Women Who Defied Gender Roles Were Once Imprisoned In Asylums

Article by JR Thorpe @ Bustle:

Society always throws up a lot of roadblocks for women who want to break from oppressive gender norms — but women in the 19th century who spoke up and pushed back against sexist oppression faced a distinctly awful possibility: being locked away in mental institutions, which at the time were generally known as "asylums."

The trend of locking women in asylums was so widespread that Nellie Bly, the pioneering journalist, made her name by getting herself committed to a women's asylum, and reporting on abuses and mistreatment from the inside in 1887. But the real horror isn't just the way many women in asylums were abused — it's how they ended up in there. To be thrown in an asylum for the crime of, say, protesting your husband's affair with your niece was a real thing that happened — and a thing that happened not all that long ago.

read more here @ Bustle

The Improbable Life of the Inventor of the Modern Bra

The Improbable Life of the Inventor of the Modern Bra | Atlas Obscura

Mary Phelps, known as Polly to friends, was born in 1891 to a family that could trace its heritage to such luminaries as William Bradford, Plymouth Colony’s first governor, and Robert Fulton, the inventor of the steamboat. As New England royalty, Polly grew up in New Rochelle, New York, wanting for nothing.

It wasn’t until 1910 that Polly realized something important was missing from her life. She was busy one day preparing for a debutante ball when she looked in the mirror and realized she loathed the way a corset made her look. It bunched up her bodice and squished her breasts into a single, uncomfortable monobosom. In her memoir, The Passionate Years, she referred to it as “a box-like armour of whalebone and pink cordage.”

Like all great innovators before her, necessity was the mother of Polly’s invention. She grabbed a handkerchief, ribbon, and a needle, and before the party was off the ground, had fashioned herself a new undergarment: the modern bra.

Read More Here: Atlas Obscura

Ancient Egypt was one of the most feminist societies ever

Ancient Egypt was one of the most feminist societies ever, here's how

Although the West tends to nod to ancient Greece when remembering its cultural heritage, there is at least one important cultural movement whose roots are firmly buried in ancient Egypt: Feminism.

Ancient Greek women – with the exception of the Spartans – had virtually no rights. In fact, they weren't even regarded as citizens, were excluded from many public spaces and were basically seen as the property of their fathers and husbands.

Even though Spartan women were an exception to this practice, their rights and freedoms still fell far short of those afforded by ancient Egyptian women. You see, in Ancient Egypt, men and women were regarded essentially as equals.

"From our earliest preserved records in the Old Kingdom on, the formal legal status of Egyptian women - whether unmarried, married, divorced or widowed - was nearly identical with that of Egyptian men," a professor of Egyptology Janet Johnson told Al Jazeera.

So, thousands of years before Women's Suffrage was a thing in Europe and America, Egypt had things more or less figured out. 

What Not To Wear: A Short History Of Regulating Female Dress

What Not To Wear: A Short History Of Regulating Female Dress From Ancient Sparta To The Burkini

 “Let’s keep in mind that it is no more freeing to tell a woman what she can wear than to tell her what she can’t.”

Few can deny that the various burkini bans put in place by towns on the French Riviera this summer have become symbolic of thecountry’s struggle over “secular identity.” The bans have seemed particularly odd to Italian beachgoers and others around the world, who have pointed out that nuns are often seen on Italian beaches in their habit. Despite the French Conseil d’Etat’s suspension of the burkini ban, local mayors continue to say they will enforce the dress code. Cogolin Mayor Marc Etienne Lansade told CNN, ”if you don’t want to live the way we do, don’t come...If you are accepted in Rome — do like Romans do.”  As it turns out, there is an ancient history of telling women what they can and cannot wear as a means of controlling a community’s political message.

Continue reading article here at Forbes dot com

'The World's Oldest Profession'

'The World's Oldest Profession' May Not Be What You Think

Next to prostitution, wet-nursing (being hired to breastfeed another woman’s child) is perhaps one of the world’s oldest professions for women; nearly every advanced civilization employed some version of it. There are countless examples: a Sumerian lullaby from 3000 BC makes mention of a nursemaid suckling; King Tut built a lavish tomb to honor his own wet nurse; Islamic law views two children having suckled milk from the same woman as a lifelong form of kinship equal to that of a blood relative; ancient Romans could bring their hungry infants to the Columna Lactaria for a nursing; and in the medieval kingdom of Castile, wet nurses for royal children were hired for one or two decades and became governesses after weaning.

