Our Open Thread this weekend is hosted by this sun-cuddle of Asian Small-Clawed Otters, courtesy of Jim H. on flickr.
Today in history: the marriage of Anne Boleyn and Henry VIII was annulled, the Soviet Venera 6 began its descent into the atmosphere of Venus, the General Assembly of the World Health Organization (WHO) eliminated homosexuality from the list of psychiatric diseases, Erik Satie and Enya were born, William Heberden and Donna Summer died; and it’s Constitution Day in Norway and Nauru as well as the International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia, Intersexism and Transphobia.
Please feel free to use this thread to natter about anything your heart desires. Is there anything great happening in your life? Anything you want to get off your chest? Reading a good book (or a bad one)? Anything in the news that you’d like to discuss? What have you created lately? Commiserations, felicitations, temptations, contemplations, speculations?
Categories: Life
Soggy here, innit? 
In memoriam: Diana Rigg 
Getting out the ‘yes’ 
100 books by women in 2016 
Hoyden About Town 
My resident surgical-convalescent is doing well, I’m glad to report. Is actually going out for a social event with friends tomorrow!
I really don’t want to post this, because I love you all deeply, but instead of referring to IDAHOT and excluding bisexuals and intersex people, can you refer to IDAHOBIT instead – International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia, Intersexism and Transphobia?
Thanks
Hi Rebecca,
I think Lauredhel might be offline this weekend, but I’m happy to make the change and am grateful to you for letting us know.
I appreciate knowing, Rebecca. And I think generally HaT is the kind of place where you can point out issues like that and be heard, and that’s part of why I like it.
The ads tell me that “Edge of Tomorrow” is rated M for “science fiction violence and infrequent coarse language”. I didn’t know science fiction violence needed to be differentiated from other kinds of violence? (The real problem is of course that Hollywood has once again whitewashed a Japanese story.)
Not offline but still sick like bleagh (day 6, whee) and not seeing everything that’s posted. Thanks. I had taken the title straight off their webpage.
Hope you are feeling better soon Lauredhel sounds like something nasty.
Hoping you’re having a better day today, Lauredhel. My sympathies after my last dose of lingering lurgy – no fun at all.
Sadly no, but thankyou for your sympathies! At least I have a bit of a voice back, now.
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There would have been some classist stuff going on too, LF – girls from families who could afford dance lessons were expected to learn, and dance is far more athletic than it is generally given credit. Girls from families who could afford country club memberships (in the US) would have been expected to learn to play tennis well enough to round out a social mixed doubles at least, and also golf and horse riding (this last in particular a denotation of upper socioeconomic status, unless one lives where there are lots of sprawling farms/ranches needing youngsters for dirty jobs). I’ll grant you that the idea of girls competing athletically was far less common then, except in the private school set, where they had imported old-world traditions of hockey and lacrosse and house cups etc. Girls were still mostly expected to be just active enough to display their grace and generate a healthy glow rather than be competitive i.e. they could be athletic but it wasn’t to be obvious.
Australian expectations of athleticism generally were rather different to most places in the world back in the 50s and still to some extent now – the almost universal existence of municipal swimming pools around the country made them a major hub of socialisation in many towns and suburbs, alongside the local tennis clubs and community playing fields, and many families would have children of both sexes who were on swim squad until their early teens at least and played several sports in both summer and winter.
My mum grew up in the 40s and 50s here in Australia as a member of a solid working-towards-middle class family, and learnt ballet, netball, softball, and tennis as a child and teenager (playing netball at regional representative level into adulthood). In Australia at the time, ballet would have been the only one of those that presented a considerable cost to the family – netball and tennis (and (various codes of) football and cricket for the boys) were general social community sports available at the cost of shoes/racket/bat/togs and a small club membership/court/grounds fee, and tended also to be the sports offered by the schools for physical education classes and sports afternoons. There are still many country towns here where sports is the major community bonding/socialisation experience for many families, because it’s affordable and structured and gets everyone out of the house for a while. In the city, it tends to be not so affordable any more.
Curious about your sources, LF, as well as what regions you mean and who was doing the expecting. My mum grew up in the 50s and brags about how she used to ride brumbies bareback. But that was Brisbane, and they had their own ways.
When husband got a nasty cold a few days ago I said “I don’t care if I get it, as long as it doesn’t hit until Monday after I finish my lecture.” Well, here I am, and here it is. So thanks. I guess.
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Aha LF, I think we may have misread your original comment? Did you mean that shows such as Happy Days were presenting a myth of the non-athletic girl?
Yes, tigtog. Of course, Happy Days takes a lot from fifties TV which was itself a distortion of reality.
[rest of comment snipped – tl;dr from a sockpuppet ~ mods]Your original comment makes so much more sense to me now. I was coming up empty on images of Happy Days presenting girls doing anything more athletic than basic pom-pom waving cheerleading.
I’ve read somewhere that a higher proportion of married women worked during the ’50’s than during WWII. Everyone assumes that Rosie the Riveter went back home after the war, but actually she just got a ‘girly’ job and therefore became invisible instead.
Discovery of the day: I could hide ANYTHING in a container of beetroot and nobody else in this house would ever ever find it.
A bit of Maddie-meme brain bleach. Oh how poor kitties suffer!