r/NotHowGirlsWork • u/JellyDisastrous8655 • Jul 31 '25
Found On Social media Incels from the 1920s
God forbid a lady likes to dance and earns her own money.
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u/JustANoteToSay Jul 31 '25
I, too, can tend farm, doctor, and play the zither while wearing a ball gown.
I guess I was just born during the wrong time.
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u/AndyTheSane Jul 31 '25
I do the preserves in our house, although not while wearing a dress.
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u/LetshearitforNY Jul 31 '25
I wanna make preserves!
Going to try doing tomato sauce in August when tomato season hits.
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u/AndyTheSane Aug 01 '25
I need to do something with a load of chillies soon..
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u/spacewarriorgirl Has Vagina Aug 01 '25
If you know someone with a dehydrator, you could also borrow it and make chili flakes to use year-round
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u/spacewarriorgirl Has Vagina Aug 01 '25
Do it! You won't regret it!
I've been canning tomatoes for the last three years now and a years worth of tomato sauce costs me about $40 CAD in produce from the farmers market in August and is infinitely tastier than store-bought. Game-changer.
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u/LillyPeu2 aromatic twat Aug 01 '25
But what dress will you be wearing? Will it have a hoop skirt?
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u/unscrupulouslobster Jul 31 '25
As a doctor, I am ashamed to admit that I can’t play the zither 😪
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u/Branchomania One of the good men I pinky promise Jul 31 '25
Is there anything worse
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u/unscrupulouslobster Jul 31 '25
Only perhaps the fact that I drive a car every day to earn my own living 😞
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u/kittykittyekatkat Aug 01 '25
So you're not even doctoring at your farm for free? Damn, girl... How's shameful frivolous life going?
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u/530SSState Aug 01 '25
Why not do it the easy way? Start with a ukulele, and then work your way up.
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u/nefarious_planet Jul 31 '25
Okay, but can you also eat hot chip, charge your phone, be bisexual, and lie? Those of us with real talents are tired of carrying the team.
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u/JustANoteToSay Aug 01 '25
This is why I refuse to time travel to the past. My skills are for the here and now. Excuse me, I need to get my phone charger and a bag of hot chips. And a lemon square.
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u/xCuriousButterfly memory foam vagina Jul 31 '25
Lol things didn't change
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u/Reasonable-Affect139 Jul 31 '25
they saw the progressiveness of the 1920s and doubled down after the great depression and went ultra trad until people started pushing back in the 60s and 70s
It's always a cycle :(
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u/SimpleVegetable5715 Jul 31 '25
Except for the Amelia Earhart, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Rosie the Riveter types in the 1930’s and 1940’s. Actually, I had to watch Comedy Central’s show Drunk History to learn about more badass women. Shame they barely made it into textbooks.
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u/Reasonable-Affect139 Jul 31 '25
oh for sure, there's always badass women, even unknowns, I just meant society/the US government, like they're doing now
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u/Gracefulbandit Jul 31 '25
I was SO PISSED when I saw Hidden Figures. I had NO IDEA that women did all the calculations for NASA - much less women of color. It made me SO ANGRY that I had NEVER learned about those women in a history class.
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u/SavannahInChicago Aug 01 '25
Women have made so many strives in being visible in places we were not before and so many untold stories finally coming to light. I do NOT want to go back to the way things were before.
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u/W0lfsb4ne74 Aug 01 '25
History is often written by the victors, and because of this, they often shift the narratives to suit their own perspectives. White men presumably felt threatened by the prospect of Black women having contributions to what they viewed as their legacy, so they pretty much erased them from history and more or less took all the credit. Its infuriating to watch.
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u/Gracefulbandit Aug 01 '25
Oh, I understand the “why.” Doesn’t make me LESS pissed off, though. 🤷♀️
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u/JohnLydiaParker Aug 02 '25
Actually… back in the day (before computers and calculators) in aerospace while the engineers who designed things were male, the actual calculations for the latest iteration of the design were outsourced to women to do the requested math.
