The Turkish Hat Law, banning non Western headgear, took effect.
Beijing's Forbidden City was opened to the public for the first time.
Last edition:
Showing posts with label Clothing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Clothing. Show all posts
Tuesday, November 25, 2025
Saturday, November 22, 2025
The Golden Age of Travel Starts with You
The Secretary of Transportation has taken a lot of flak for this, and I'm not fan of the Trump Administration, but you know, I don't think the message here is wrong by any means.
And, fwiw, I hate seeing people in pajamas in public, whether its on an airplane, or Walmart.
Sunday, November 9, 2025
Going Feral: Lex Anteinternet: Saturday, November 3, 1945. Wyoming Game Wardens Game Wardens Bill Lakanen and Don Simpson murdered.
Going Feral: Lex Anteinternet: Saturday, November 3, 1945. Wyom...: Lex Anteinternet: Saturday, November 3, 1945. Chinese Civil War, G... : China's civil war was acknowledged now to be a major conflict ...
Lex Anteinternet: Saturday, November 3, 1945. Wyoming Game Wardens Game Wardens Bill Lakanen and Don Simpson murdered.
Lex Anteinternet: Saturday, November 3, 1945. Chinese Civil War, G...: China's civil war was acknowledged now to be a major conflict and two Game Wardens were found dead near Rawlins. The Chinese Civil War w...
Linked over from Lex Anteinternet, which also discussed the Chinese Civil War.
Saturday, November 3, 1945. Chinese Civil War, Game Wardens Killed.
China's civil war was acknowledged now to be a major conflict and two Game Wardens were found dead near Rawlins.
The Chinese Civil War was the topic of a political cartoon as well.
The murdered Game Wardens were Bill Lakanen and Don Simpson who were killed by ardent Nazi sympathizer and German immigrant Johann Malten. The same Game Wardens had arrested Malten for game violations when investigating, interestingly enough, claims that Malten had been involved in espionage and was relaying weather reports on shortwave, something that was illegal during the war when there was a blackout on weather reporting as the information was useful to submarines. Upon visiting Malten's cabin in the Sierra Madres they found he had committed numerous game violations.
On this occasion they were stopping by to see if Malten had continued to ignore the law. They were shot down out of hand when they arrived.
Malten burned his cabin down and it was officially reported that he'd died within it, although the evidence of that is very poor. There were reported sightings of him for years thereafter.
And a selection of 1945 cartoons.
I knew about this story because former Wyoming Game Warden David Bragonier wrote about it in his book about Wyoming Game Wardens, Wild Journey: On the Trail With a Wyoming Game Warden in Yellowstone Country. It's a good book, and I recommend it.
Bragonier discusses this event, although I clearly don't remember everything I read in his account. That's probably not too surprising as I read the book in 1999. What I recall but didn't see in the accounts on the murder you can find here is that the investigation was associated not only with the killer's German nationality and his strong Nazi sympathies, but also with shortwave radio transmissions that could not be pinned down.
There's a bunch of interesting things that could, and if a person had time, should be explored here as the story raises all sorts of undeveloped oddities.
One of them is that Lakanen and Simpson are two out of the three Wyoming Game Wardens who were murdered by immigrants (to the extent I know why the various ones who lost their lives in the line of duty did). I'm not saying that immigrants murder game wardens, but this is an interesting fact. The other one is John Buxton, who was murdered by a youthful Austrian immigrant in 1919. In that instance he had taken a .30-30 Savage rifle from a 17 year old who drew a revolver and killed him. The reasons that Buxton was checking the boys is unclear. Stories frequently claim they were hunting out of season, but that seems incorrect. They were certainly overarmed for rabbits, however, with a .30-30 being way too large for that pursuit. Buxton might have been checking them as their activities seems suspicious, which frankly they do, or because there was a state law at the time that prohibited aliens from carrying firearms.
The killers handgun, we might note, was concealed.
I only note this as its odd. Hunting is common in Germany and Austria, and indeed there's a strong hunting culture there, but it's highly regulated. As a result, poaching is fairly common as well, even though its highly criminal. Indeed, one of the SS's units during World War Two, the Dirlewanger Brigade, was originally made up of convicted poachers, although it moved on to other criminals over time.
Anyhow, I wonder if these people were just hugely out of sink with any culture at all.
