I only have one love

"Capitalism is temporary. Dykes are forever"

Oh my god, what is your problem with me? What, I can’t even breathe now? Um, for starters, maybe because you hooked up with my best friend’s boyfriend? 

SCHOOL SPIRITS 1x08: MADISON’S BODY 

the Scarlet Garden 🦇

this is probably the most popular pattern ive made yet! it was...challenging to work on tbh, but i really love the end result! 💖

I think this is so neat and to all my trans followers - if you ever need help remembering just how valid and real you are, please look at this!

I’m generally not a huge fan of the 1950s, but I have to say Maryellen won me over. Why? She’s pro-vax. She survived the polio epidemic of 1952 and makes friends with the kids who were left disabled by it. The major historical event her two books cover is the release of the Salk vaccine. I research cemeteries. Do you know how many kid’s death certificates I’ve looked at that had vaccine-preventable illnesses on them? Do you know that child graves NOTICEABLY go from sad fact of life to extremely rare after 1955? Is the fact that you’re anti-vax and pro-gun just because you really really really love to see children die?

—a direct quote from the anti-vax, pro-gun, “pro-life” crowd.

Maryellen only gets two books and that honestly pisses me off so much. She’s from Florida! A Florida girl just like me! There’s so much to explore with that! The biggest thing that I sort of see in Maryellen’s collection is that the end of World War 2 put America on top of global politics and that its post-war economy made the 1950s the golden era of American consumerism. I want to see a supermarket playset!

The rise of consumerism meant that goods were primarily being bought from department stored and catalogues. While home-making clothes was still popular, it finally fully took the back seat to mass-produced fashion in the 1950s.

Technology transformed the home and time-saving appliances gave women more time to devote to their personal interests. The washing machine and dish washer *did* play a certain role in women’s liberation, but the idea that they are solely responsible for it is a marketing ploy made to sell more appliances.

Air-conditioning meant that places like Florida were a much more tolerable to live, and the rise of the suburbs created a new space for American leisure: the back yard. YES I want a patio and pool set for Maryellen, complete with a dad on the grill.

So in short, the 1950s are often looked back on with intense mis-placed nostalgia because it was an easy time for a certain part of the American middle class to be nostalgic for. BUT. Being in Florida, Maryellen would attend a Whites-only school, and most of the public places she visited would be segregated. There were no laws protecting women and children from abuse and domestic violence (if you want to have your day ruined, read about the Tongay Aquatots, a story out of Florida that Maryellen likely would have read about in the news). Homosexuality was considered a mental illness, and people caught being gay in public were labeled as sex criminals just like rapists and pedophiles. If you were mentally ill, you were still likely to spend your life locked in a mental institution and given routine electroshock therapy (for real though how much better would Marilyn Monroe’s story have ended if she’d have just had access to modern anti-depressants and cognitive behavioral therapy?). That and the fact that the USA and USSR were building bombs to nuke each other out of existence at a moment’s notice. So yeah living in the 50s actually kind of sucked major ass.

All that being said, as much as Maryellen’s collection leaves me wanting MORE because there’s just SO MUCH you can do with the 50s, I really like what she has. My one broad critique of Maryellen’s fashion is that her clothes are much more teenager than nine-year-old. Now, it’s given in her books that she has “very grown-up taste in fashion,” but that still doesn’t change the fact that a lot of her dresses are, well….. fashion for high school, not elementary school. Like her little gloves and pearls. She looks like she’s gonna go on her first date, not go roller-skating at the park. But I guess the dress is plenty casual if you just take the accessories off.

(credit @fifties-sixties-everyday-life​)

(Tuesday Rose Vintage)

Also I love that her dog is a dachshund. Nothing quite embodies 1950s middle America quite like a chubby dachshund.