#obviously ymmv

[transhuman-priestess]

I know it’s TDOV and being hidden isn’t great but I also feel the need to say that like, the best, most fulfilling years of my life as a trans person were between 2011 and 2015, before the “trans tipping point.”

I know my experiences aren’t universal but after that I ended up getting misgendered more and more, directly in proportion to how visible trans folks were as a cohort.

Like, honestly, being visible hasn’t really helped me at all so I’m never really that jazzed about TDOV.

[houseofwolvess]

i keep seeing posts about ppl's *eyelashes* thickening after starting testosterone, and like. how did i not hear about that before

[crackdkettle]

ngl it’s very difficult to stomach paying $10+ for crepes when you’ve been making them since you were six years old

[snow-system-wol]

Interconnected chaos map: for if you are really determined to never use an aetheryte

(or if you want to know aetheryte proximity to zone links)

[fairandfatalasfair]

I've seen a few people trying to make a case for why this or that piece of modern fiction should 'count' as a Story in the camlann-verse, and like... I do get the temptation to do that when you have a set of criteria to work with. But my genuine impression is that what makes something a Story is less about fiddly specific criteria and more about overall vibes. The apocalypse is not a fairy bargain; you cannot rules-lawyer your way around it.

It's not so much that it has to have been spoken aloud the first time it was told and be X number of years old and have Y number of contributors and be known by Z number of people. It's that it has to exist in that space between fiction, history, and myth where the details of its origins disappear into the fog. It has to live in our collective unconscious, so that we assume people in our community will know about it without necessarily knowing where they learned it. It has to be the kind of story we talk about in terms of versions and variants rather than originals and spin-offs. It has to have been told and retold so many times you'd hardly recognise the "original" version if you heard it, because every teller has reshaped it just a little.

It's not about boxes on a checklist, it's about stories existing as a living part of the world.

[calamitys-child]

Update on "how do I get my regular dose of proprioceptive and impact input the adhd is becoming utterly unmanageable without it": turns out if you ask enough people this you will absolutely find a guy who knows a guy who really loves pole fitness, rock climbing, rollerskating, trampolining, skateboarding, etc etc and they're without fail absolutely DELIGHTED to have a new recruit on hand. Jump high go fast be strong swing on things wear big protective gear and land hard on floor in safe bouncy manner. Does anybody want to play games with me I've discovered playing games

[c-ptsdrecovery]

A lot of us have trouble with self-care because we were taught by early caregivers never to put our own self-interest first.

Here’s the thing: in a perfect society, people would look out for each other, right? Because each person deserves to have people looking out for them. But sometimes there isn’t another person who can take care of you.

You are the person with the primary responsibility of looking out for you. 

Little kids’ parents have that primary responsibility, but when the kid reaches a certain age, they are the one with that primary responsibility.

Yes, you have some level of obligation to take care of friends and family and the needy, but the one person everyone can agree that you definitely have the responsibility to take care of is you. 

Think of it like a logic puzzle. Every person deserves to have somebody taking care of them. You are in a situation where nobody else is going to take care of you or nobody else can take care of you. You still deserve to have somebody taking care of you, and you are the person with the primary responsibility to do that. 

Yes, there are times when we don’t put ourselves first, for whatever reason, but for a lot of us, we have abandoned ourselves and have stopped fulfilling that responsibility to care for ourselves. You are as deserving of care as anybody else, and you are your primary caregiver: if you don’t do it, who will?

[punsbulletsandpointythings]

Man, I enjoy knitting/yarn social events. There are very few other situations where I find it so easy to just start chatting with strangers.

[agnesandhilda]

fascinating that isagi can (and often does) notice the ways he and kaiser operate similarly but gets mortally offended if anyone else comments on it

[eatyoursparkout]

hello! this ask is prompted by a recent reblog of yours about rubber preservation. I'd love to hear your thoughts relating to TFs and preservation and plastics. what should folks know? any best practices for storage? do you think there's another way manufacturers could produce them to make them more hardy? etc etc. thanks :)

Sure! I'm not a conservator by trade (and even within conservation plastics are still somewhat of a new and niche thing), but I can offer some general advice.

The tl;dr is that like 90% of other materials your best bet is to keep them clean, out of strong light, in an environment that isn't too hot or too cold, and to avoid temperature/relative humidity (RH) fluctuations as much as possible. And above all, make sure that they're well-ventilated.