In the earlier murder, it's been noted that the young men had been in run-ins apparently with Italian immigrants in the same location. Austro Hungaria and Italy had been on opposite sides of World War One. Again, I'm not saying that caused the murder, but I do wonder if they conceived of themselves as being very much on the outside of things.
Another interesting thing, although having nothing to do with the focus on this page, is the lingering Nazi sympathies in some quarters amongst German immigrants who chose to continue to live in the country. That carried on, quietly, well after the war, even after the news of the Holocaust became known.
Odd.
If Malten was actually a spy, that may explain the killing in and of itself.
Another thing this story oddly brings up is the extent to which trapping remained economically viable.
Trapping was pretty common in Wyoming up into the 1970s, when there was a fur market price collapse. I had, well still have, traps, although I haven't set them for decades. In the 1970s high school kids like myself supplemented our incomes by trapping or hunting coyotes for their furs. The market was so lucrative at the time that there were people who flew in from out of state and hunted coyotes near Miracle Miles, something we didn't appreciate very much as we didn't have those sorts of resources available to us. The Federal Government was also big into predator control at the time which we also didn't appreciate much for the same reason.
Furs are, fwiw, an actual renewable resource fabric, one of the few.
Fur coats were a big deal for women at this time and would, again, be throughout the 1950s. They were not nearly as much of a luxury item as people like to remember. My mother had a heavy mink coat that she brought down from Montreal that she wore on really cold days. As a kid I loved it when she brought it out, due to the feel of the soft minks.
It was, in spite of Donald Trump and the Sweet Home Alabama crowe dof the GOP may believe, colder then.
I've never looked into it but I suspect that synthetic fabrics had as much to do with the decline in furs as anything else. That started during World War Two and is well evidenced by the Air Force's switch from sheepskin flight altitude flight jackets to synthetic ones. That trend continue into the 1950s and I suspect it just generally caught up with fur coats by the 1980s. Indeed, the association of fur with luxury somewhat increased in that time, with it generally being the case that things are regarded as luxurious not only for their scarcity, but because they really aren't needed.
More on fur clothing some other time.
I guess the final thing I'll note is how dangerous of job being a game warden is. A lot of the crimes you investigate are, by default, armed crimes.
Given that, it's amazing to look back and realize that when I was a kid wardens didn't carry sidearms. They weren't allowed to. I recall when that changed and many did not take up what was then the option to carry them. Now they're required to.
Indeed, I was recently stopped by a warden and frankly he wasn't very nice. That's a new trend as well. I don't like it. But not only was he not nice, he was extremely intimidating carrying a government issued handgun on a government issued gunbelt and wearing a government issued flak jacket.
I've really hated the militarization of the policy and this is all part of it. Everytime I see a policeman anymore, including a game warden, they're dressed like they're going into Hue in 1968. All policemen of every type are civilians. They're simply deputized civilians. They shouldn't look like an occupying army. And if the treat people rudely, and many do, and are standing their armed treating you like you are a detained Vietnamese villager, it's scary.
A little of that comes across, I'd note, in Bragonier's book, in spite of my recommendation of it. It's a good book, but he displayed an element of contempt for the public he served in it.
David Bragonier must be, I'd suspect, gone to his reward by now His biography indicates that he was born in Iowa in 1937 and moved to Wyoming after graduating high school. He became a game warden over twenty years later, in 1958, something that would be extremely difficult to do now due to the education requirements. He briefly worked for the Forest Service before that.
A man becoming a Game Warden at 39, which he did, would be really unusual now. Probably impossible.
I actually have twice tried to plow that field myself, rejecting it once as I just go engaged. I would have been about 30 at the time. It'd be completely impossible for me to become a Game Warden now as I not have a wildlife management degree. I suppose that requiring that specific degree is a good thing, but I do miss the days when a lot of Game Wardens were basically from ranching families. Even when I was that age, many of them fit that category. My cohort was probably about the last one that would meet that description.
I went on, of course, to a successful career in the law, and I was already a lawyer, of course at age 30, and had been for a few years. I took one fork in the road. You aren't supposed to look back. Luke tells us, in a different context, that "No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God". I'll confess I've looked back a lot.
Having said all of that, I spoke the same warden (turns out he's very green) as I found a poached elk about two weeks later. I had to guide him in, by phone, to the location. He was very nice on that occasion, and that's how things should be.
Sunday, October 12, 2025
A series of Sunday reflections, not all of which are appropriate for the Sabbath.
This morning, I left the house early, although I had slept in. Sleeping in for me means it was 4:30 a.m.
