The single strangest reaction I’ve seen thus far to the devastation of Sandy comes from Laura Wood, the genteel bigot and feminism-hater who blogs as The Thinking Housewife. After looking through a gallery of photos on the Daily Mail showing some of the damage in New York city, Wood suggested that the real problem is that New Yorkers aren’t wearing cheerful enough clothing:
THESE Daily Mail photos of New York City after the hurricane remind me of just how ugly the streets of Manhattan are, with almost everyone dressed in drab, uninteresting clothes that rival the uniforms of Maoist China for their homogeneity and lifelessness. America is one of the most aesthetically impoverished nations in history. I wonder how many thousands of people are on medication because they are depressed by their own clothes and their ugly, hostile environments, surrounded as they are by impersonal denim, sneakers with tire treads, plastic-covered down jackets, billboards with oppressive smiles, and the austere, chilling cliffs of modern skyscrapers. This is the environment of a people that idolizes equality and sameness. The only way to survive amid such poverty is to possess an interior castle, a place of tapestries and mahogany where denim and sweat jackets are nowhere to be seen.
Just make sure this castle of yours isn’t reduced to rubble by 85 mile-an-hour winds and flying debris.
Speaking of New York, here’s an interesting (if a bit shaky) video of a walk through that city’s dark streets after the hurricane hit.
Oh, a squirrel once chewed through the corner of my brown bag lunch on a university campus, without me noticing until I tried to eat my lunch.
Sammiches should not come pre-chewed.
@Falconer
Holy coypu!
I was in Lower Manhattan yesterday. It was not depressing. Surreal, and familiar (I’ve been in a lot of disaster areas, fires, riots, earthquakes, windstorms, and now two hurricanes). Below 20th, there were no cops. There was no power. The restaurants, and some shops, were open; they were running on gas, candles, and cash.
Everyone was doing something, and almost everyone was cheerful. I found a new (to me) bookstore. I stopped in at work. I talked to the staff at the place I get my morning coffee. I was offered lunch twice. I had some cheese at Murray’s.
The same here in Jersey City. Lots of town is a disaster, people were working. People were helping their neighbors. The music store across the street (instruments, not records) called to let us know we had power. People with generators were letting anyone come up and charge things.
My boss teased me, “I didn’t recognise you in pants”. Because I’ve not worn anything but kilts to work since June.
That’s because I, like so many in/around, New York, am a boring person, who wears “drab” clothing, and is miserable because of it.
Or, yanno, not.
p.s. Kitteh’s: I’ll take 1580-1600 Britain, or the Regency, 1795-1810ish.
@Falconer – They were the cutest invasive species on campus 🙂
@Karalora – I’m totally stealing that – it’s my new catchphrase!
Bet she wouldn’t like Helsinki, either.
http://www.hel-looks.com/20120925_01/
It’s like she wants to live in a fantasy world, and complains when the real world fails to match up. The fact that it’s ridiculous or impossible for real life to match her fantasy is irrelevant. I mean, they do that stuff in movies, right?
Well, the myth that back in the day people believed baths were unhealthful seems alive and well here. That was never the case. It was just hard to take a bath without indoor plumbing.
In terms of how crappy things were back in the day, a few people hit the nail on the head. Most people didn’t have any changes of clothing. Toothbrushes were unheard of. Toiletpaper didn’t exist till almost the 1900’s and stones were used before then. Even among the wealthy, they used to roll up rose petals and stuff them up their noses just to tolerate large public gatherings of rich people in their (relatively) nice clothing.
But as far as how the upper crest was dressed back in the day; it was to the nines. Bowler hats, and corsets make for some pretty well dressed people. Don’t deny it.
Try reading Concepts of Cleanliness by Georges Vigarello before you prate about attitudes to bathing. Attitudes have varied but there were periods (the seventeenth century, for instance) when bathing was a medical treatment undertaken with caution and on doctor’s orders only. Cleanliness in that era was related to changing one’s linen. These attitudes changed slowly; the idea of cold baths being done for health came in during the eighteenth century and sea-bathing was popular in the nineteenth, but they were still matters of health, not cleanliness. These attitudes only changed during the nineteenth century and even then, that didn’t mean daily bathing was seen as a necessity.
Did you deliberately ignore my lengthy description of the difficulties of indoor bathing in nineteenth century middle- and upper-class houses?
“Toothbrushes were unheard of.”
Just what class are you talking about here, sonny? We’ve been talking about the middle and upper classes. Regardless, you’re talking nonsense. Toothbrushes existed as long ago as 1600 BC, in Africa – that’s proper bristle toothbrushes. They’re recorded being used Europe from the seventeenth century. They were being mass produced there from the 1780s. Mass production implies a market, as does the fact that the manufacturer became wealthy.
“Toiletpaper didn’t exist till almost the 1900′s and stones were used before then.”
Rubbish. Paper was recorded being used in China from the sixth century AD. Many materials have been used, from sand to plant matter to wool and lace, depending on the country and class one’s talking about. Modern toilet paper is credited as the invention of Joseph Gayetty in the US in 1857, which is hardly “almost the 1900s”.
Does Diogynes know anything about anything? So far every single thing I’ve seen him state as a fact has been wrong.
Yeah, I was starting to wonder if he has some weird dictionary that gives “cynic” as a synonym for “ignoramus”.
Well, I’m off for the night. There’s Inspector Morse to watch.
I probably won’t be online much for the next week-odd, my buddy’s arriving from the US tomorrow and we’ll be off doing Tourist Stuff. 🙂 Take care, all.
“Toiletpaper didn’t exist till almost the 1900′s and stones were used before then.”