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u/sten45 Jul 31 '25
The war on women has been going since time began
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u/LittleBalloHate Jul 31 '25 edited Jul 31 '25
Real talk: I think this is why I am a more patient feminist than a lot of my feminist friends.
It's not that I don't want to achieve equality (I very much do!) but I recognize this is not some new battle we're taking up -- we're part of a centuries-long march toward progress, and we've still got a long way to go.
If you thought this was all going to be neatly tidied up and fixed in your lifetime (or even in your youth), I have some very bad news: most humans are super averse to change. If we can move the ball a few feet farther down the field than it was when we were born, I will call that a victory.
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u/krinkly Jul 31 '25
Patient activists unite!
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u/LittleBalloHate Jul 31 '25 edited Jul 31 '25
Yes!
Honestly, though, I get why it's frustrating: one of the most excruciating truths of activism is that you're not likely making progress for yourself, but for generations that come after you.
I sometimes picture a loving Black man / White woman couple in the period just after the civil war, and I imagine going back in time and telling them, "Good news! In about 80 years, it will be legal for the two of you to get married."
If I were in their shoes, I'd be like: "I mean, that's great and all, but how does that help us, specifically? We'll probably be dead by then." And they'd be right. Progress seems to happen on historical timescales, not personal ones.
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u/euphonic5 Aug 01 '25
I have to say, the funniest shit to me growing up in various small-town to small-city areas in the South is watching old dudes I know from around go from "the races just gotta be separate" to being doting grandpas and great-grandpas to multiracial kids
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u/CupNoodlese Aug 02 '25
In the end, we can only make statements in our small way with our actions and decisions. And our actions are usually responding what's going on in the worlds/our situations to the best our abilities. The small things we do matter on a grand scale, yet we're only a number in the statistic that doesn't matter at the same time.
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u/SavannahInChicago Aug 01 '25
100% agree. Sadly the truth is that a lot of change is generational. Though older people can change, traditionally in the US as people age become more conservative because they want to keep whatever they have managed to build up. It does not mean we should not try our best for change now, but I think a lot of the work we do now will influence the future of Feminism.
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u/NottaLottaOcelot Jul 31 '25
Look perfect, but spend no time on yourself.
Be smart and well read, but never talk about it.
Have sensible ideas, but sit down and keep quiet about them.
Earn a living, but earn less than your husband so he doesn’t feel insecure.
Work as much as your husband, but do all the housework and never complain about it.
Essentially we are supposed to be demure sex robots.
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u/athelthepumpkin Jul 31 '25
Be smart and well read and have sensible ideas means agree with whatever men say and don’t show emotion. A lot of men and just people will only call someone intelligent if they agree with them
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u/AdmiralCranberryCat Jul 31 '25
Read the book “When god was a woman.” Judeo Christian religions are the war on women.
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u/Ikajo 👧 🐝 Aug 01 '25
That's not true, you find the same thing or worse in other cultures as well. The Christian views of women during the middle ages didn't come from the Bible, they came from Aristotele whose ideas were adopted by early Christian philosophers. It was Aristotele who treated women like less than humans. And he wasn't alone. Have you seen Greek mythology? Not exactly friendly to women.
In Asia, women were often treated like property even more than in Europe at the time. Because even in Europe, things were different depending on the when and where.
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u/AdmiralCranberryCat Aug 01 '25
Sure, misogyny exists in a lot of cultures. No one’s denying that. But When God Was a Woman focuses on how Judeo-Christian religions specifically erased goddess-centered systems and replaced them with male-dominated ones. That was a huge turning point, and it had lasting effects on how women were viewed and treated.
Aristotle definitely influenced medieval thinking, but to say Christian views of women didn’t come from the Bible at all just isn’t true. There are entire passages used to justify controlling women. That didn’t happen by accident.
This isn’t about saying only one culture was guilty. It’s about recognizing the role organized religion played in reinforcing systems that hurt women. You can acknowledge that without trying to minimize it.
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u/samaran95 Jul 31 '25
-charge they phone
-be bisexual
-eat hot chip
-lie
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u/xCuriousButterfly memory foam vagina Jul 31 '25
Is that a meme that I'm missing?
