if u have 2 ppl w/ the same pronoun:
“she took her bag” whose bag????WHose BAG was it her OWN bag or the other her’s bag??????????????
“he ate his donuts” were the donuts his own???? did he fucking eat someone elses donuts??? YIU DONT KNOW bc english is a bullshit language
its funny that people are calling this the gay fanfiction dilemma bc thats literally why i made this post. i was writing a gay fanfic.
Cat Cat Cat! Purim is coming up soon. Can you tell us the Purim story, with swears?
oh my god, is this my thing now. OKAY, fair warning, this one’s gonna be… real long.
OKAY SO LIKE. way back in the waybackwhen, we’ve been kicked outta judea for the… first? second? first time. (we got kicked out of israel/judea a… few times. we got kicked out of spain twice, we got kicked out of the netherlands three times, we got kicked out of france and bavaria five times, we got kicked out of mainz in particular four times
god bless the gentiles honestly they’re god’s appointed travel agency. ANYWAY)
so we’re in persia. and we’re under the rule of king ahasueare– king ahahasay– king ahasueueueueue-
KING AHASARARUARAUAEREASS, who is having a Party
and king ahdahahaah has a wife, vashti, who is among the hottest women in the whole country.
king aheshhh, who is quite drunk at this point, is like VASHTI. VASHTI I WANT YOU TO COME OUT AND HAVE FUN AT THIS PARTY. I WANT YOU TO COME OUT AND DANCE FOR US AND WEAR YOUR CROWN
vashti is like ughhhhhhhh FINE
king aaaaaaahhahaha is like …ONLY YOUR CROWN
vashti is like …not fine
so, because this is ancient persia and men are terrible, vashti is promptly divorced and king aughjesus decides to hold the Country’s Biggest Beauty Contest, where the Most Beautiful Women in Persia will all audition to be his wife!!! (I TOLD YOU MEN WERE TERRIBLE)
MEANWHILE haman, a smug motherfucker with a three-pointed hat, is a councillor for the king. haman, because ancient persia does not have any kind of government that could be labeled “sensible”, makes a law that says Everyone In This Country Must Bow Down To Me When I Pass, because Reasons.
BUT, guess who does not bow down to people, you guessed right, it is the jews. chiefly and specifically in this instance an equally smug (but much less powerful) motherfucker by the name of mordecai.
haman passes mordecai, is like “you don’t look like you’re bowing??? that is not a bow shape??? exPLAIN.” mordecai is like “r u god? i don’t think yr god? i think god would have better taste in hats? so”
so haman is plotting like a motherfucker, which he is, and mordecai is Mad Afraid, but there is no time for plotting or fear because guess what it’s beauty contest time, motherfuckers
and guess who mordecai has enrolled in it, it is HIS NIECE, ESTHER
esther is hotter than vashti, but, like, in a chiller way. in my head, samira wiley. (in my head, esther is a lesbian. in my head esther is my girlfriend. right. ANYWAY)
king ahooleyhoo immediately picks esther, as she is the Most Beautiful Woman In A Ten Thousand Mile Radius (as are all jews OBVIOUSLY), and she is taken up into the palace to be the most beautiful and powerful woman in a ten thousand mile radius. and she is also mad smart, so
meanwhile haman has finished his Plotting and has resulted in this: he is going to get revenge against mordecai by Killing All The Jews.
“oh yeah,” say the jews. “real original.”
mordecai goes, well, coincidentally, i happen to have a niece who is the queen of persia. and ollies over like ESTHER? ESTHER HAMAN IS PLOTTING TO KILL US ALL. ALL THE JEWS. DO SOMETHING
esther is like, i have a solution to this. the solution involves getting naked.
so she holds a banquet for her husband the king, and at the banquet is like WOW… GOSH… I’M VERY NAKED… AT THIS BEAUTIFUL BANQUET. WOULD YOU LIKE TO HAVE A LOT OF SEX AND GOOD FOOD, DARLING HUSBAND
darling husband is like fuck yes, gets drunk as shit. esther is like okay. yes. now that you are full of good food and heavily sexed up, can i have a thing. can that thing be that you vow to protect me from anyone who wants to kill me
…sure, says king aheshehaara. sg.
great, says esther. havin a banquet tomorrow night too. be there or be square
king ajldfghfdghk;dfghufgsdoi has no desire to be square, so he comes to the banquet tomorrow night to find that esther has also invited… HAMAN? “well,” he thinks to himself, “i have never pictured this threesome before, but y’know, life is a rich tapestry”
but eventually esther goes “ah okay remember that promise to protect me from anyone who would kill me. what if i told you. i knew a dude who would do that thing”
“I WOULD SUPER KILL THAT DUDE,” says king ahassafrass, who has exactly 2 problem-solving methods
“great,” says esther. “what if i told you… THIS IS THE DUDE.” AND SHE POINTS AT THE DUDE. WHO IS HAMAN. WHO IS AT THE TABLE!!!
