Thanksgiving 2020

Happy Thanksgiving to my American readers!

 

Image courtesy of this website.

Valentine's Day

Happy Valentine's Day to everyone and Happy Wedding Anniversary to my husband and I!

The Things We Lost

A couple of days ago I looked outside and saw two girls playing. Of course, there are always lots of kids playing outside in my neighbourhood yet something about them registered as strange in my mind. I looked again and realised what it was - both girls wore dresses, one in a bright peach colour, the other one white, and what is more, these were proper dresses with wide skirts and not some tight stretchy stuff.

Sure, little girls will often have dresses on, but those two were tweens. It brought back vague recollections from my childhood when it was considered quite normal for girls to dress like this in summer. I'm not that old, mind you, and yet it felt like a glimpse from a different world.

Yes, for the younger among us it's probably difficult to believe that there was a time when women and girls wore something else daily than boring denim uniforms. And in the current year...one gets shocked by seeing a girl in a bright dress...Sad, really. What do you think?

Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving to all my American friends!

1950s America

Just a couple of nostalgic ads before I leave:)

1940s America

The Church Of Equal?

Some folks say modern Evangelicals have problems with feminism. I'd say they probably have problems with more than that.

Christians usually stand in opposition to any class distinctions...

(Quote by an Evangelical author).

21 For three things the earth is disquieted, and for four which it cannot bear:

22For a servant when he reigneth; and a fool when he is filled with meat;

23For an odious woman when she is married; and an handmaid that is heir to her mistress.

I realise the verses are from the mean Testament, not from the nice one:)

(Since the lady author whom I quoted above no doubt, meant well, and it's a sister in faith I won't give her bad publicity and mention her name).

Does you church preach Jesus or social justice? 

The War On Femininity, Part 1: Like Grey Clouds In November Sky

Our church newspaper published a very wonderful article recently. It actually proclaimed that the traditional Western clothing for females is skirts/dresses. It went further to say that the believers shouldn't  look  like grey clouds in November sky but rather like people invited to a wedding feast.

It sounds like a radical statement nowadays, but not so long ago you didn't have to persuade women to try and look pretty. In fact, when you watch old TV series like I Love Lucy you see that the most quarrels she had with her husband was about her spending too much money on a new hat or dress. 1950s advertisements feature both men and women wearing nice clothes, like this:

Folks used to have healthy pride in their appearance and even housewives would wear nice things at home:

I still keep wondering how did it all go from this to this:

Modern unisex clothing is boring, to say the least. The colours are drab, the style is absent, the fitting either baggy or too tight. 2/3s of the population appear to be wearing basically overalls (what are jeans if not work clothes?) on a daily basis. All this considering the fact that we have an abundant choice of decent clothes on the internet. They must be putting something in the water...

Science Proves What We Always Knew

If you dress like a slob, you'll behave like a slob and people around will perceive you as one, while dressing sharply and professionally will increase the success of your performance:

If you want to be a big-ideas person at work, suit up. A paper in August 2015 in Social Psychological and Personality Science asked subjects to change into formal or casual clothing before cognitive tests. Wearing formal business attire increased abstract thinking—an important aspect of creativity and long-term strategizing. 

(From Scientific American)

So here you have it from the mouth of scientists, modern sloppy "casual" way of dressing decreases abstract thinking and destroys creativity, while dressing in formal attire produces "the feeling of power". There is a reason dress codes exist in business and finance and legal profession.

Now what does it do to a woman's self-esteem to constantly wear what was traditionally considered male attire and could at best be described as unisex clothing? Or for an adult man, husband and father to wear baggy shorts with flip-flops on a daily basis? Or for a housewife to spend her whole day in pajamas?

Dress for success, not for failure!

An average American 1950s family doing shopping:

An average American 2016 family doing shopping...
Well, never mind!

Happy Mother's Day!

Homemaker's War Guide

Click on the image to view full-size.


Courtesy of this website (as I understand it's not copyrighted)

1930s Fashions Part 2: Footwear Edition

A gentleman will always be recognised by his shoes:

Bodoir fashions:

Sturdy outdoor footwear:

Men's shoes actually used to have quite considerable heels:

Those aren't exactly shoes, but I found it a cute ad: boys' play clothes:

Something for summer:

1930s Ads: Fashion

 Some of the ads from my vintage collection:

Also featuring gentlemen:

This one is rather naughty by 1930s standards:

A society event:

Vintage bathing suits:

Happy Father's Day!

Victorian Mothers

 

Happy Mother's Day!

The Time Machine To The 1930s

The year is 1935 and you are a Catholic in a Protestant country. What do you do? Simple, you read Catholic Illustration (Katholieke Illustratie).

No. 27 which appeared on the 4th of April, 1935 begins with a short story about a tailor who has all sorts of aristocratic clients but refuses to dress well in real life with his fiancee leaving him as a result. She stays with her father and keeps his house until the two meet again when she is 45 and he is nearly 50. This time it ends with a wedding and the tailor is invited to make a suit for the King of Belgium.

Next comes a story about the meteorological service in aviation. Below the picture of a pilot studying the weather map:

Since it's nearly Easter, the next item is an article about a special form of liturgy called The Liturgy Of Holy Suffering. The photo below shows a part of it called the adoration of the cross:

Then we are treated to the second chapter of a historical novel about one Count Hendrik from Germany who is apparently going to start a fight for freedom against the King of Danes. After this comes an article about a health resort in Switzerland:

It is followed by a true story about the fireman who encounters a body in a coffin in the burning house and nearly loses his mind but manages to take the coffin out just on time before the roof collapses. There is also an interesting collection of facts (did you know that in 1935 in one hour there happened 1200 marriages and 85 divorces), a couple of opinion items and the events of the week in pictures. Below the new Belgian government:

Next comes the last chapter of a novel which, as far as I can understand, was about a Dutch businessman who went on a business trip, got drunk and enlisted in the Prussian army. After several months, though, he was allowed by the King of Prussia to return and to marry his fiancee and he also stopped drinking.

Then we read the reportage of a football (soccer for you Americans:) match between Holland and Belgium. Below the picture of the Dutch national football team (our guys won 4:2):

After the chess problem, a story about the new stamps, an article about the hard life of Chinese people, and and the bridge column there finally comes the women section. First we get an article about saving money while cooking on gas, then a piece of advice for the new mothers (as little visiting as possible, so as to protect the baby from infections and let the new mother to regain her strength), a column about keeping the private information about other people private, a craft feature about embroidering a linen tablecloth, and a weekly menu among some other things.

What were you supposed to serve each day of the week?

Monday
Pork fricandeau with winter carrots, oatmeal.

Tuesday
Cold meat with canned green beans, rhubarb with custard.

Wednesday
Hachee (stewed meat) with beet salad and mashed potatoes. Griddle cakes

Thursday
Ground veal with black salsify
Apple pancakes

Friday
Buckling (a form of herring) with red cabbage, rice pudding

Saturday
Beef escalopes with  canned endive. Fruit.

 Sunday
Vegetable soup. Veal steak with broccoli rabe.
Orange custard with biscuits.

Next comes the article about new fashions:

Below are the patterns you could order:

The women section ends with an article about Primula Orbonica (a house plant) and then we read a story about a Catholic saint Veredemus, a short sermon about the importance of social cohesion, a reportage about a hotel in England for poor but genteel travellers where Ch. Dickens once spent the night, and humour from different countries. And that was all for today, till the next time.



P.S. in other news, today is the Liberation Day.