Part of me is exasperated at all the very young, white, privileged fashion bloggers that have risen to fame (Cory Kennedy is the obvious, but also Alexi Wasser from imboycrazy.com, and I know there are others whose names/URLs I cannot recall), so am kind of meh about hearing news about Tavi Gevinson.
That said, having just read her blog, she comes across as wide-eyed and adorable- reading her reaction over meeting Chloƫ Sevigny and not meeting Hedi Slimane, she seems as much an excitable fourteen year old as anyone, privilege and extraordinary circumstances notwithstanding, I guess.
@Vivien Smith-Smythe-Smith: What is her privilege, exactly? I've been wondering for a while how she gets her hands on such extraordinary clothing at such a young age. Are her parents in the fashion world?
"1,500 girls lined up on Saturday in New York, and another 1,000 in Los Angeles, to try to be chosen as America's representative to the Ford agency's Supermodel of the World competition"
Haven't they been running that competition for a while now? Like, pre-ANTM days?
@femme-bot: Oh, SMOW's been around forever. But I don't think they held cast-of-thousands ANTM-style free-for-alls on selection day. That is pure reality TV.
Reason #1 why I don't buy a Libertarian impulse behind the Little House books:
The entire series is about sharing what you have with others, from Laura's penny to Almanzo's ride for wheat for the whole community. While there's a lot of emphasis on self-reliance, it's more communal and familial than individualistic.
My dad grew up in DeSmet, SD. You can still see the ruin of Laura and Alanzo's house. My grandmother was a tour guide at the Ingall's house in DeSmet well into her 80s. My sister and I had one of every item sold in the gift shop. My grandfather re-shingled the roof.
DeSmet remained a hard place to live well into my dad's childhood. Grandma suffered through the dust bowl. Dad went to school in a one-room schoolhouse. The family farm had no electricity and no running water.
@smizmar (formerly cointreau-teese): I agree that even when reading these as a child, it was clear to me that Ma's views toward "Indians" was meant to be seen as wrong and based in fear and misunderstanding. (The minstrel show, on the other hand, went completely over my head-- having no idea what "darkies" were, I thought they were portraying some kind of band of musical chimney sweeps a la Mary Poppins.)
In any case, while I see how these bits are offensive, I do think they present a good opportunity for parents to talk to their children about race in America. It is absolutely a fact that in the Ingalls' time, people were racist and ignorant and full of grotesque notions about "the other." I think it's a mistake to reject these books because they include those elements or try to whitewash the racism out of them. Hiding our problems doesn't help anybody.
I have a hard time believing that anyone, even a child, reading the books now would go, "Yeah! We should kill all the Indians! Minstrel shows for everyone!" If you are growing up in an environment where statements like those are seen as plausible in any way, you've got problems that are way bigger than Little House.
@mbot says Spock yeah!: Complete agreement. The books are by no means perfect, but it was a chance for me to learn about how people of color were treated. I was appalled by how Ma treated Indians, and really disliked her for a long time, until I was an adult and actually reread the series this past year. I realized that that was only one facet of her personality, and that without Ma, the family would have been destitute and possibly dead.
I think that with the right attitude, these can be very educational.
@babzie: Yes! Fried apples 'n' onions; popcorn and milk; quivering slices of head cheese; melting, savory spiced cream from the tip of a slice of apple pie. And then there's Little House in the Big Woods with its crackling pig's tail and squeaky cheese curds and attic full of pumpkins and preserves and wheels of cheese. I even love the food descriptions in The Long Winter (coarse brown bread! with a nutty flavor that was novel at first but soon grew as monotonous and oppressive as the endless blizzards!). So good.
@babzie: Do you have the Little House Cookbook? It's chocolate-covered awesome. And really as much fun to read as to cook from. Forty or so different ways to prepare cornmeal. You really get the idea: Farmer Boy was food porn for Laura, too. She grew up eating cornmeal, water, and salt.
Thurman writes of Rose: ""(Rose) had lived among bohemians in Paris and Greenwich Village, Soviet peasants and revolutionaries, intellectuals in Weimar Berlin, survivors of the massacres in Armenia, Albanian rebels, and camel-drivers on the road to Baghdad." "(She) acquired several languages, enjoyed smoking and fornication, and dined at La Rotonde when she wasn't motoring around Europe in her Model T."
She might have been frumpy, middle-aged and depressive when she helped her mother craft those indelible stories, but it's worth acknowledging she seems an intrepid, fearless journalist before then. I do have to respect that, she was successful at it, muck-raking or not. She knew how to spin a story, it seems. A complicated lady. Interesting, had a pang of remembrance, her birth in the "Little House" books! So that's what she went on to.. pretty great article.