The tl;dr tl;dr is that plastics just suck.

More detail under the cut! (...Lots of detail. Sorry.)

There's 2 main problems with plastics.

The first is that a lot of them are just kind of inherently unstable. Unlike a nice chemically stable material like glass, they want to deteriorate when exposed to things like....oxygen. Rip. And once damage has set in, it's basically impossible to reverse/treat.

The second is that there's really no regulations or standards when it comes to the manufacture of plastics. There's a bazillion different types, and even if you're able to identify the specific kind via chemical test (and this often damages the object in question) it's almost impossible to know what other kinds of additives went into the plastic soup that created the thing in front of you. This also makes it really hard to develop a standardized approach to caring for and treating plastics, because two things can react wildly differently even if they appear virtually the same.

That means that when it comes to plastics, preventative conservation is the name of the game. You want to mitigate the effects of the agents of deterioration on the object as much as possible. And in the meantime, make peace with the fact that nothing can be preserved indefinitely :')

TFwiki has an article talking about the common types of plastic used in TF figures, which is neat and useful. Gonna hazard a guess that most figures are predominantly ABS, which is great because it's a fairly sturdy hard plastic that probably won't show effects for a while. I'd be statistically more concerned about figures with squishy, rubbery bits (looking with apprehension at my Kingdom line BW figures).

So! While the ideal environment for plastics is cold, dark, dry and oxygen-free (lol), when it comes to personal collections you can obviously only take reasonable measures. They're in our homes, not a vault. The main things you want to keep in mind:

Light fades and discolours plastic over time, and can eventually cause certain kinds to become brittle. The more lux that your figures are exposed to, the faster that's going to happen. So while it's not reasonable for your house to maintain museum-level lighting or shell out for fancy UV filtered cases, I'd keep your displays out of direct sunlight at minimum.

High temperatures can increase the rate of oxidation, and low ones can encourage shrinkage and brittleness. Either one can do damage over time, but what's worse is fluctuations in temp that force the material to weather one extreme to the other. If you've got your figures in a storage unit or something, a climate controlled one would be ideal, or at least insulating the box so that they're kept at a more stable temp. In the home, I'd keep them away from any vents/heaters.

As far as humidity goes, it's less damaging to plastics than a lot of other materials, but you still want to avoid any large fluctuations that will cause the material to expand and shrink (and eventually crack). Wherever you're storing your figures, try to make sure it's somewhere <65% RH (this is a high cutoff compared to most materials, so your home is probably fine unless you live somewhere humid without A/C).

Pollutants are a big one for plastics. Dust can cause microabrasions and damage over time, so keeping your figures clean is a good idea. I'd use a soft brush to avoid scratching your figures, or a lightly moist swab of some kind. Don't risk any kind of chemical cleaners, bleach, vinegar, etc. and I'd even avoid compressed air to be safe. If you want to be really careful about it, wash your hands before handling your figures. Humans carry all kinds of oil and dirt on their fingers- that's why museum professionals are often wearing gloves.

And then there's the problem of off-gassing...

Plastics can unfortunately give off vapours that can negatively affect other plastics in their vicinity. The especially bad ones are called malignant plastics (evil, scary), but it's hard to ID them until they start falling apart or damaging the things around them. Best course of action is to reduce contact between different figures (pose them together, but maybe don't leave someone's hand on someone else's shoulder for five years), and make sure that there's good ventilation.

If you're going to box up figures, don't be like me and store them in your parents' basement for years in an airtight container :') Go for a more pourous material like archival grade corrugated board, and use something as a buffer between figures like polyethylene bags/sheeting so that they're not touching (there's pros and cons to sealing each individual figure in a polyethylene bag- it'll be trapped with its own gases which could speed up deterioration, but the microclimate will keep it from affecting other figures around it).

And if you have boxed figures.... either commit to leaving them boxed forever or crack those bad boys open. My partner opened up their Pacific Rim figures after several years of them stewing in their own vapours and sadly they ended up falling apart in their hands. Thanks NECA.

As for manufacturing, you'd have to ask a chemist! I'm not sure exactly what it is that turns certain plastics to gunk and causes others to shatter, but I'm sure standardizing the way we make them would go a long way. Unfortunately, the stuff that's going to better for the planet in the long run (biodegradable) is also going to deteriorate quicker by design, so that's a whole other issue.