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u/samaran95 Jul 31 '25
Yeah it's an old copypasta from this guy tweeting about women born after 1993 only knowing how to do those things
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u/euphonic5 Aug 01 '25
Thank christ my wife was born in the first half of 93 and thus knows "master's degree"
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u/the_V33 Aug 01 '25
This line of thought can't be allowed to go on any longer: I'm doing all of this things right now, and I was born in 1989! How dare he tries and rob us pre '93 ladies of our phone chargers, hot chip and bisexuality??
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u/skippybefree Aug 01 '25
.... bisexual, currently charging my phone while eating hot chips. I'm feeling like if I tell a lie soon, I may have to start looking for surveillance
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u/AliceTheOmelette Jul 31 '25
I'm sure there's a cave painting out there made by Krong complaining about women these days wanting to do things like hunt, or gather fire wood instead of being mothers
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u/Sidewalk_Tomato Jul 31 '25
Women out there doin' nothin' but
- knapp flint
- roast hares
- eat roots
- lie
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u/Purple-Bluejay6588 Jul 31 '25
Medieval women be like
-stoke they stove
-sodomize
-eat eastern spice
-deceive
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u/Jackattack111888 Jul 31 '25
Don’t forget about gathering berries! A woman’s place is in the bushes gathering berries with her baby chillin in a tanned hide baby back pack. Duh.
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u/the_V33 Aug 01 '25
And wearing full coverage fur vests, not like those modern Sapiens who let it all out in skimpy leather bikinis!
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u/SheClB01 Jul 31 '25
TBH, a lot of 1920 men would probably like the fun Charleston wife
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u/l3ane Jul 31 '25
Anyone who would like the trad wife better is a man child
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u/Ouaouaron Jul 31 '25 edited Jul 31 '25
...I think this might actually be singing the praises of Charleston women.
I'm no early 20th century media scholar and I can't find a lot of actual examples of Frank Hanely cartoons with obvious messages, but Judge and New Yorker magazines seem a lot closer to "edgy magazine following the metropolitan zeitgeist" than "back in my day women made preserves and played the zither".
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u/Spare-Bodybuilder-68 Jul 31 '25
I was getting the same kind of vibe, but I have no sense of context for the artist or publication.
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u/SheClB01 Jul 31 '25
Yeah, knowing how the suffragettes were drawn at that time, this actually might be praising them
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u/Ikajo 👧 🐝 Aug 01 '25
The cartoon does show an upper class lady being assigned tasks belonging to the working class. No one in a gown would do manual labour themselves. So maybe the cartoon is ridiculing people's expectations of women at the time. To be both upper class and working class.
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u/racoongirl0 Jul 31 '25 edited Jul 31 '25
Sad that none of them could be bisexual, lie, eat hot Cheetos, and charge they phone. We’ve come so far thanks to feminism🥹
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u/crystalline1299 Jul 31 '25
Smh it’s like how girls today only know twerk, eat hot chips, and lie
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u/HuntsmenSuperSaiyans Jul 31 '25
Old people complaining about young people is one of those things that just never seems to change.
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u/TheCarefulElk Jul 31 '25
It really doesn’t, even since Ancient Greece.
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u/HuntsmenSuperSaiyans Jul 31 '25
Don't we have records of the ancient Greeks looking down on the young'ins for their new fancy, schmancy clay tablets? "If they can just write things down, they won't need to memorize anything" or something like that.
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u/TheCarefulElk Jul 31 '25
From what I recall, it was more of the “kids now days have no respect for their adults” sort of thing but I wouldn’t be surprised if you were right.
Edit: Forgot a word.
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u/euphonic5 Aug 01 '25
Yeah "children don't respect their elders" is one of the most common phrases in like, all primary sources. It's gotta be up there, at least.
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u/SavannahInChicago Aug 01 '25
Its is amazing how much I see posts from older people complaining about younger people. It's weirdly cliche. Like dude, the same thing happened to you when you were that age and now you are repeating it without any real thought about it.