The prior morning I had awaked at 2:00 a.m. and felt like crap all day. Part of that was because I worked, and the office was cold.
It's worse today. My arms are still and sore, from my shoulders to my wrists.
Anyhow, it wasn't in the morning. Sleeping in until 4:30 was nice. I actually got up about 3:30, took my thyroid medicine (which makes me angry every day) and went back to bed.
I shaved this morning. I don't most Sundays, or Saturdays. If was retired, I'd grow a beard.
I left for 8:30 Mass early, as I needed to get gasoline. The Jeep was on "E". I pulled into the nearby mega station and the pump didn't work. I figured it hadn't been turned on, so I ran into the store to direct the attention to the clerks.
I've only been in the station itself once. It was a few weeks ago early in the morning and there was a middle aged thin guy and a friendly, but not so sharp, young guy working there. The middle aged guy was a hoot. I brought up my snacks for the day, which included some pink "sno balls" and he noted how they used to make blue ones. He thought they had been removed as "blue balls" wasn't appropriate, but was hoping they'd bring back "blue balls". The young guy never got the joke in spite of his repeated efforts to explain it, without explaining it.
"Blue balls, man!"
Oh well.
He wasn't shaved that day either.
Today,. when I went in, the clerks were two enormously fat young women.
Now, that sounds rude, but they were. It's not a crime to be enormously fat, although it sure isn't good for you.
Both of them had all kinds of fishing tackle affixed to their faces. Piercings, as they say.
Now, in a second, or third, rude observation, having piercings if you are enormously fat doesn't make you attractive. Having piercings all over your face never makes you attractive, but having them if you are fat is a really bad look. It's similar to having tattoos if you are enormously fat woman. It makes you look worse.
Having said that, having piercings and being very thin makes you look like a meth addict.
When I came in, I noted right away "the pump needs to be turned on". They both informed me that most of the pumps weren't working. Indeed, they were very helpful on that point.
It was extremely cold, and very windy.
I noted they might want to post a sign on the pumps in that case. I was grumpy, unreasonably so.
They noted they hadn't had time as they'd only been there since 5:00 a.m..
It was 8:00 a.m.
Three hours?
They did have time to make an enormous pile of fried chicken. It was freaking huge. I can't imagine how many chickens had died to make it.
The two men who were there a couple of weeks ago had not done that.
Who buys fried chicken at 8:00 a.m.?
It did smell good, as it was fresh fried chicken.
It reminded me of the song "Sunday Morning Going Down", which mentions fried chicken.
I hate that song.
Oh well. I hope their lives are happy, and I hope too they get in shape a bit.
I went to Mass.
The Priest, on the way out, called me by name. It's not my parish, but I've been going there for months as I live the Priest's homilies'. They don't pull any punches.. I was surprised he knew my name. He's a very good Priest. I'll have to be a less severe sinner.
I'm often surprised when people know my name, as I'm an introvert. Frequently, people do.
On the way home, I stopped at a different gas station. I had to stretch the hose as the person inf ront of me, who was not filling up, and wasn't there, hadn't left enough room. As I was finishing up she showed up. She looked considerably older than me, but probably wasn't, and was wearing pajama bottoms.
People who wear pajama bottoms outside of their houses should be exchanged for Syrian refugees immediately. It's sloppy in the extreme and means you don't give a rats ass how you look.
We don't want to see you in your pajama bottoms.
I ran in the store to get some outdoor snacks. She came back i with some loud drama about how much she had paid, or not, for prepaid gas.
Seriously, even if you have a nearly new truck, if you go to the gas in your pajamas, we really don't care about your over, or under, payment. Put on some trousers.
I went out for ducks.
It soundly have been my dogs first time, but he died about a month ago, poor puppy. He was so lively, too much dog for me really.
I miss him. I'm not getting over his death, even though he was just a dog.
I hope dog souls, and cat souls, go to Heaven.
There were ducks, but the hurricane force winds frustrated me.
On the way out, I had to stop as a horse trailer was blocking the road and the driver, a cowboy, was yapping it tup with a hunter while parked in the middle of the road.. Off to the side, another cowboy was helping a young Native American woman mount a horse. The horse was calm, but the poor woman, about 20 years old, clearly didn't know how to mount it. Frankly, a greener horse would have been dangerous.
As it was, it was charming. The cowboy was concerned and helpful. They managed it, as I drove on, she was on the horse, proud but embarrassed.