Anyway! That's a lot of info, but I hope it was an interesting and/or helpful introduction to plastic care lol. If you're interested in more thorough reading, I'll direct you to the CCI's handy dandy free online resource. They're an invaluable resource for all kinds of materials care.

[clevercrumbish]

If I can speak candidly for a moment, it's extremely obvious that opposition to intergenerational or even inter-age-group friendships is a primarily childish take not just because it signifies a lack of understanding of important experiences for their development as a well-rounded person and an unhealthy paranoia about predation but also because it betrays a lack of experience with observing what happens when somebody who does only have friends their own age reaches the point of a commonly age-keyed negative life experience.

Like yeah dog, sure, a 40 year old being friends with a 25 year old is sus. Come back to me when your last remaining grandparent is helpless or senile or slowly dying and dealing with that consumes your parents' entire life and you realise that everyone they can talk to is statistically having the exact same experience and that collectively none of them are doing okay about it because they can't escape this grim ass topic. Then think about how it is for the grandparent too and go and fucking talk to someone you weren't born within three minutes of.

[lifebloodblue]

We all know that Spock found some way to get Kirk out of the Nexus even though it was never explicitly stated in canon just like we all know that Kirk and Spock were in love with each other even though it was also never explicitly stated in canon

[favvn]

You know, I get that Star Trek: TOS has a lot of lore surrounding it. The producers say one thing, the actors say another, and the passage of time does not help to clarify things as memory changes and opinion changes, too (look at William Shatner's infamous back-and-forth opinion on K/S, but, then again, he's an outlier adn should not be counted). The change in the women's uniforms from the two pilot episodes to the actual series has been discussed to absolute death. Is it sexist and catering to the male gaze or is it empowering and a sign of the changing attitudes to sex, fashion, and women's burgeoning freedoms in the 1960s? My own thoughts on the matter are divided, but something that has always made me lean more on the "it's sexist" half are Star Trek's production and air dates, Mary Tyler Moore, and Katharine Hepburn. (Would you still love me if I wrote a critical essay about the Star Trek miniskirt dress 🥺👉👈)

Under the cut is a discussion of the progress of the 1960s and why pants/trousers on women still matter. (Side note: UK people, sorry. Please envision trousers instead of pants otherwise lmao / semper ubi sub ubi!) With quoted articles included, this is over 4k words.

A few disclaimers before I begin: I use very gendered language in discussing the impacts of the pill owing to the era. To use gender neutral language would detract from what the pill meant to the women of the 1960s and the strides made for women since. This entire essay is centered on the United States since Star Trek is a product of the country. This essay is by no means an exhaustive look on all subjects discussed (especially the contentious history of the pill, the feminist debates it created, the conservative backlash to it, etc.) or a summary of all the social changes of the 1960s which would also impact Star Trek (the continuing progress of the Civil Rights Movement, the landmark ruling of Loving v Virginia to legalize interracial marriage in 1967, the Counterculture movement, the legalization of No-fault Divorce in California in 1969, etc.), but I hope it does do what I intend which is to explain why I feel that the women's uniforms on Star Trek: TOS are not as empowering as one wishes.

Background context: Star Trek began production in 1964 with the original pilot episode "The Cage," although it remained unaired until the 1980s. At this time in the 1960s, women made up one third of the workforce in the United States. In 1960, the Food and Drug Administration approved what is colloquially known as the pill. At the time of its inception, it was life-changing for both married and unmarried women alike in giving women an easier to use contraceptive and a more reliable means to prevent pregnancy (for example, a condom would require the husband's cooperation within a married couple. A diaphragm would require spermicide to be effective. The pill requires only one person's input). I shouldn't have to explain why the ability to prevent pregnancy at an individual level means greater freedom for women or how much time and energy is needed to raise children, the sacrifices that have to be made for unplanned pregnancies, and to say nothing of the issue of money lurking behind it all.

Within this time frame, women beyond movie stars were beginning to wear capri pants. While this trend first began in the 1950s, the pants' popularity continued to rise throughout the 1960s. Prior to this, pants were an option within woman's fashion in the US going as far back as the 1930s (and technically even further than that if one wants to look to the whole of human fashion), yet women in the US did not have the right to wear pants in public until 1923.