!!!!! says king ahahahahhfewsse.
!!!!!! says esther.
¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡ says haman.
so esther REVEALS SHE IS A JEW! and that haman is implicitly PLOTTING TO KILL HER! (“i didn’t– I WAS NOT AWARE,” says haman. “WELL MAYBE YOU SHOULD HAVE FUCKING CHECKED THEN,” says esther. “OR WAIT. ANOTHER SOLUTION. IT’S DAWNING ON ME. AN EPIPHANY. YOU COULD NOT KILL PEOPLE”)
the king has haman hanged on the gallows on which he was planning to hang all the jews. and guess who is instituted as councillor in his place, that’s right, MORDECAI
who declares that the anniversary of Us Not Being Dead shall be celebrated every year forever with dressing up in costumes, and also that we shall eat little cookies shaped like haman’s hat, and also that whenever haman’s name is mentioned we will yell like hell
hey, says king aharseadslic. could, theoretically, this holiday include getting so drunk you can’t tell the difference between mordecai and haman
…i guess so, says mordecai
right, says king ahasuerus. carry on, haman
AND SO WE CONTINUE THESE TRADITIONS OF EATING COOKIES, WEARING COSTUMES, AND GETTIN SLOSHED, even SCATTERED ACROSS THE WORLD; and yes, i will be spending my thursday gettin drunk on my way to rome
so pour yrself a whiskey, put on a fake beard, and raise a glass: it’s purim 5776, and guess what, motherfuckers?
As an apartment dweller, this is a game changer. My current apartment doesn’t have a laundry facility and the closest Laundromat about a 30 min bus ride which is just not practical. The mini-washer is a life saver
The panda mini washer hooks up to the sink, is incredibly lightweight (about 28 pounds, so light even I can lift it) and easy to use.
It has a surprisingly large capacity. The basket from the first picture represents about one and a half loads. The jeans took up a whole load while the rest filled the bin only half way.
Here’s the inside. The left is the washer the right is the spin dryer. Yes, it even drys.
Basically you shove your cloths into the washer, fill it up with water and let it go. I use my shower head to fill it up so it goes faster, the sink hook up took about five minutes to fill the whole tub, with the shower head is is down to a minute an a half. I do it in three wash cycles, a five minute rinse with baking soda, a five minute wash with soap and a three minute rinse with water. You have to drain and refill between each cycle so it’s a little more labor intensive than a traditional washer.
That’s the spin dryer. It’s about half the capacity of the washer so one wash takes about two loads to dry. The spinner is much more effective than I was expecting. A three minute spin gets my cloths about 90% dry. I hang them up to air dry for that last 10%.
The machine cost me about 150$. When you factor in two dollars for the bus, five for the machines (per week), the mini-washer pays for its self after only about six months worth of laundry.
I’m not great at expressing emotion, but I’m hoping you can tell how excited I am. Let me just say that the panda mini-washer is great and I highly recommend it to anyone currently using a Laundromat.
Oh by the way, they have table top dishwashers that are pretty much the same thing:
This is one of the biggest technological breakthroughs for the everyday homeowner in the current decade: the realization that refrigerators aren’t the only things that can be miniaturized for better affordability and minimal space requirements.
Can you IMAGINE how this is going to change the lives of college students and apartment-dwellers? Or anyone with a lower income who can’t afford a place with “luxury” appliances like dishwashers and laundry machines?
They know they’re killing us. They have the numbers, they know we’re dying because of their cuts to disability spending.
They can say whatever they want, but they can’t claim they didn’t know.
They are killing us. They’re looking at the numbers of us dying because of their cuts, and they are introducing further cuts and further gatekeeping to prevent new applications from going through.
Don’t let anyone make you forget. They know they’re spilling our blood, and their response is to drive the knife in deeper.
“The UK has become the first country in the world to be placed under investigation by the United Nations for violating the human rights of people with disabilities amid fears that thousands may have died as a consequence of controversial welfare reforms and austerity-driven cuts to benefits and care budgets. - x
Thanks for adding a source!
If anyone has any other information on this, I’d love to see it. It’s something I plan to point out during my evaluations for work assistance, just in case they think I’m exaggerating when I tell them trying to hold a job would kill me.