@Baroness: She also wrote a book about American needlework for McCall's. I bought it just for the fact that she wrote it. She's definitely not easy to characterize.
@Baroness: Wilder Lane was crazy awesome in many ways. She was a seasoned traveler, adopted a boy from Albania (I might not be remembering everything), was a polyglot, and a good writer. I find her to be a fascinating historical figure, even if I don't really agree with all her views.
I enjoyed the Rose spin-off series more than the original Little House books precisely because the Wilders stayed in one place (at least in the books). My taste in books has always been strictly mainstream, so I liked that, as the books were published in the '90s, I was the same age as Rose. She went to school, had friend issues, flirted with boys...things that I recognized from my own life, but it still had historical flavor. As a child, I grew frustrated with the Ingallses always having to move and how Pa couldn't manage to keep a job.
I remember my mom reading one of the books in the series to me as my bedtime book for a while. Then one night we got to a description of them killing their pig and how Laura went to her bedroom and put her hands over her ears so she wouldn't hear the pig screaming when he was killed.
I started crying hysterically, and my mom was horrified that they included that in a children's book.
Needless to say, we moved on to Anne of Green Gables the next night. No more Little House stories for me!
I came across a few of these books in a thrift store recently and have started rereading them. I think what we see as Libertarian craziness now was more of a real pioneer spirit then - different times people, different times!
@AmoretteGoldsboro: Back then, it made perfectly good sense to want to strike out for the frontier, work your ass off, and accumulate property, wealth, and independence that you had no hope of getting in an urban environment. Nowadays, there aren't many places where someone can claim 100 acres just by putting a homestead on it and planting a crop.
Having recently reread the books for about the 20th time, I don't know if I interpret Pa as a crackpot. It seemed like Pa was just one of those people who can't pass up an opportunity. He was a trapper when they left Wisconsin, which meant that as people encroached, his livelihood was driven away. It wasn't just the "wanderlust," though that probably played a role as well. It seems really reasonable to me that he would see the opportunities provided by the Homestead Act and decide to try it out. Then, bad luck hits pretty much everywhere they go, and instead of sticking it out at each place, he keeps searching for a better opportunity. Really, he's like the 19th century version of a guy who keeps getting sucked into pyramid schemes or something.
11/23/09
That said, having just read her blog, she comes across as wide-eyed and adorable- reading her reaction over meeting Chloƫ Sevigny and not meeting Hedi Slimane, she seems as much an excitable fourteen year old as anyone, privilege and extraordinary circumstances notwithstanding, I guess.
11/23/09
11/23/09
ETA: apparently her dad is a 'high-school teacher,' but no comment on what her mum does.
11/23/09
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11/23/09
Haven't they been running that competition for a while now? Like, pre-ANTM days?
11/23/09
11/23/09
08/04/09
The entire series is about sharing what you have with others, from Laura's penny to Almanzo's ride for wheat for the whole community. While there's a lot of emphasis on self-reliance, it's more communal and familial than individualistic.
08/04/09
I agree. And also add a tired, sarcastic, "And libertarians NEVER share! We get kicked out of libertarian-land if we do."
08/05/09
08/06/09
08/04/09
DeSmet remained a hard place to live well into my dad's childhood. Grandma suffered through the dust bowl. Dad went to school in a one-room schoolhouse. The family farm had no electricity and no running water.
08/04/09
In any case, while I see how these bits are offensive, I do think they present a good opportunity for parents to talk to their children about race in America. It is absolutely a fact that in the Ingalls' time, people were racist and ignorant and full of grotesque notions about "the other." I think it's a mistake to reject these books because they include those elements or try to whitewash the racism out of them. Hiding our problems doesn't help anybody.
I have a hard time believing that anyone, even a child, reading the books now would go, "Yeah! We should kill all the Indians! Minstrel shows for everyone!" If you are growing up in an environment where statements like those are seen as plausible in any way, you've got problems that are way bigger than Little House.
08/04/09
I think that with the right attitude, these can be very educational.
08/04/09
08/04/09
08/04/09
08/04/09
She might have been frumpy, middle-aged and depressive when she helped her mother craft those indelible stories, but it's worth acknowledging she seems an intrepid, fearless journalist before then. I do have to respect that, she was successful at it, muck-raking or not. She knew how to spin a story, it seems. A complicated lady. Interesting, had a pang of remembrance, her birth in the "Little House" books! So that's what she went on to.. pretty great article.
08/04/09
08/04/09
08/04/09
08/04/09
I started crying hysterically, and my mom was horrified that they included that in a children's book.
Needless to say, we moved on to Anne of Green Gables the next night. No more Little House stories for me!
08/04/09
08/04/09
08/04/09
08/04/09
08/04/09