The 19th Amendment actually preceded women’s right to wear trousers in public, which was granted by the U.S. attorney general on May 29, 1923. Yet for several decades wearing pants remained a crime of fashion, punishable under state laws banning cross-dressing by both sexes, which aimed to keep women (and men) in their places. In 1933, Joanne Cummings was arrested for wearing pants in public in New York. In 1938, Los Angeles kindergarten teacher Helen Hulick was barred from testifying in a burglary case when she arrived at the courthouse wearing trousers. Evelyn Bross was charged for wearing trousers on a Chicago street in 1943, even though she was dressed for her wartime job as a machinist in clothes “more comfortable than women’s and handy for work,” as she explained. Bross was acquitted. As the judge explained to The Journal Times, “I think the fact that girls wear slacks should not be held against them when they are not deliberately impersonating men. Styles are changing.” (source)

Meanwhile women's bathing suits changed from a standard two-piece to what we recognize as the modern bikini due to a rise in beach films of the 60s (think: Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini). Skirt hemlines grew shorter throughout the 60s, revealing first a few inches above the knee, to the upper thigh and just below the groin, and the miniskirt made its debut (although debate abounds as to who necessarily invented it along with how short it was originally intended to be). Needless to say, the pill in conjunction with changing fashions launched what is referred to as the second sexual revolution in the 60s.

“The miniskirt was an extraordinary phenomenon and had a big impact because it was part of the emerging youth culture of the 1960s and it was very much an expression of that youth culture and also of the beginnings of the sexual liberation movement due to the invention of the birth control pill. So it was kind of a historic moment,” says Valerie Steele, director and chief curator of The Museum at FIT. “You had had something of a youth culture and a short skirt in the 1920s as well but, although young women in the ‘20s were seen as being far more sexually liberated than their precursors, that primarily meant that they felt more free to go out on dates unsupervised, choose their future spouse, kiss multiple men before getting married and sometimes engage in petting. But they still were threatened with what had always limited women’s sexual freedom − that danger of becoming pregnant.” Fifty years after its invention, the garment still has many barriers to break.“With the rise of all kinds of religious fundamentalism in the world today there’s been a backlash against women and against sexual liberation [...] You’re looking forward to a much freer future and backwards to a much more restricted past, and the miniskirt is kind of symbolic of that.” (source)

In 1963, President Kennedy signed the Equal Pay Act into law, aiming to reduce the gender disparity in pay. Also in 1963, Betty Friedan published The Feminine Mystique. The book started out from a survey offered to her fellow classmates from Smith College, which found that many of them were unhappy with being a housewife after completing college and/or holding a career before marriage. These results, in addition to numerous women's magazines that Friedan worked for and the strict gender roles and unbridled consumerism of the 1950s, led her to examine how so many girls and women were now being taught to believe motherhood and being a housewife was all there is to life. Despite the limitations and severe oversight of Friedan's book (bell hooks famously criticized the work for failing to consider how race and class alters Friedan's claims in her own book From Margin to Center published in 1984), it has been credited with launching the Second Wave of Feminism in the US, and its timing enabled it to have the impact that it did despite its limited scope. I want to be clear: I understand the limitations of Friedan's book but it still has a lot of history attached to it and is contemporary to Star Trek's production. To put it all plainly and simply: things were changing for the better for women as conservative elements in society began to loosen, and Star Trek was in production and on air as it happened.

The Air Date versus the Production Date

"The Man Trap" was the first episode to be aired on September 8, 1966 after the second pilot episode "Where No Man Has Gone Before" was produced in 1965. The first produced episode after the second pilot was "The Corbomite Maneuver," however, studio executives passed on airing it as an introduction to the series owing to its incomplete special effects and opted for "The Man Trap" over "Where No Man Has Gone Before" (too exposition heavy), "The Naked Time" (utter fools for bypassing it), and "Mudd's Women" (there were concerns about "space hookers" being mentioned in reviews which would damage the network's reputation and discourage sponsors; the times might have been changing but not everything follows suit/for all that television was able to do during the era of the Hays Code, network censors would still be wary of certain issues pertaining to sex).

In "The Man Trap", we are introduced to both Lieutenant Uhura and Yeoman Rand. Both wear miniskirt dresses as do any other female crew members that we see in the background.

What's interesting to note is that, right away, in the first aired episode, there is dialogue from two men commenting on Yeoman Rand. Not for her skills, of course, but due to her looks and her body:

BLUESHIRT: How about that? REDSHIRT: Yeah, how'd you like to have her as your personal yeoman?