Give me about an hour to get onto desktop and I’ll get stuff. What sort of stuff do you want? People’s stories + the shitty things the Tories are doing?
Definitely people’s stories. Knowing more in depth who’s being turned away would likely help. These people are seriously going to reevaluate me after last year deciding I’d last been fit for work in 1996, and I just don’t trust them at all. (I was 10 in 1996, btw.)
Sadly a lot of it will be bad. Another thing that happened was the much loathed “bedroom tax” which ended up hitting a lot of people with special requirements badly -I.e. one woman lost the reinforced panic room she got because her ex was violently stalking her and another lost their room of medical equipment because neither could afford the extra tax.
And that’s just scratching the surface. 20 minutes research got me all that stuff.
You know there’s probably a party staffer who’s said the words “Thankfully posts about the US election’s all that’s really coming up on tumblr” so I dunno fuck that hypothetical person HERE’S WHAT’S UP WITH US!
Oh god, and I thought the US was getting bad…
It’s barbaric. This is not what a great country looks like. This is a country that has failed its most vulnerable citizens. ~ Mulan
The former petrol station worker from Northampton said: “It’s impossible to predict how long I’ve got left, but it has always been terminal. I have never been in remission and I never will be. But for some reason they are saying I can go back to work. They are saying I am not disabled enough.”
Ms Windle has to have an injection every two weeks to stop her tumour growing and has an operation every three months to put a stent between her kidney and bladder.
“EVERYTHING THAT HAPPENS, STAYS HAPPENED.
“What kind of philosophy is that?”
THE ONLY ONE THAT WORKS.”—Death Terry Pratchett, Thief of Time (via snipejaeg)
I’m sorry if I’m afraid of you
or if days of flirting turn to
radio silence, without warning.
I’m sorry if I make you say the words
over and over and over until I believe them.
(I’m sorry if I don’t believe them.)
I will probably spend more time
worrying about losing you than I spend
trying to keep you. Trouble is,
every single time I’ve ever thought
something was too good to be true–
I’ve been right.
Understand,
I will know how to be vulnerable with you,
but I won’t know how not to regret it.
And I have no idea how deep we’ll be
into this relationship before I admit
I’ve never done this before.
Not really.
Not in any way that counts.
Before I admit that I know
how to put my body inside someone else’s
but not how to make it beautiful.
I probably won’t be easy to love.
Too many people loved me badly,
I’m not sure I know how
to do it right.”—TO WHOEVER LOVES ME NEXT by Ashe Vernon (via latenightcornerstore)
psA: APRIL IS COMING UP SOON PLEASE DONT BREAK UP W PEOPLE AS JOKES DONT ASK PEOPLE OUT AS JOKES IT FUCKIN SUCKS MAN JUST RICKROLL THEM OR DRAW A DICK ON THEIR FOREHEAD WHILE THEY ASLEEP
also no screamers, epileptic inducing images, or fake messages of “insert person here” has died today on april 1, 2015. Just be cool; not offensive or harmful, yah?
It’s so weird that Daisy Ridley is eyeballing that Lara Croft role in the Tomb Raider reboot, like, sure Star Wars was really big but you can’t just be a beloved space hero in one franchise and also be a big name as some kind of combat archeologist. Who’s ever doubled up like that?
this is eunotosaurus he is like turtle great great gr8 gr8 gr8 grandpa
him ribs big. then l8er u got later on there this dude who got big ribs 2
him name pappochelys we just found him
then those red things (they called gastralia) got real big n it make a plastron n u got the odontochelys
they got hard bellies n big ribs but shell doesn’t come for millions of years but then u got shell n u got proganochelys
he live with dinos he so lucky
shell happens to baby turtle because carapacial ridge goes over their shoulders instead of under wow
here is diagram of human and tortle skeleton after tortle has enslaved human and make him walk like dog for amusement
turtles might be cousins to either lepidosaurs (sneks, lizrds n tuatara) or archosaurs (crocs n birbs) but probably archosaurs turtles are probably related to birbs which is cool
i have a literal degree in zoology and my final capstone thesis was on turtle evolution and phylogeny so this isn’t misinfo buddy buster brown @vulpiximisa fear not
I read this post twice and realized that it is actually the perfect form of science communication for Tumblr. There is nothing factually inaccurate here, despite what you would usually expect of posts with similar syntax. Bless you.
The guy next to me in a coffee shop is
telling his date ‘You know you girls are all liars. Well, not all, but I’d say
80%. More than half.’