Not all that long ago, her grandmother would have known how. That knowledge is lost quickly.
But then, not all that long ago, the grandfather of the cowboy wouldn't have helped. He did.
The whole time, a very young boy stood there with a horse. He's probably ten times the cowboy I ever was.
Friday, October 10, 2025
Saturday, October 10, 1925. The Chinese Imperial Collection.
It was, of course, a Saturday.
The Saturday Evening Post hit the stands with a depiction of a cowboy who had just been bucked off. It was a nice depiction, but the hat with the huge crown was a movie, or dude, type of cowboy hat, albeit one popular in the movies at the time. Real cowhands would not have worn a hat with such an enormous crown.
The Palace Museum was opened to the public in Beijing by the Republic of China. The museum was in the former Forbidden City and contained 1,170,000 pieces of artwork.
Upon the Japanese invasion in 1937, most of the collection was moved to Nanjing. During the Chinese Civil War much of the collection was moved to Taiwan, where it remains.
Game 3 of the World Series was played, leading to this:
October 10, 1925: Senators’ Sam Rice makes dazzling catch to preserve victory in Game 3 — or did he?
Last edition:
Thursday, October 8, 1925. World Series. . . both of them.
Wednesday, September 10, 2025
Monday, September 10, 1945. Eh?
Post war news items were getting a bit weird.
Mike the Headless chicken was ineffectively beheaded, and would go on to become sort of a freak show star for a brief period of time.
Life magazine featured a black and white cover photo of a UAW worker. The contents of the magazine were:
Pg… 29 The Week's Events: U. S. Occupies Japan
Pg… 42 The Week's Events: Editorial: Peace in Asia
Pg… 45 The Week's Events: King Leopold's Family
Pg… 51 The Week's Events: Black Markets Boom in Berlin
Pg… 127 The Week's Events: Lilly Dache Packs for Paris
Pg… 63 Articles: Nijinsky in Vienna, by William Walton
Pg… 112 Articles: As We May Think, by Vannevor Bush
Pg… 103 Photographic Essay: United Automobile Workers
Pg… 57 Modern Living: House for Texas
Pg… 90 Modern Living: The French Look
Pg… 61 Art: Portrait of Sylvia Sidney, by Fletcher Martin
Pg… 82 Art: Hudson River School of Painters
Pg… 75 Movies: "Uncle Harry"
Pg… 97 Sports: Grownups Spin Tops
Pg… 138 Science: Plant Cancer
Pg… 2 Other Departments: Letters to the Editors
Pg… 12 Other Departments: Speaking of Pictures: Germany's Fantastic Secret Weapons
Pg… 16 Other Departments: LIFE's Reports: "Bottoms Up" in China, by Lieut. Thomas P. Ronan
Pg… 132 Other Departments: LIFE Goes Swordfishing
Pg… 142 Other Departments: Miscellany: Seabees Give Waves a Party
Life is often remembered as a great magazine in its heyday, but it featured some pretty vapid articles. This issue's feature on The French Look informed readers that young French women had small breasts and often went braless, depicting a typical bra (on a young French woman), for those occasions in which les mademoiselles wore them. Doing that in the US, UK, or Germany would have been regarded as shockingly indecent, although it was not uncommon in the Southern European Slavic and Romance language speaking countries, which in turn contributed to the American and British views that the Italians were really primitive, and the German view that the Yugoslavians were.
In case you wonder, I ran across the Life magazine item searching this date on Twitter. I haven't pulled up the article.
I'm clueless on the truth or accuracy of that claim and not going to investigate it, but French living conditions were definitely different than American ones, with a significantly different diet. Most people and cultures today are significantly thinner than Americans are and in the 1940s the French had suffered years of near starvation conditions, so they were likely overall less bulky than Americans in every manner. A 20 year old French woman in 1945 had lived her teen years in starvation conditions and had been on pretty thing rations throughout the 1930s. She would have been smaller in every way.
Also, French clothing had been severely rationed during the Second World War and you can't wear clothes you just don't have. Americans have largely forgotten, indeed never appreciated, the extent to which World War Two causes massive food and material deficits during the Second World War.
Added to that, Americans for some reason think of the French as being Parisians, which most are not. Paris had been the center of the fashion industry since at least the mid 19th Century, but that didn't apply to most of the French. About 50% of the French were rural in 1940, down from 64% in 1920, but still a very large percentage. As late as 1960 about 40% of the French were rural.