Do I have to explain that the second comment might as well end with a "if you know what I mean?" How empowering, how optimistic to see the sexism of the 20th century make its ugly way into the unknown future of the 23rd century. (This is, in fact, made worse if one reads what Whitney herself had to say about filming the episode.) Yeoman Rand is not seen as a person here, regardless of her preserved femininity. She's an object to be leered at by the male crew members thanks to the miniskirt dress.

I know that one could argue that the fact that the women in Star Trek wear this uniform is not inherently sexist--clothes are a neutral thing until one places meaning on them (although, how can clothes remain truly neutral when various clothing items are designed for a purpose and when clothing is a visual element? How you dress alters how you are perceived and you cannot escape the perception of others outside of becoming a hermit.) The problem is that, even if the rest of the series does not use comments like the above dialogue, the era that it was produced in would already fill in that unspoken gap, even if a modern audience were to reach a point where that no longer happens. "The uniforms are different because men and women are different. Men don't wear dresses," are the 20th century attitudes that would still influence Star Trek: TOS, even if they aren't explicitly stated in every episode. (Any time I have to hear Uhura say, "I'm frightened" or some variation of the phrase, I want to scream because it's the old idea that women aren't as courageous or brave as men. That the men must offer the protection and reassurance even centuries beyond our present.) The series is very much a product of its time despite its optimism for the future, and one could argue that its brand of optimism is very much a result of the 1960s.

Contrast the new women's uniform from the series itself versus the uniform used in the two pilot episodes and what do you notice? Originally, the women wore the same pants as the men. The cowl necklines of their sweaters are the only difference in their clothes. The two pilot episodes were produced in 1964 and 1965 respectively whereas the actual series was produced from 1966 to 1969 during the height of continuing social changes (the ongoing Civil Rights movement, the Counterculture movement, etc.). Within those years, the women's uniform changes from the same uniform given to the men to something that is uniquely and obviously intended only for women to wear.

Now, I realize both Nichelle Nichols and Grace Lee Whitney have said they approved of the new uniform, and a lot of opinion has held that if the two actresses were fine with it, it must truly be alright. Again, I understand the symbolism that a miniskirt can hold and its timeliness in the era. However, the fact that the two pilot episodes envisioned a future wherein women work alongside men but are not set apart as women by the outer symbols of femininity is a big deal to see, and it takes on renewed importance when seen alongside the changed uniform within the next 2 years. Rather than appearing empowering, it looks more like a regression, a, "We can't let women become too equal with men, despite the 23rd century setting. We can't blur the lines between the genders. We have to reassert the women's femininity, so we'll put them back in dresses same as is expected of them in the 20th century." This is the same attitude used to dissuade women from wearing pants during the 1920s and 1930s. As Friedan writes in The Feminine Mystique, quoting a 1956 article from Life magazine (and no, the article is not satire, sadly; one could argue I'm pulling this bit out-of-context because Friedan was contrasting how the magazines vilified career women while praising the new housewife, but I would argue it still holds merit as many career women did, in fact, wear pants at their jobs. The praise for a skirt remains because it does not challenge the idea of femininity or the roles that women can hold/what women are capable of. It reasserts the Feminine Mystique):

Or, to quote Naomi Wolf's introduction to The Beauty Myth (yes, I am aware of the hot mess she has become. She made points with this, however):

In other words, while the above scene from "Tomorrow Is Yesterday" is seen as progressive to some due to Kirk's correction of Captain Christopher's response, it is telling that he--the man transported right out of the 1960s--calls her a woman first and foremost because that is what the dress serves to do. Of course she's a woman. The men are never seen wearing that uniform. It sets her apart and highlights her gender in that separation.

Mary Tyler Moore

The Dick Van Dyke Show aired from 1961-1966 and focused on the lives of Robert and Laura Petrie. Rob worked as a television comedy writer while Laura was a stay-at-home mother to their son, Ritchie, yet one episode plot does feature Laura returning to work as a dancer for television (to, of course, the forgone conclusion that the house crumbles without her and returning to work is too exhausting, so she'll stay a housewife and only work sporadically). What is notable about the series in this case is that Mary Tyler Moore was the reason Laura Petrie wore capri pants instead of full-skirted dresses.