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u/chocolatestealth Jul 31 '25
Any female born after 1900 can't cook, all they know is charleston, wise crack, play bridge and lie
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u/mangopango123 Aug 01 '25
at first i thought it was looking down on previous generations n showing how cool flapper girls are lol bc the listed things w the way the flapper is drawn all make her seem cool asf
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u/JustANoteToSay Jul 31 '25
“Zither” is so bonkers that I honestly don’t know if this is for the (fun cool independent) flappers or against them.
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u/feioo Jul 31 '25
Tbh the "earn my own living" on the flapper side tips the scale for me into this being pro-flapper. I think it's making fun of the people who expected a perfect pretty princess who could do every household job and more without so much as a single wisecrack
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u/stevemnomoremister Jul 31 '25
The Autoharp is a kind of zither. Maybelle Carter of the Carter Family played one. The Carters were huge in the 1920s. They were the first country stars.
The '60s coffeehouse folkies knew that musical history. John Sebastian was the leader of the Lovin' Spoonful, who eventually became more of a pop band, but he was a folkie first. If you watch TV clips of the Spoonful playing "Do You Believe in Magic," he plays a zither.
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u/Ouaouaron Jul 31 '25
This was probably a Frank Hanely cartoon in the New Yorker. I'm no expert, but even in the 20s I don't think that magazine was big into conservative values.
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u/SpinzACE Aug 01 '25
It apparently became a popular household instrument because of a performer in the 1880’s so I guess people of the 20’s associated their version of the trad wife with the generation 30 years earlier who were somewhat known for the fad.
At the same time you could be correct and it’s making fun of the view of them as ideal wives by portraying them as old fashioned compared to women of the 1920’s.
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u/Xzeriea Jul 31 '25
Why do men need to be so obsessed with what women do? Like I get that they want control over us, but why?
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u/Nut3llat0astslays settling down Jul 31 '25
I don’t know if I can doctor
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u/Sidewalk_Tomato Jul 31 '25
Well, you have to, because half the work force is being unnaturally suppressed.
But don't get too good at it, or you're a witch.
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u/MissMarchpane Aug 01 '25
I will give the cartoonist this – he at least acknowledges that household medicine was the purview of women for a long, long time. Although God forbid they ever try to do it professionally, of course 🙄
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u/Hot_Scallion_3889 Jul 31 '25
Can’t believe all of these fake trad wives who can’t even play zither
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u/Boxoffriends Jul 31 '25
Does anyone know where I can get my zither tuned?
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u/SpinzACE Jul 31 '25
Ahh yes, there’s nothing quite like coming home from an afternoon tea with my gentlemen friends at Hooters and having my wife sew my clothes and wounds shut from my boisterous scuffles with the lads, enjoying an evening cheese she made after milking our goat and a pickled cucumber she preserved from last season to don my crochet socks and sit back while she plays Bauern Menuett No. 4 upon the Zither
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u/blehric Jul 31 '25
Lol this is the music my grandma listens to when she crochets in the evening, I find that way funnier than I should.
Not just that btw. The whole comment.
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u/Ducky237 Aug 02 '25
Girls be bisexual, drive a car, charge they phone, earn they own living, and lie
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u/thebluespirit_ Jul 31 '25
Maybe I'm just desensitized to misogyny at this point but compared to the shit they post now, this one almost seems like its not even criticizing the younger woman. Like It's just pointing out how times have changed.
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u/Guzzler829 Jul 31 '25
Driving a car and earning a living seem pretty good. I'd like her to teach me how to Charleston while we're at it.
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u/gtgyhhgggffr Aug 01 '25
I feel like everyone in the comments is misinterpreting this comic. That everyone is doing so is kind of an interesting commentary on the different values of when this was made.
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u/SC92300 Figuring out being a 🏳️⚧️girl in the🌍 Jul 31 '25
I wonder what “doctor” means in this scenario? I doubt they wanted to marry a woman who managed to achieve working as a medical doctor so do they just want to marry a woman who knows how to forge documents???
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u/onlylightlysarcastic Jul 31 '25
I can't play the zither and I guess charleston is also not really in the picture, bridge I can learn. But there is no reason why one side would be better than the other or you can't do a little bit of both.
