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Jul. 3rd, 2021 09:23 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chocolatepotOh god I just spent so much money on fabric and bonnets ... I am so bad at millinery that I wanted to buy a form from Timely Tresses, and I eventually decided that it made the most sense to buy the finished Ophelia (which is Regency but has a pretty wide brim, and was on sale for $40 off) as well as a Parmelia form (actually 1830s style). I'm going to want both of them eventually for sure, so why not? Also got a yellow striped cotton for the gown - I am not normally a big yellow-wearer, but my checked 1820s dress is yellow and it looked surprisingly well on me - plus a few cotton sateens for later corsets.
Sewed a channel for the busk this evening, which is pretty good. I meant to sew more but intending to sew led me to feel an intense need to clean - so I went so far as to scrub the bathroom floor! I have learned in my life to grab onto the times I feel the need to clean and take advantage of them, because the rest of the time it will literally not occur to me.
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I saw a Rejected Princesses post on my dash today and because I am rationally-irrationally irritated by Rejected Princesses I'm just going to go off on it here. The concept isn't terrible - highlighting historical women who'd be unlikely to be made into Disney princesses or get a similar treatment - but the way they do it highlights why the Disney treatment is such a bad way to teach anyone about history.
The very beginning of this post shows two of the most major flaws of the project: moral judgments of different historical personages based largely on where the person stands wrt the central female character, and uncritical use of primary sources (or of other sources, like Wikipedia, that uncritically use primary sources). The writer is listing the "jackhole moves" of Emperor Yang of Sui, who, to be fair, was not a successful ruler. The first is that he was deliberately trying to come to the throne, something a number of Rejected Princesses are considered heroines for; the second is that he murdered his father, who's portrayed as a good person for uniting multiple warring kingdoms, but as with pretty much all historical kingdom-uniters, he'd done this by subjugating them militarily; the third is that he invaded a lot of places, which, see previous point - is this an unambiguously bad thing to do, or a failed attempt to "unite", or are inter-kingdom relations more complex than this?; and the fourth is that his infrastructure projects killed people, which ... in a Marxist history lens that's very bad, but it's not like the Grand Canal was built or the Great Wall repaired specifically for the purpose of killing builders - these were massively important projects that benefited Sui society as a whole.
And to go back to the patricide, that speaks to the "sources" issue: it's really common to find long-ago historians accusing beneficiaries of deaths of causing those deaths, a generation or two later, in so many contexts, and it doesn't mean that they have some special insight. Likewise, after successful rebellions/usurpations, it's really common to find later historians blackening the name of the person deposed with accusations of personal cruelty and overweening ambition. The writer goes on to talk about the rebellion, and how the emperor was just so incompetent he couldn't manage to stop upsetting people and united everyone else against him. Actually, most of the rebel leaders were naming themselves rulers of different regions, and this all puts a different spin on the whole situation from a macro view - it's a tumultuous time and place, kingdoms are regularly splitting up and being "united" (despite the official view of 5,000 years of Chinese continuity), and these issues aren't dependent on Great or Weak Men.
Lastly, the post focuses on the progressive moves of the eventual-Princess Pingyang as leader of forces - handing out food to the hungry, barring her soldiers from rape and looting - but completely downplays/ignores the fact that they're still killing people over a power struggle! And this is something you see in a bunch of these stories: deaths attributable to the Rejected Princesses are treated as something badass on their part and happening to NPCs. It's really frustrating.
The tagline on the main site is "Well-behaved women seldom make history. Rejected Princesses celebrates those who did." They've actually made the customary mutilation of my beloved Laurel Thatcher Ulrich quote worse by doubling down on the idea that the "well-behaved women" did nothing of value!
ANYWAY.
Sewed a channel for the busk this evening, which is pretty good. I meant to sew more but intending to sew led me to feel an intense need to clean - so I went so far as to scrub the bathroom floor! I have learned in my life to grab onto the times I feel the need to clean and take advantage of them, because the rest of the time it will literally not occur to me.
---
I saw a Rejected Princesses post on my dash today and because I am rationally-irrationally irritated by Rejected Princesses I'm just going to go off on it here. The concept isn't terrible - highlighting historical women who'd be unlikely to be made into Disney princesses or get a similar treatment - but the way they do it highlights why the Disney treatment is such a bad way to teach anyone about history.
The very beginning of this post shows two of the most major flaws of the project: moral judgments of different historical personages based largely on where the person stands wrt the central female character, and uncritical use of primary sources (or of other sources, like Wikipedia, that uncritically use primary sources). The writer is listing the "jackhole moves" of Emperor Yang of Sui, who, to be fair, was not a successful ruler. The first is that he was deliberately trying to come to the throne, something a number of Rejected Princesses are considered heroines for; the second is that he murdered his father, who's portrayed as a good person for uniting multiple warring kingdoms, but as with pretty much all historical kingdom-uniters, he'd done this by subjugating them militarily; the third is that he invaded a lot of places, which, see previous point - is this an unambiguously bad thing to do, or a failed attempt to "unite", or are inter-kingdom relations more complex than this?; and the fourth is that his infrastructure projects killed people, which ... in a Marxist history lens that's very bad, but it's not like the Grand Canal was built or the Great Wall repaired specifically for the purpose of killing builders - these were massively important projects that benefited Sui society as a whole.
And to go back to the patricide, that speaks to the "sources" issue: it's really common to find long-ago historians accusing beneficiaries of deaths of causing those deaths, a generation or two later, in so many contexts, and it doesn't mean that they have some special insight. Likewise, after successful rebellions/usurpations, it's really common to find later historians blackening the name of the person deposed with accusations of personal cruelty and overweening ambition. The writer goes on to talk about the rebellion, and how the emperor was just so incompetent he couldn't manage to stop upsetting people and united everyone else against him. Actually, most of the rebel leaders were naming themselves rulers of different regions, and this all puts a different spin on the whole situation from a macro view - it's a tumultuous time and place, kingdoms are regularly splitting up and being "united" (despite the official view of 5,000 years of Chinese continuity), and these issues aren't dependent on Great or Weak Men.
Lastly, the post focuses on the progressive moves of the eventual-Princess Pingyang as leader of forces - handing out food to the hungry, barring her soldiers from rape and looting - but completely downplays/ignores the fact that they're still killing people over a power struggle! And this is something you see in a bunch of these stories: deaths attributable to the Rejected Princesses are treated as something badass on their part and happening to NPCs. It's really frustrating.
The tagline on the main site is "Well-behaved women seldom make history. Rejected Princesses celebrates those who did." They've actually made the customary mutilation of my beloved Laurel Thatcher Ulrich quote worse by doubling down on the idea that the "well-behaved women" did nothing of value!
ANYWAY.