She was not the first woman to wear pants on television, but she chose to wear them so much on The Dick Van Dyke Show that network sponsors tried to limit how often she could wear them. Moore defended her decision by arguing that no housewife she knew was doing housework in a dress. The network was concerned, however, that the capri pants showed her--shall I say--assets too well and wanted to hide things under a full skirt instead. Ironic, isn't it? A miniskirt and capri pants are too provocative. The fact that by trying to force Moore's character into a dress reinforced the image of a housewife as one who vacuums and cooks in a full skirted dress and heels probably didn't hurt. (source)

I mention Mary Tyler Moore as she is an example of both a woman who elected to wear pants and the same mindset that would have wanted the women of Star Trek dressed in something more feminine even if it went unsaid (although the shortness of the dresses would be a flag for their social mores). This is what I mean when I say I am divided: Moore was admonished for wearing pants for fear that they were too titillating and the women of Star Trek were placed into dresses that surprisingly got by the objection of a censor owing to their length and the fact that none of them danced on the show. (I am aware that Nichelle and Whitney were both dancers and there are photos of Nichelle in the uniform while holding her leg up as if at a ballet barre instead of the bridge set. Neither actress danced on the show, however, so if this was used to bypass any skirt length concerns, it wouldn't necessarily be a surprise).

Mary Tyler More both danced and appeared in a leotard on The Dick Van Dyke Show, and I mention this because the miniskirt and hotpants have their roots in dance fashion, yet that falls apart as an excuse to bypass the censors if the actresses hired do not dance within their roles or if the episode does not hold the plot line of them being dancers. In other words, how did they get the dresses by the censors when considering the responses of the clip below, responses that were very true to the production era. Again, while television was not beholden to the Hays Code as cinema was, the conservative values held by the code would still be seen through the censor objections. The only guess would be following costume design specifications to a malicious compliance degree--the women's uniform does cover everything until someone has to sit or bend at the waist (to say nothing of if someone is thrown out of their seat)--and excusing risque designs as "it's the future and women wear less clothes." Neat that it took until The Next Generation to give us the skant for men. There's a fun destruction of gender roles in that, however scant of an appearance it had in the show. (Why it wasn't included in TOS could very well had been owing to the social attitudes of the day / I know there's more to be said about Kirk's nudity in the series and what that means in terms of reversing what gender is objectified and whose gaze is being met / the history of male nudity in public to begin with as it was once illegal for men to be shirtless in public, that men have historically worn dresses and skirts before, and so on, but this is not about the men. Sorry.)

For reference, this is a scene from season 1, episode 8 in which Laura visits Rob while still in her dance leotard. 1960s conservatism and sexism is on display with Rob's, Buddy's and the unnamed delivery boy's (played by Jamie Farr) reactions compared to Laura's response of "these are just my dance practice clothes, it's no big deal" (arguably the same response one could have to defend the miniskirt dress in Star Trek. I'm aware of this, but I cannot accept it given history):

(As an aside, do give The Dick Van Dyke Show a chance. It is hilarious despite the limitations of the era / it's a lot like Star Trek: TOS in that regard.)

Katharine Hepburn

I don't post enough about her to show that I am a fan but I am a fan (of three famous Hepburns: Katharine Martha Houghton Hepburn, Katharine Hepburn, and Audrey Hepburn), and Katharine Hepburn was legendary for her preference for wearing pants long before it became fashionable for women to do so (Marlene Dietrich was another legendary actress who did the same, although I am more familiar with Hepburn):

But following her own style rules wasn’t always easy for Hepburn, a woman who would be later be revered as one of the greatest screen legends of all time and admired for her gumption. Studio staff hid her slacks backstage to stop her wearing them (she reportedly chose to go pantless until they were returned to her). Media outlets published lengthy articles questioning the Hollywood women who chose to wear men’s clothes. “Trousers for women are incredible, ridiculous and absurd!” Movie Classic magazine quoted Hepburn’s fellow actress Constance Bennett saying of the trend in 1933. “I can’t imagine wearing such atrocities.” (source)

"It was almost scandalous that she wore pants," said Marjorie Plecher Snyder, a former costume supervisor who worked on "Desk Set" in 1957. "It was an unheard-of thing." Like many leading ladies of her day, Snyder said, Hepburn simply knew what worked on her athletic body, with its long neck and limbs. While the press routinely recorded Hepburn's trouser-clad appearances as if they were transgressions, every photograph helped direct women to new ways of dressing. Hepburn, not Giorgio Armani, most helpfully advanced the cause of androgynous clothing for women. The teenager who once cut her hair short and called herself "Jimmy" Hepburn explained her style in a 1975 interview with Ladies' Home Journal, in which she said: "I've dressed this way for 40 years, just because I had brains enough to know that certain kinds of shoes were comfortable and keeping up stockings is uncomfortable." (source)

(I've tried to set the video to play at 160 seconds in but it may not do so on mobile. I would edit and upload my own clip but tumblr limits one uploaded video per post.)