This oddly ties into this topic as rural life isn't like urban life, including in terms of the clothing people wear. Starting in the late 19th Century French and British artists began to glamorize the agrarian life and left a fair number of romantic, but fairly realistic, paintings of it. Some British paintings of rural life show farm women working fields in the hot summer months flat out topless, something you would not associate with either the UK or British farming today. French paintings can be a shock to run across while as they're often very well done and beautiful, they also make it relatively apparent that French farm women in hot months were wearing light cotton blouses with nothing underneath them.
European agriculture was much slower to mechanize than American agriculture. The Great Depression had an enormous retarding effect on the mechanization of American agriculture and this is even more so for European agriculture, which remained largely equine or bovine powered before the end of World War Two, another thing contributing to starvation as horses were conscripted for the German Army and cows and bulls just shot and ate them. Here, however, this is significant as French men and women were working the fields largely in the same way as they had in 1918.
Brassiers are actually a French invention, makign their appearance in the 1880s, as we've discussed before, and they received a boost due to World War One, as we addressed here:
As noted, things don't change overnight. So, maybe, young women coming of age in Paris in the 1940s who had an okay income or who had parents who did, might have a more advanced clothing standard then, say, a young woman growing up in rural Normandy, even if that young woman had moved into Paris during the war.
And, shall we noted this, in 1914-1918 Americans had been absolutely charmed by the French, and American men had been charmed by French women. But those men were largely rural and they were meeting women who were largely rural. In 1918, 20% of American homes had full indoor plumbing, meaning most did not. By World War Two most Americans homes did, although quite a few very rural ones did not. Most Americans were no longer rural by 1945.
In 1940 only 5% of French homes had indoor plumbing. The percentage for Italy was lower.
5%.
Perhaps not too surprisingly, therefore, lots of American troops were fairly horrified by the French, contrary to the way we like to remember it, when they started landing on French soil in 1944. The French, to put it mildly, smelled. And if the French smelled, the Italians smelled worse, with Italian women wearing cotton dresses in hot weather in which their upper lady bits flopped out, combined with omitting shoes and going around in bare feet. They were hopelessly primitive, in American eyes (which as noted is how the Germans found the Yugoslavians).
Anyhow, if you don't have indoor plumbing, you aren't going to be able to easily frequently wash your clothes and if you can omit something, you probably are going to.
Additionally, if you live in those conditions, and those of the 30s and early 40s, you are probably 40% underweight, smoke cigarettes constantly, have a large percentage of your caloric intake depending on alcohol, and you smell bad.
That's okay if everyone you associate with also is underweight and unwashed.
Things weren't like imagine them to be back then. Glamorous French women? Sure, on their own terms in the conditions in which they found themselves.
Life today is now a sort of special issue magazine featuring photographs. It's very large size format always existed, but it was originally a weekly and was so until 1972. It's big competitor was Look, which ceased publication in 1971. That both of these magazines took a hit in the early 1970s is really interesting is at long predates the Internet, which would otherwise be blamed for it.
Anyhow, Life was always a photo magazine, of which there were several others. It was a serious one, but right from its onset in 1936 (interesting to note it came out during the Great Depression) it frequently featured cheesecake, running racy photographs of actresses and semi undressed women on the guise of discussing clothing or fashion. Some of the photographs even today are shocking if you are not anticipating them. In 1953 it went full pornography for the first time running a nude of Marilyn Monroe which would be the same photograph used as the very first Playboy centerfold in 1953. The excuse, and probably the actual motivation, for that is that by doing that it was attempting to save the career of Monroe, who would be scandalized if her nude, taken in the late 1940s before she was a well known and up and coming actress, appeared first in a pornographic magazine, but still there's the only difference between the two publications of the image is the purpose the magazines served.
Anyhow, this is interesting in that Life and Look were general publication magazines that were outright flirting with cheesecake very early on, showing an (unfortunate) evolution on community standards. We've looked at this in the past, but this is certainly good evidence that whatever was going on in the culture was going on before World War Two and before the 1950s.
The Allied Control Commission decided to transmit to all neutral states a request for the return to Germany of "all German officials and obnoxious Germans".
Sweden resumed allowing foreign warships to enter its territorial waters.
MacArthur ordered the dissolution of the Imperial general headquarters and imposed censorship on the press.
The Shangdang Campaign began in the Chinese Civil War between the Eighth Route Army and Kuomintang troops led by Yan Xishan in what is now Shanxi Province, China.
