I couldn’t come up with a good graphic for this post, so here’s a giant chicken kidnapping a young boy.
Jakeface — not his real name — is a “Game” blogger, pushing 40, and living in Vietnam. Or visiting there? I haven’t read enough of his blog to be able to figure that out. Given that the name of his blog is “cedonulli,” which seems to be a pretentious reference to the Latin phrase “cedo nulli” ( “I yield to none”), I probably won’t be reading all that much more.
But I do know he likes Vietnam, because he’s the sort of guy who enjoys joking about having sex with “girls … so barely legal … it’s not even funny,” and in Vietnam, he says, he’s not the only one who thinks that 24-year old women are “old as fuck.”
Did I mention he’s pushing 40 himself?
Anyway, not long ago, Jakeface offered readers of his blog his deep thoughts on the subject of age, and why women over the age of 19 are already starting to look elderly to him. [Link is mildly NSFW]
He starts off by noting sadly that even in Vietnam, he still runs into Western women in their 30s who for some strange reason think they aren’t old hags.
even nice western girls are under the influence of western default cultural context. so many ridiculously illogical retarded things leave their mouths, that you can’t help but praise the heavens that you found a cultural base that still has a concept of sustainable biological imperatives.
“i’m 35 now, i’ve got my education and my career, i’m ready to settle down and have babies. why can’t i find a good man?”
it’s so hard to be jake, sometimes.
Jake apparently hasn’t found the shift key on his keyboard yet.
But he can’t blame these Western gals, he says, for being “indoctrinated by western culture,” and “so it would be unfair, short sighted, dumb to make fun of miss-35 for waiting till after the closing bell to place her bid.”
Well, just so long as Miss 35 doesn’t try to get her wrinkled claws into him:
when the same miss-35 makes some eyeballs your way though, and says “i think you’re attractive”, then things get a bit creepier.
Dude, if you’re going to write fiction, at least try to make the dialogue sound vaguely realistic.
Anyway, Jake informs us that this eyeball-making elderly lady of 35 with the world’s least creative pickup line is
like the homeless man wandering into the bentley dealer, making moves to go sit in the new continental gt. a clear case of a completely non-reality based self image. a delusion, painful to those who may have to be part of a conflicting reality. i totally get how 19 year old girls must feel, when the 65 year old liver-spotted shaking hands of the australian tourist reach for her thigh.
Yes, that’s right: when a 35-year-old woman hits on a man her age or even slightly older, she is like a 65-year-old man pawing the thighs of a 19-year-old girl.
That’s PUA math for you.
Actually, that’s the math that PUAs try to sell to their readers, and to themselves.
In reality the math that really counts for Western expats like Jakeface has to do with exploiting their relative wealth in countries where a sufficient number of women are poor enough that putting up with a PUA and his bullshit isn’t the worst option they have. In Vietnam, per capita income is a little over $1,100 (American). Per capita income in the US? About $43,000. That’s the real expat PUA math.
Anyway, Jakeface continues with his rant:
24 is super crazy, crazy old. for a girl.
17. 19. past that, if we’re going to get all about babies, is pretty sketchy.
Yeah, he really said that. Does he even believe it? Who knows? The average age for first births in the United States is 26; in the UK, it’s 30. The risks of pregnancy and giving birth over the age of 35 have been greatly exaggerated, and the vast majority of babies born to women later in life are perfectly healthy. Even if he doesn’t know any women his age who’ve had children,you might think he would have noticed the small army of female celebrities in their forties who’ve been popping out babies without either them or the babies exploding.
But Jakeface isn’t basing his conclusions here on a close reading of the medical literature, or even People magazine. Nope, as he makes clear, his opinions are coming straight from his dick and his “barely legal” obsessed brain.
who cares about what which culture says about it. that’s what my brain, freed from all the media propaganda, is finding attractive. at 24, you can already start to imagine what she’ll look like in 10 years. the outlines are set. the fantasy of youth eternal is already shattered.
24 is old-holy-fuck-you’re-countess-dracula, tell me about how life was in the 16th century.
Again, Jakeface by his own admission is almost 40.
in vietnam, that sort of age awareness seems to be the consensus, still. which makes vietnam ok in my book. it makes me think about applying for vietnamese citizenship. i want to be part of a culture that shares my innate values. a 35 year old vietnamese woman wouldn’t go “heeeey, soooo, how about some babies?” it’d be considered unfathomably rude, suggesting that my value wouldn’t allow me the choice of a 19 year old instead, that my fridge is only good for milk a solid week and a half past its expiration date.
Dude, you only have this “value” in countries where a good portion of the women don’t have good options. And you know it. That’s why you’re in a country with a per capita income that is literally 1/38th that of the United States.
and this isn’t personal, as in if you read this and you’re a 35 year old woman, i’m not making fun. i’m only talking about biological reality, and my own mating preferences. which also, mating preferences of any man with the option, and in his right mind.