So why bring Katharine Hepburn into the issue of the women's uniform in Star Trek: TOS? Because, quite simply in my opinion, it is shameful that some 30-40 years after someone like Katharine Hepburn, after how the capri pant became a fashion trend in the 50s and 60s, after Mary Tyler Moore skirted the network by wearing the pants she wanted to wear anyways, in a future boldly imagined we see women dressed in the same uniform as men for only two episodes (one which sat in the can until the 80s) only to watch the pants be exchanged for miniskirt dresses. In this view, with the history that leads up to it, it looks bad, no matter how I'm told to view the miniskirt.

I could, perhaps, argue further about professional dress codes and the way that we dress is dictated according to circumstance (example: what I wear at home is not what I wear at work or to the store. That tank top I got bleach on? Fine around the house, not so out in the eyes of society), but that would potentially get into the moralizing debate that dress codes are dictated not by practicality (pants will forever be more practical than dresses and skirts. One does not have to worry about showing their underwear in a pair of pants) but by puritanical standards and a celebration of modesty, that clothes are neutral at best, and no one is asking to be cat-called or worse raped for what they wear. The only thing that stops me from fully embracing the idea of clothes as truly neutral is that, as with anything that necessitates perception and therefore the opinion of another person, the neutrality is lost with the act of being perceived. For example, I tell myself that gender is just a dress up game and that my clothes mean nothing on their own, but no matter what, someone is going to look at me and give me pronouns and assign a gender to me in that moment, regardless of my feelings on the subject. There's no way to get around that beyond becoming a hermit.

In a way, perhaps, I wonder if modern audiences have come to forget how novel it is for a woman to be able to wear pants, how originally it was illegal to wear pants as a woman in the US, that society itself has been slow to fully adopt to the change in attitude (female senators were not allowed--according to the dress code, although it was unofficially enforced at best--to wear pants on the Senate floor until 1993, for one example), and that it is now taken for granted as something ordinary and expected rather than something that has been feared and demonized for destroying gender roles. In other words, despite the length of a miniskirt challenging conservative views and being another clothing option for women to choose from, it still upholds the notion that dresses are for women and that even within the professional sphere, women must still dress like women in order to have respect and in order to retain their femininity lest gender roles are challenged too much. Despite what it may challenge in terms of conservatism, a lot of people (regardless of gender) will still attach the judgment that to wear so short of clothing is to inherently be provocative and asking for the leering attention of the male gaze. This in turn feeds into the question of if such clothing offers respect and authority and if it is even professional for a job. (There is an argument to be said that it is infantilizing. By shortening the hemline to what is normal for a child, it does grant youthfulness to an adult woman, but it also places her in the clothing measurements intended for a child, not an adult.) This is what I wonder about when it comes to discussions of the women's uniform, in addition to the history that led up to it, and the strides we are still making now in the 21st century to enable women to be taken seriously within their job fields while wearing pants.

[chesthighwater]

the original thief games are on sale for 97 CENTS on steam ❗❗❗

thief gold is 97 cents! the metal age is 97 cents! deadly shadows is 98 cents for me for some reason BUT STILL THIS IS CRIMINALLY CHEAP. that is less than a pack of gum nowadays!!!

go buy thief do it now

and get tfix for thief gold, t2fix for metal age, and sneaky upgrade for deadly shadows. AND GO EXPERIENCE THE BEST STEALTH GAME EVER MADE

[transrevolutions]

a key thing to understand about how laws "regulating" cop/government behavior work is that "[xyz thing] is illegal for them to do" doesn't mean they aren't going to do it, all it means is that maybe if you're lucky you can try suing them later.

[rabbitindisguise]

my therapist gave me this exercise where instead of undercutting postive thoughts with "but [negative thing here]" I need to undercut negative thoughts with "but [positive thing here]" and she prefaced this with "I know this is gonna sound stupid but trust me, it can work" so I can't even be mad that something that sounds so trivial actually helps a Lot