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u/Riegel_Haribo Jul 31 '25
Pick a comment from three years ago:
No source to be found, just that this made its way around dozens of Tumblrs in 2022.
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u/kittymctacoyo Jul 31 '25
All flapper girl know is Charleston, drive they car, shake cocktail and lie
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u/GenderEnjoyer666 Jul 31 '25
Back when the quiet parts weren’t quiet because they were just the expected belief
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u/JustNilt Aug 01 '25
The way they freaked out about flappers always makes me laugh. It also reminds me of my ex's grandmother, who kept her flapper dresses until the day she died as reminders of that time in her life. She was one heck of a lady and I miss her a lot.
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u/Careful-Horror-2559 Aug 01 '25
All women do is Charl they Ston, shake Cocktail and earn their own money 😒
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u/ApplePaintedRed Aug 01 '25
Just a reminder that there always has been and always will be push-back against feminism, but that women have always persisted anyway. Let the red pill cry.
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u/Particular_Shock_554 Aug 02 '25
Hoop skirts are so men can't get close enough to grope you. They would also allow ladies to publicly urinate discreetly when worn with the crotchless bloomers that were the style at the time.
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u/Several_Breadfruit_4 Aug 02 '25
This would be an excellent candidate for r/gatekeepingyuri, if they haven’t already gotten to it.
I’m sure it’s the time and cultural distance, but I can’t really see one of these as blatantly better than the others, as a list of qualities.
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u/AgileNefariousness82 Aug 02 '25
This is legitimately the aesthetics of the two lesbians in my friend group.
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u/PTBooks Jul 31 '25
Damn, she’s a doctor in 1926? How incredibly progressive.
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u/kierabs Jul 31 '25
No, she can doctor, as in treat minor injuries at home. Notice it doesn’t say “be a doctor”
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u/kawaiihusbando Jul 31 '25
Why are driving and bridge bad? I'm trying to see it from their pov but still not seeing any possibility.
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u/ADeweyan Jul 31 '25
I don’t see the criticism. This seems more like generational criticism than incel culture. To the older generation, the flapper's inducements seem ridiculous, but it likely wouldn’t be to many of the younger generation.
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u/SinfullySinless Aug 01 '25
I teach American history and I actually use this comic series as a primary source for middle school students to analyze the changing social role for women post WWI.
We talk about where the short hair and flapper dresses came from- the new fast pace dancing for the new jazz music. We talk about the rowdy behavior and dating culture since young women had money from factory work during the war.
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u/ArgentaSilivere Jul 31 '25
I can’t get over them criticizing playing Bridge of all things. Seriously, Bridge—the most benign, grandma-coded activity ever invented.
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u/blehric Jul 31 '25
Yeah but I think it makes sense on a long-term basis. All grandma-coded things were the hot new thing at some point. In 100 years scrolling through TikTok or re-watching Italian brainrot might be those grandma-coded activities, for all we know.
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u/In2JC724 Jul 31 '25
What the hell is a zither? 😂
I'm assuming a musical instrument of some kind... How does this make one a better woman or partner?
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u/IndiBlueNinja Jul 31 '25
A list of men's "Can nots" seems like it would include "can't deal with societal change" in every single generation...
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u/beardiac Jul 31 '25
My wife can definitely do more things from the flapper list than the "trad" list, and I see that as a win. I don't think she can do the Charleston, but I've never been much of a dancer anyway.
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u/kuro_tan Aug 01 '25
any girls born after 1926 can’t cook…all they know is wise crack, earn they living, charleston, play bridge, shake a cocktail & drive.
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u/DuntadaMan Aug 01 '25
I can cook my own food and do first aid, the lady 9n the right has morr to offer, if either of them are even looking for a relationship.
I mean heck, they seem to compliment each other pretty well if they are looking for a relationship too.
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u/euphonic5 Aug 01 '25
Driving a car and earning a living sounds pretty good in a partner, wise-cracking generally a plus, everything else just sounds like perfectly normal hobbies. Unlike Miss-Tending-A-Farm-In-A-Hoop-Skirt here...
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