‘Girls think they have power over men by using sex as a bargaining chip and they don’t.‘
Now he’s telling her about a ‘psycho’
date he had who started telling him how ‘patronizing’ he was OUT OF NOWHERE
He’s a musician but he says he couldn’t date any of the ‘sheep’ who come to his gigs.
He’s been talking about himself literally nonstop since I sat down fifteen minutes ago. The scariest thing is the girl is listening actively, leaning forward, and smiling and giggling while I’m mentally screaming ‘Run, girl, run!’
Now he’s talking about gig he did for the troops in Afghanistan and how dangerous it was. ‘I could have been shot by a sniper at any second. But I was making people human. I was keeping them from going crazy. I was playing bass and crowd-surfing on my back. We were treated like ACDC. I had a prejudice about the military but you see the armed forces for what they are. They’re good people.’
He’s finally stopped telling her about the military and has gone back to covering every detail of his career. I still know absolutely nothing about his date.
Now he’s complaining about how bad the dancers were at one of his gigs (‘pathetic, ridiculous’).
Now he’s giving her a detailed history lesson on Greco-Turkish military conflict. I swear I’m not making any of this up.
Summary of the rest of the date:
Guy’s talking continues, relentless. Girl’s responses slowly growing more and more lackluster (unnoticed). Finally Guy gets up to use the bathroom. I casually say to Girl, ‘First date?’ A few seconds later, we’re recapping every obnoxious moment, literally holding onto each other, doubled over and gasping with laughter. ‘He hasn’t stopped talking since I sat down!’ ‘Oh my god, I’m so tired!’ ‘I mean, it’s your choice, but I wouldn’t go on a second date with that guy.’ More peals of laughter. ‘Oh my god, I’m so tired!’ ‘Not that I wanted to eavesdrop, but when he said all women were liars…’ ‘I know, right? I couldn’t believe it! I didn’t want to offend him, but…’ And so on. Finally: ‘Shh, here he comes.’
We straighten up and I pretend to be working on my laptop. Guy comes back to the table and they leave together. She waves at me behind his back.
If you’re on tumblr right this very second, you should know that even if times get rough you are still a fucking fantastic person and you deserve to have a great day.
Public Service Announcement: If you are not a virgin do not presume to wear a white wedding dress. It is an honor that is earned from chastity and virtue. Not a tradition for you to soil if you lacked the same.
what about anal? does it count
The idea that the white wedding dress is “an honor that is earned from chastity and virtue” is historically bullshit.
In the west the white wedding dress has it’s origins in the Victorian era, specifically in the white dress Queen Victoria wore in her marriage to Prince Albert. At the time, red was the most popular color for upper-class women to wear at their wedding, and her wedding dress was sort of the contemporary version of Lady Gaga wearing some outlandish outfit to a red carpet event. (She also eschewed the ermine and crown traditional for a queen to wear, which was quite startling to many people.)
After that, a pure white dress became a fashionable way for wealthy, upper-class women to show off their money. Because a pure white dress would quickly yellow and could be ruined by a single spill or a little dirt in an era before 20th century laundering techniques, a white wedding dress was a way of saying “that’s right bitches, I’m so rich I can afford to have this beautiful, elaborate gown made for me and I’m only going to wear it once. Plus odds are good I’ll never work a day in my life or come into contact with anything that might soil it so yeah, great to be me, right?”
Connotations of spiritual purity and eventually virginity only came years later, when the idea of a “white wedding” began to appear in etiquette and housekeeping guidebooks. Even then, it was more because these qualities were associated with upper-class women rather than because the white dress was an honor earned through keeping hands off one’s genitals. Even then, most women just wore their best church dress to their wedding for quite a while. It was the image of thew white wedding dress in post WWII Hollywood movies that finally cemented it as a standard and iconic part of the culture.
Nowadays of course, the American wedding is an orgy of conspicuous consumption, and every woman regardless of her financial situation is expected to get married in a dress she’ll never wear again.
tl;dr, that tradition you’re so keen on protecting has less to do with virginity than is does with showing off big wads of cash.
Poor people would traditionally wear their Sunday best to get married in. They were usually black, brown or other dark colours, because Sunday Best outfits had to last for years and be appropriate for all occasions, including funerals.
Reblogged for historical debunking
I’m always in favor of historical debunking that also gives the middle finger to Magical Virginity.
Hey op I love fucking and I’m gonna wear white to my wedding are you mad?
I love when Tumblr trashes troll bait with historical truth bombs. Also, having recently gotten married, I really wish we could go back to the “just wear your fave dress, k?” version of weddings. Because the pressure to spend thousands of dollars on a dress that you use once is horrible.
Interesting cause I always wanted to wear red to my wedding
