What I learned about today

[james_davis_nicoll]

The hatpin peril

Comments

[quirkytizzy.livejournal.com]

That's....*blinks*....wow. Kind of historical pinning of an issue that still runs today. (Pun totally intended.)

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

We threw out some really vicious hatpins when we cleaned out my mother's house.

[graydon saunders (from livejournal.com)]

Knew someone with a heirloom hatpin from grandma or great-grandma; it had -- for the tipward couple inches -- edges.

[harvey-rrit.livejournal.com]

Well, I'm with the suffragists as to the cause of the problem not being anything to do with some temptress exposing an ankle.

I know victim blaming goes back to before the works the Bible was plagiarized from, but GOD DAMN CAN'T WE MAKE IT STOP?

[editrx.livejournal.com]

I still have my mother's hairpins -- only damn way to keep on some of her more ingeniously artsy hats from the 40s. Which I would love to wear, but I'm in cow country these days.

[eub.livejournal.com]

“This is but another argument for votes for women and another painful illustration of the fact that men cannot discipline women,” argued the suffragist Harriot Stanton Blatch, a daughter of Elizabeth Cady Stanton. “Women need discipline; they need to be forced, if not led, out of their barbarisms, but women never have and never will submit to the discipline of men. Give women political power and the best among them will gradually train the uncivilized, just as the best among men have trained their sex.”

Well there's some hella-not-third-wave feminism there.

[londonkds.livejournal.com]

I once saw a museum tramcar in Brussels that had a sign ordering women to cap the ends of their hatpins.

[pameladean]

I'm not remotely persuaded that we live in some enlightened era where politicians as a class worry more about getting women's votes than about what we wear.

P.

[ravenskyewalker.livejournal.com]

Agreed. Plenty still believe that women shouldn't be allowed to vote, and there's always the "What were you wearing?" question in response to a sexual assault report. Enlightened? Bah, humbug.

[beamjockey.livejournal.com]

Just the other night we watched Luc Besson's film The Extraordinary Adventures of Adèle Blanc-Sec, a romp recommended by multiple correspondents here. It is set in the year 1911.

A deadly hatpin is involved in the tragic event that drives the plot.

(See also.)

[tool-of-satan.livejournal.com]