honestly one of my favorite things to do is find evidence of historical figures possibly being queer and then shove it in the face of homophobic historians bc i’m a petty bisexual ass. like look buddy if you’ve even read sappho’s poetry once you’ll see that she definitely liked women and hey even plato claimed that achilles was doin the diddle with a dude. alexander the great? more like alexander the gay cause he and hephaestion were def making out. sorry i don’t make the rules, your historical fave is gay
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
Benjamin Franklin helped to create Impeachment Clause of US Constitution. He realized that if a president were to “render himself obnoxious,” then people would logically consider assassination unless there was a legal way to get rid of the president.
Just obnoxious. Not treasonous or acting outside of the best interests of the American people. Just really really fucking annoying.
au where the trojan war is a party menelaus throws to win back his girlfriend who left him for some douchebag and he ropes all his friends into helping him and wacky shenanigans happen and a running gag is that odysseus doesn’t even want to be there he’s got shit to do and at the end he gets stuck in traffic on the way home
on the way home odysseus gets into a very minor fender bender that’s more like a fender bumper with some shit driver who is almost DEFINITELY high. and it’s all this guy’s fault but he won’t stop screaming about how he’s gonna fucking sue and odysseus just wants to go the fuck home and the guy goes “I’M FILING THE POLICE REPORT WHO ARE YOU” and odysseus is just so done that he says “nobody” and drives the fuck off and this completely tripping guy ends up screaming to the police at the side of the road at like three in the morning “NOBODY CRASHED INTO MY CAR!!!!!”
the funniest and best thing i’ve learned while doing research for this shakespeare project is that in the late 19th century, there was this group called the american acclimatization society and their thing was bringing european plants and animals to the u.s. so one member was this guy named eugene schieffelin and he was like obsessed with shakespeare, so he went, “hey, wouldn’t it be cool if we tracked down EVERY SPECIES OF BIRD SHAKESPEARE EVER MENTIONED and brought them ALL to America” so he rounded up like a hundred European starlings and released them in central park, and now there are upwards of 200 million starlings in North America and they cause around $1 billion worth of damage to crops every year, all because shakespeare mentioned them exactly ONCE in Henry IV part 1
And then like twenty years later, because New Yorkers apparently HADN’T LEARNED ANYTHING FROM THIS MISTAKE…
Some people decided that Stanley Park in Vancouver just wasn’t a fun enough park without some cool squirrel like those grey squirrels hanging around in Central Park, and SHIPPED US A BUNCH OF SQUIRRELS AS A PRESENT.
Which the people of Vancouver responded with ‘wow, great idea, thanks!’ and then released the squirrels.
The Eastern Grey Squirrel is now one of the most pervasive invasive species in BC, and has totally decimated the population of native red squirrels, both by out-competing them for food resources and EATING THEIR BABIES.
Fun fact: According to Greek legend there was a famous prostitute who managed to avoid a death sentence by showing the judges her boobs and arguing that it would be a crime against the Gods to destroy something so beautiful.
Before you ask, yes there are paintings of this. And yes, they’re amazing.
No, but this is one of my absolute favorite bits of history!
The courtesan named was named Phryne and she was indeed a renowned beauty, and was indeed was put on trial for a capital crime. And yes, the sum of her defense consisted of her stripping in court (helped by her lover/defendant) and asking the jury (all males) if they were prepared to destroy this.
But this is actually a very interesting case of Values Dissonance - the capital crime she was accused of was blasphemy. In Ancient Greek society, exceptional beauty was a sign of favor from the gods, and they took the idea that beauty indicated goodness with great seriousness. They even called their nobles Kaloi k'Agathoi, “the Beautiful and the Good.”
So by showing off her great physical beauty, Phryne was being very clever indeed, her argument essentially being “How could I possibly commit blasphemy if the gods have given me this body?“
Robert E. Lee himself refused to wear his confederate uniform after the confederacy’s defeat in the American civil war. At his funeral he was not buried in it and no one in attendance was permitted to wear theirs either. He also declared that his confederate battle flag (what we now call “the confederate flag”) never be raised again and that it was a flag of treason.
About 60 drawings and hieroglyphic inscriptions, dating back around 5,000 years, have been discovered at a site called Wadi Ameyra in Egypt’s Sinai Desert. Carved in stone they were created by mining expeditions sent out by early Egyptian pharaohs archaeologists say.
They reveal new information on the early pharaohs. For instance, one inscription the researchers found tells of a queen named Neith-Hotep who ruled Egypt 5,000 years ago as regent to a young pharaoh named Djer.
Archaeologists estimate that the earliest carvings at Wadi Ameyra date back around 5,200 years, while the most recent date to the reign of a pharaoh named Nebre, who ruled about 4,800 years ago. Read more.