The Indonesian Navy was founded.
The USS Midway was Commissioned
José Feliciano was born in Lares, Puerto Rico.
Related threads:
Clothing: It was because of World War One.
Labels: 1910s, Clothing, It was because of World War One, It was because of World War Two, Men, Standards, The roles of men and women, Women, World War One, World War Two, Yeoman's Fourth Law of History
Last edition:
Friday, September 7, 1945. Green River Railroad Bridge Fire. A final and unnoticed parade.
Friday, August 29, 2025
Wednesday, August 27, 2025
The Cost Meter. A Trade War Index.
Petroleum: $61.78/bbl (Wyoming crude become unecomic at $59.00/bbl).
Coal: Coal 99.40/ton
Coffee (USd/Lbs) 372.60.
Levis at Penny's: $55.65.
April 7, 2025
Petroleum: 60.80/bbl.
One of Trump's minions cited this, fwiw, as evidence that inflation isn't kicking in and things are fine. On the contrary, the price of petroleum is dropping on fears of a recession. A recession reduces oil consumption.
Indeed, because of the bizarre nature of tariffs, trading prices on some things in general may go down, while the price rises for Americans.
April 8, 2025
From the Wall Street Journal yesterday:
It's about $61/bbl this mooring.
cont:
$58.10. Below marketability in Wyoming.
April 9, 2025
Oil opening this morning:
56.03
April 10, 2025
Despite the strong relief rally on Wednesday, following President Trump’s 90-day pause of tariff hikes on most countries except China, the U.S. benchmark oil price is now lower than the breakeven for the shale industry to profitably drill a new well.
OilPrice.com
West Texas is $59.16/bbl.
April 11, 2025
U.S. reached a new record-high of $6.23 per dozen.
Oil is opening at 60.10/bbl.
May 2, 2025
Oil and Natural Gas.
WTI Crude 58.57 -0.67 -1.13%
Brent Crude 61.49 -0.64 -1.03%
Murban Crude 61.41 -0.93 -1.49%
Natural Gas 3.502 +0.023 +0.66%
A note, below $59.00, US crude doesn't move.
The inflation rate right now is 2.39% with the tariffs about to hit.
May 6, 2025
WTI Crude • 58.28 +1.15 +2.01%
Brent Crude • 61.39 +1.16 +1.93%
Murban Crude • 62.20 +2.24 +3.74%
Natural Gas • 3.594 +0.044 +1.24%
Coal: 98.50/ton
Coffee: 388.45
Levis: $55.65.
May 16, 2025
WTI Crude 61.95 +0.33 +0.54%
Brent Crude 64.88 +0.35 +0.54%
Natural Gas 3.345 -0.017 -0.51%
Coal: 99.00/ton
Coffee (USd/Lbs) 373.79
August 27, 2025
A pound of ground roast coffee now averages $8.41, up 33% from last year, according to the New York Times.
WTI Crude: $63.91/bbl.
Brent Crude: $66.79/bbl.
Coal: $99.75/ton.
Gee. . . doesn't seem like prices are going down.
Thursday, August 27, 1925. The Hat Revolution.
Mustafa Kemal Atatürk delivered his Hat Speech urging Turks to adopt Western style hats in defiance of the Hat Law, which required men to wear hats by religion. This sparked the Hat Revolution.
He also criticized female facial covering.
In the states (from the 100 Years Ago Reddit):
Note the press presupposed a divorce proceeding that required that fault be demonstrated.
Last edition:
Tuesday, August 25, 1925. End of the Occupation of the Ruhr.
Thursday, August 21, 2025
Friday, August 25, 1925. Infamnia.
From Reddit's 100 Years Ago sub.
Related threads:
Caps, Hats, Fashion and Perceptions of Decency and being Dressed.
Last edition:
Thursday, August 20, 1925. Thrills, frills and stills.
Labels: 1920s, 1925, Cartoons, China, Chinese Warlord Era, Communism, Ethel Hays, Kuomintang, Nazi Germany, United States, USSR, Weimar Germany
Sunday, August 10, 2025
Danish Confirmation Classes over the decades.
Note the remarkable change in clothing styles over the years.
Konfirmand billeder fra Vrensted
Thursday, August 7, 2025
Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist, 99th Edition appendix. Sydney Sweeney has great jeans, and genes. So does Beyonce Knowles. And stuff.