Continue reading Huffington Post article by Jennifer Grayson

Meghalaya: Modern Day Matriarchy

From the Sydney Morning Herald:

The one and only place in India where the birth of a baby girl is greeted with ecstasy is Meghalaya, where the mother's family, waiting in the corridor of the maternity ward, break into laughter, hugs and clap their hands for joy.

''When a boy is born, the reaction is very different, subdued - 'Oh, OK, fine, whatever God gives us must be accepted,'' says Merle Gilford, a nurse at Nazareth Hospital in Shillong, the capital of Meghalaya, a picturesque state of wooded hills and mists in the north-east.

In male-dominated, boy-fixated Indian society, Meghalaya is an aberration. It holds one of the world's last surviving matrilineal societies. The 1.2 million strong Khasi tribe invests all power in its women. For thousands of years, the Khasis have traced their descent, inheritance and lineage from mother to daughter.

Breasts: A Natural and Unnatural History

Environmental journalist Florence Williams says that "Breasts are bellwethers for the changing health of people.”

It was after reading a news article about the effects of chemicals on breast milk that Florence set out to  investigate the natural and unnatural history of breasts.

Her book presents the findings of her forensic investigation of the evolutionary, social, sexual and historical knowledge on breasts.

From The Independent (Ireland):

They are, says Florence Williams, author of new book 'Breasts: A Natural and Unnatural History', "bikinied, bared, flaunted, measured, inflated, sexted, YouTubed, suckled, pierced, tattooed, tassled and in every way fetishised".

Donut Dollies

From an article in the Huffington Post by Doug Bradley:

Donut Dollies were single, female college graduates who were used primarily as morale boosters for U.S. combat troops in Vietnam. Many of these young women were as motivated by JFK's call to duty and service as we guys were. But their training manuals instructed them to present themselves as reminders of girlfriends, wives and sisters waiting back home. As one SRAO member told my friend Heather Stur, author of Beyond Combat: Women and Gender in the Vietnam War Era, the donut dollies were to be "nonsexual symbols of purity and goodness." Good luck with that in a combat zone!

Mistresses: A History of the Other Woman

From the Telegraph:

The role of the mistress is as old as love and matrimony, but harder to define than either. Elizabeth Abbott, a Canadian academic whose previous books include a history of celibacy, has taken up the challenge in Mistresses: a History of the Other Woman.

Abbott writes that it was while researching her book on celibacy that “I came to realise that mistressdom is, in fact, an institution parallel and complementary to marriage. Though many people assume that adultery undermines marriage,” she notes, “many others believe that, paradoxically, it shores marriage up.” The material, in short, could hardly be richer or more complex.

In 13 chapters, beginning with illicit love in the ancient world and concluding with the changing role of the mistress after the sexual revolution of the Sixties, Abbott considers the careers of mistresses in a variety of different eras and cultures.

Geraldine Doyle (aka Rosie the Riveter)

From the Washington Post:

Geraldine Doyle, 86, who as a 17-year-old factory worker became the inspiration for a popular World War II recruitment poster that evoked female power and independence under the slogan "We Can Do It!," died Dec. 26 at a hospice in Lansing, Mich.

Her daughter, Stephanie Gregg, said the cause of death was complications from severe arthritis.

For millions of Americans throughout the decades since World War II, the stunning brunette in the red and white polka-dot bandanna was Rosie the Riveter.

Egypt: History of Women

Back in 2007 I found this rather interesting article on the Egyptian State Information website, and thought it may be of interest.

Women have played a significant role in Egyptian society. The earliest appearance of woman in public life in Egypt goes back to the Pharaonic era, where she enjoyed an equal status with man and engaged in politics and government. Queen Hatshepsut reigned from 1479 to 1457 B.C. She played an effective historical role in enhancing State structure in the realms of religion, trade and domestic and foreign policy. The same course was pursued by Nefertiti, Cleopatra and Shajaret ad-Dorr in later eras. With the rise of the modern State under Mohammed Ali's reign a magnificent role for women emerged.

From the Blogosphere

This week from the Blogosphere:

• The Myth of the Chastity Belt by Master Jack
• On Patriarchy by Historiann
• Its History - The Ideal Medieval Women by A Look Into The Past (Stephanie Allen)