When someone says harem to people, these kind of paintings come up in people’s mind.
L.F. Comerre. (1850 – 1916)
But, people who drew these paintings, they are called orientalists, have never seen a harem because NO STRANGER WERE ALLOWED TO ENTER THE HAREM UNLESS THEY WANT TO LOSE THEIR HEAD. So they painted what they dreamt of, since they were grown up with Western beauty concepts, they painted Harem girls as what their culture accepted beautiful.
BUT, at 19th century Persia, the Western beauty standards were not dominant. So of course, they had their own beauty standards and their own concept of beauty.
The more masculine a woman was, more beautiful she was accepted. The opposite was also true for men. Women with heavy brows and faint mustaches considered so attractive that they were sometimes painted on or augmented with mascara and young beardless men with slim waists and delicate features. In 19th century portraits of lovers, the genders are barely distinguishable, identified only by their headgear.
Young men without beards were the idols of beauty that time. Sexual mores and erotic sensibilities of 19th century Iran permitted homosexuality between these young men and older men.
BUT, after Iran started to be more modern, aka more Westernized, this beauty standards were lost. West beauty standards started to be more dominant and homosexuality was no longer permitted. Today, it is a crime to be homosexual at Iran.
This book, women with mustaches and men without beards, is about the beauty standards of Persia at Qajar dynasty. If you are interested, you can buy it and read. HERE is an interview with the author, Afsaneh Najmabadi.
At that time, Qajar princess was considered beautiful. Today, uncultured internet memers are making fun of her. Shame @ all of you.
EDIT: That’s not Pricess Qajar ffs….. Qajar is the name of dynasty, not the princess….
Her name is Zahra Khanom Tadj es-Saltaneh, she was the daughter of the King of Persia in the early 19th century. Not to forget that she had a university education.
Washington State (not DC) is the only state in the union where you can legally have a fistfight with somebody (with police as referees) to settle your differences
This is tied to an archaic law that isn’t enforced anymore.
So if you beat the shit out of someone they won’t do anything?
Oh no this is still enforced, and in fact we actually Have a few vigilante superheroes
Like Phoenix Jones who actually patrol the streets and challenge criminals, the police usually get called, and they watch as Phoenix Jones pummels them because Phoenix Jones is actually an MMA fighter.
I gasped and my eyes got so wide after reading this
That man is AWESOME
Apparently for about three years he had an actual superhero team of people with military, medical and martial artist backgrounds he personally trained and equipped, but eventually disbanded. He didn’t give specifics, but said that some of them were “the wrong kind of people” and were too dangerous. There are really for real things that happened.
Also someone tried to be an “arch nemesis” to him named Rex Velvet, some nerd wearing an eyepatch and a fake mustache who didn’t hurt anybody but made surprisingly polished, melodramatic and goofy callout videos from an abandoned warehouse and presumably pulled some annoying pranks.
Did some research about Phoenix Jones: guy is legit. Ex-MMA fighter like the post says, but what the post FAILED to mention is this guy has legit superhero-grade equipment. His suit’s actually made of armor-plated and bulletproof materials, and it has a functional utility belt with lined with stuff like handcuffs, a stun gun, pepper spray, and the like for performing citizens arrests and non-lethally detaining actually armed and violent criminals.
Seattle actually has it’s own LEGAL batman
bruh
Before she died I said to her “Sylvia (Rivera), it just drives me crazy when people say to me ‘now was Stonewall a gay rebellion or was it a transgender rebellion’”. And I told her “I just tell them yes”. “Sylvia, what do you say? What would you say if somebody says ‘did you fight back that night because you were gay, because you were a self-identified drag queen, because of police brutality, because you were a sex-worker, you had to turn tricks in order to survive, because you were homeless, because you knew what it meant to go to jail, because you didn’t have a draft card when the demanded to you that night?” And I’ll never forget her answer it was so succinctly eloquent, she said: “we were fighting for our lives”. And the fact is that oppressions overlap in people’s life, as they do in this room. There are people in this room who are carrying heavier burdens of discrimination and oppression. There are people who had more dreams that have been deferred. There are people who have less opportunities, more doors slammed in their face. And that was true at the Stonewall too … But the fact is that when they all came together, shoulder to shoulder, to fight back against a common oppressor that night, they made history. Not in spite of their differences, but because they came to understand the need to fight together against a common enemy. And that was the most important lesson of the Stonewall rebellion for so many of us, that was the power of what we could do when we all came together.
Okay kids today we’re gonna talk about Edmonia Lewis
Edmonia was a sculptor in the 19th century, and was half African-American and half Native American. She was one of the first people of colour from America to earn international fame and success for her artwork. She started sculpting during the civil war and trained under some of the most influential abolitionist sculptors of the time.
Not only was she a successful WOC artist, but she sculpted other people of colour in the neoclassical style:
Forever Free (1867)
Old Arrow-Maker and his Daughter (1866)
The Marriage of Hiawatha (1866)
Do you know how rare it was in the 19th century to have a piece of artwork show black people or Native Americans without them being ‘savages’ or half naked? Let me tell you, it’s pretty damn rare.
She would purposely leave her women more clothed than her male figures to desexualise them, and I probably don’t need to tell you why that was important at this time (if you really want to see how white artists saw black women, look up American Slave and The Virginian Slave).
Unfortunately she was made to make her female figures look more European as she got backlash accusing her of inserting herself into figures BUT they’re still hugely impressive given that most famous sculptors at this time had teams of people working on their work and adding all the details by hand, whereas Edmonia did absolutely everything herself.
Basically I think about Edmonia Lewis a lot and I think more people should know about her.
I posted this YESTERDAY holy shit I’m so happy that so many people are getting to hear about her this is magical
File this under: Things i need for my next Toni Morrison article
I also really love how softly rounded and chubby the lines are.
I am now selling this comic as a printed, hand-stitched zine on etsy- all proceeds will be donated to the Southern Poverty Law Center. Find it in my shop here.
Me in 6th-grade history class: It’s pretty weird how the USA has been in the moral right in every single armed conflict in its entire war-torn history, but I guess that’s just the way the cookie crumbles in the greatest nation on earth.
Archive 