The Sydney Sweeney jeans ad praising her genes is genius: How nice to have the Sydney Sweeney “great genes” controversy. It is happily of no consequence, which is . . .
Froma Harrop.
The massive overreaction to Sweeney being in an American Eagle ad while being white continues on, and is nicely addressed by Froma Harrop above. Harrop's article reminds us of a few other pretty women, which likely means that it's a good thing the article was written by a woman.
Coincidentally, Beyoncé Knowles ad campaign for Levis continues on as well. It predates Sweeney's ad for American Eagle. I don't know anything about American Eagle jeans at all, but I do about Levis as I wear them a lot.
Knowles is also hot.
From Knowles Levis commercial
Knowles, of course, is an African American.
Of interest in this, both Knowles and Sweeney manage to be hot while fully clothed, a good trend.
Sweeney from her American Eagle ad.
Also of note, they're both actually really curvy and not sticks. In other words, they look like actual women, which is of course what they are. Knowles is particularly notable as she's been regarded as hot all along, even though she doesn't fit into the traditional stick figure model category that modeling agencies have tended to use for years. She's big.
Of course, all this brought out the political clowns. Robot from Texas, Sen. Ted Cruz (why hasn't ICE deported this foreign born interloper yet?) felt compelled to state that due to the Democrats “beautiful women are no longer acceptable in our society.” That's really absurd. One of the things that Sen. Krysten Sinema, now an independent but up until recently a Democrat, basically took criticism for was being hot while in office. Sinema, whose politics are eclectic, is clearly highly intelligent. She's also a fallen away Mormon who is "unaffiliated" in terms of religion, and a lesbian, all of which puts her in the infamia category for Republicans.
Republicans, it might be noted, really lashed on to Sweeney when they found out she's a registered Republican, which means almost nothing. Most of the MAGA politicos would have been regarded as fringe Republicans at best up until King Donny. Real Republicans, as Wyoming Secretary of State Chuck Gray likes to point out, are now regarded as Democratic infiltrators by the current GOP, which is lead by a lifelong former Democrat, Trump. We really don't know about her actual political views at all.
She registers in Florida, and of course she might register Republican for the same reason that horrifies Chuck Gray in Wyoming, it might for the most part be the only place to register. The Unconstitutional Primary Election in Wyoming tends to be the real election, so that's where people register. Maybe that's why Sweeney registers that way in Florida. Who knows?
Republicans, starting with Trump, have really latched on to her already, which is a metaphor that should make Sweeney uncomfortable. Some real boofador from Fox News even went so far as to suggest that seeing Sweeney in jeans might remind American men of their demographic obligation to procreate, whic his extremely weird, and referenced Dylan Mulvaney as an example of what might be deterring them. While Mulvaney is genuinely bizarre, and transgenderism not a real thing, that's probably not what's keeping the WASPs home alone in their basements rather than going out and meeting someone.
Somebody in this category, who is going out, as in out of the state, is Artemis Langford, who, having graduated from university, is packing up and leaving, claiming the state doesn't want people like him here. Langford, who deserves real pity, demonstrated self pity in the interview, as he had to have known that being a big overweight man in a sorority would draw attention, although he no doubt didn't expect all the litigation that ensued. The basic gist of his complaint is that he doesn't like it that there have been laws passed to protect actual women from being displaced in women's sports and the like, and he doesn't like it that society has moved towards recognizing "transgenderism" for what it is, a mental illness, so he's leaving. At least as of two years ago, his intended career path was law school. Being a man presenting as a woman wouldn' t stop a person from practicing law here, although it probably would be limiting, so pursuing that career elsewhere probably would be a good idea, if that's his actual intent.
All of this gets into the topic of conservatism, cultural conservatism, culture, and populism, but we'll try to take that up somewhere else. Maybe in our 100th Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist edition.
Anyhow, one denim glad guy saw an opportunity here, and took it:
He does like the Sweeney ad. I'll bet he likes the Knowles one too.
And all this comes up, sort of, due to denim, something that women didn't often appear in, and for that matter decently dressed men, until after World War Two. While women wearing jeans had taken off well before that, Levis didn't introduce 501s for women until 1981.
Related threads:
Levis
Labels: 1870s, 1873, 1890, 1890s, 1940s, 1947, 1950s, 1960s, Agriculture, Clothing, Growing up in the 1970s, It was because of World War Two, Standards, technology, trends, World War Two
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