That doesn’t even pass the common sense test. I think sometime between the actual stone age and 1900 someone would have looked at a leaf and a stone, done some experimenting, and from that time forward the human race would have never looked back. It’s such a great idea I’d be shocked if multiple people didn’t have it. When was the first Sears catalog published?
@kysokisaen
That’s the trouble with common sense, it’s frequently totally inaccurate. In the Middle East they used small stones. I guess they’d just never seen leaves.
Baths may have been uncommon, but “washing up” wasn’t.
I’ve gone a long time without shower or “bath”. From 29 Mar, to 26 Jun, 2003, I had one shower, on 12 Jun. I was with thousands of people in the same boat. We weren’t filthy.
We had soap, we had water. We bathed. I can wash “The Stink” off with a cup, maybe two, of water, and a bit of soap. Give me 3 liters and I could do my entire body, tip to top; including hair. Hair now would be a lot harder, because I have a lot more, but dust washing and a regimen of brushing will cope with that.
What is more difficult is to keep the smell down without soap. Soap didn’t become (in England at least) a common thing until the 17th century (and they mocked the Scots for using it). I suspect the much more common use of soap in Holland was carried over to the US by the Puritans; who also engaged in more common (weekly) baths, as well as daily “washing up”.
But those, “wash basins” in people’s rooms, weren’t just decorative. When you look at portraits and see clean shaven men, it’s certain that part of the regimen involved cleaning, because there is no way to shave a face without some form of cleanliness.
As to, “rose petals up the nose”… daft as a brush. Look up “pomander”.
Naï&f doesn’t begin to explain the stupid in that one.
In the middle east they used water, and their hands. It’s why they never offer, nor eat, with their left. In europe all sorts of things were used, same in the US. Corn-cobs were replaced with Sears & Roebuck.
Part of the reason for, “squat” toilets is they make it easier to clean one’s bum.
My University Campus is awash with ducks as well, at the centre of it is a huge artificial lake and there are more ducks, geese, swans, moorhens and the like than you can shake a stick at.
We have a pair of them that have adopted the accommodation block where I live and turn up every day and wait outside the front door to be fed. They actually tap on the glass with their beaks! It’s both adorable and kinda weird.
However all this means that there is an awful lot of duck and goose poo knocking around campus, And I mean A LOT.
So here in NYC we and people we know (and admittedly I know a pretty lumpen crowd) have gathered food where we can, set up portable grills or what have you to feed our communities without power to cook or keep food, some have handed out dry ice (I think Con-Ed) was even involved in that, and in two spots at least even GENERATED small amounts of electric power with rigged up bicycles (remember news stories last year when cops cut the power to Zuccotti Park during OWS? They’re those bikes.)…
Annnnd “Thinking” Housewife wrote a shallow article with classist overtones complaining we didn’t dress cheerfully enough to do it? Way to go down in the history of this disaster as a certified Asshole, ——— Housewife.
@The Kitteh
http://www.snopes.com/history/hoaxes/bathtub.asp
The topic here is Victorian era. I wrote my post to reflect that. Not gonna read the book you suggested because I’m behind in what I already want to read. My general knowledge of cleanliness comes from a book titled “The Good Old Days: They Weren’t So Good.”
I didn’t ignore what you wrote. I deliberately acknowledged it, in fact. Maybe if you didn’t selectively read you would have seen that. Its hard to bathe without indoor plumbing.
I’ll retract what I said about toothbrushes. They became popular 50 years before I thought they did.
But toiletpaper? I’m right about that. Maybe in your convoluted way of thinking, finding a single instance outside of what I said may make you right, but you would have to ignore a few things for it to make sense. I am not writing a dissertation, I’m making an argument deliberately based on a specific viewpoint, and that viewpoint is written from the perspective of a Western educated person. I’m not Chinese, and I would assume you’re not either. Heck, I know they made the Pythagorean theory first, but both of us still call it by the Greek name. I bet most Chinese do too. Our perspectives are entirely Western, and its goofy to presume otherwise.
@kyso
Which of us has read 2000 year old Aramaic texts dealing with this topic?
They used smooth stones. If anyone is missing common sense, it isn’t me.
@pecunium
Our college econ professor was the one who told us about the rose petals in the noses. I dunno, take it up with him if you don’t believe me.
And the whole left,right hand thing is post-Moammedian. What do you think they did before Mohammed?
If you read Aramaic, then I’m a unicorn. *gallops off to poop cupcakes and cry on cancer patients*
<blockquote Heck, I know they made the Pythagorean theory first, but both of us still call it by the Greek name. I bet most Chinese do too.
And you’d be wrong: http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%8B%BE%E8%82%A1%E5%AE%9A%E7%90%86
“勾股定理” Gou1gu3ding4li3 : :lit, “The Checking Distance Units Rule.”
Protip: Ethnocentrist assumptions of what other languages call anything: usually incorrect.
If you want to know something about history, you might want to consider asking a professor of history rather than a professor of economics.
I’m very amused that you’re now defining the period pre-Islam in the Middle East as modern. It doesn’t exactly line up with the Victorian period in the UK as far as the timeline goes.
Also, I wonder if you realize how many very unpleasant things you reveal about your worldview when you act as if things that happened in China can be waved away as not relevant to discussions of human history. I’m willing to believe that you’re that Eurocentric, but not everyone is, and not everyone here grew up in the EU or the Americas.
Doubtful. The Zend Avesta makes it clear that the left hand is for covering and touching the private parts, while the right hand is for touching food and most ritual objects.
http://www.avesta.org/ritual/rcc2.htm