Really? George Clooney, formerly the world’s most eligible bachelor, just got engaged to a 36-year-old.
it could still happen. jake might have some asian babies with a few 24 year old girls. there are two current contenders, which i’m hoping to replace with some 17 year olds, before some heat-of-the-moment questionable decisions.
it’s hard to take a step back, when you’re in the pet shop, surrounded by puppies.
For the sake of all that is good in this world, dude, do not breed. Do not saddle some poor Vietnamese teenager with your spawn.
@Ally & cassandrakitty
Whodini AND Tricky!!! All my nostalgia are yours!!!
@LBT
Blueprint is all that! Have you heard the stuff he did with RJD2 as Soul Position?
I also recommend Atmosphere, especially their later stuff (“You can’t imagine how much fun we’re having” and beyond).
If you enjoy rock as well then I recommend POS (he’s a rapper but a lot of his instrumentals are rock influenced).
Sage Francis is a little more esoteric in his rhymes, but ridiculously talented.
Brother Ali is just a joy to listen to as far as I’m concerned, though some have been known to find him to be too cloying. He’s pretty spritual in his rhymes, but not preachy (to my ears anyways)
Re: Katy Perry
Steve Kardynal helped me deal with my trauma from my cousin’s love for her
@Michelle C Young
In addition to media coverage, the artists and songs that are able to get the major record deals and the airplay is generally more in the hands of white executives, and so the type of image that mainstream rap has is not completely in the hands of the artists and the rap artist community in general. Very often even with mainstream artists, when you look at their albums vs their singles, you get a much better feel for their talent, as well as an idea of the kinds of songs that are chosen to be singles by record companies.
I think I’ve mentioned this here before, but another myth that needs to die in a fire is girls marrying in adolescence in medieval Europe. The average woman married in her early twenties. People trot this myth out a lot as a justification for pursuing teen girls. NOPE!
So nope. And men didn’t marry until they were in their mid-late twenties.
Oh, Ally S! I’m so sorry you have to be related to such a…
OK, I’m editing myself. You fill in the blank. At any rate, you, and every young girl he met, have my sympathies!
Not sure how I borked that last link, but here it is: http://www.kostym.cz/Anglicky/1_Originaly/02_Renesancni/I_02_53.htm
RE: Bina
I’d love to see one of these guys hit on a 46XY with androgen-insensitivity syndrome,
You realize that’s really creepily invasive about those women, right? I don’t go around discussing YOUR genitals in elaborate detail for my revenge fantasy. Don’t be a dick.
RE: Leum
My favorite variation on that is Glsomeothernotveryimportantletters
Yeah, that works too.
Bingo. Also, andropause is a real thing. Male potency and fertility drop off gradually with age, and there’s probably a good reason for that. While some men can father children right up until they drop dead of old age, it’s not such a good idea to do that. For one thing, aged fathers most likely won’t live to see their kids reach adulthood, and this puts additional strain on the mothers to carry the burden of child-rearing alone. Older fathers have also been linked to various illnesses, such as autism and schizophrenia. Apparently, just because sperm are churned out on a shorter production schedule than eggs doesn’t mean that they are any less subject to genetic deterioration with age. Which puts another nasty crimp into the whole evol-psych argument that old(er) man/young(er) woman is just the “natural order of things”.
@Phonecian: “The moment you press for your country to have jurisdiction over its nationals for legal acts committed in other countries, you have to allow for other countries to have jurisdiction for their nationals for acts they commit in your country.”
Pretty sure that child sex tourism actually IS illegal in these countries, they just have a more flexible system of official graft in place that allows people with enough money to circumvent local laws through bribery. It’s illegal in Vietnam for a 40 year old man to have sex with a 17 year old he’s not married to, and the same holds in ALL of the Pacific sex tourism hot spot countries, with slight variations on the age of consent.
So our American extraterritoriality laws regarding sex tourism are not prosecuting things that are legal in the countries they are committed in, they are plugging up the holes in such laws left by greedy bribe-taking officials.
I had an internet-friend who was having trouble conceiving. She went through every test in the book, and it turned out it was all fine – with HER. Her husband was the issue. He, however, just couldn’t deal with that, and instead of having any sort of treatment, himself, he just continued to blame her for not giving him babies.
Also, her in-laws were awful and treated her like trash. Gee, I wonder, could there be a connection?
Squeeeee!
Yup. Very young marriages were the exception, more an upper-class thing, and children were not usually cohabiting. Yes, it did happen – Margaret Beaufort, Henry VII’s mother, bore him very young, for example – but it wasn’t the norm.
You are gonna send me some keyboard cleaner, aren’t you?
dustydeste, ooooh I love that bodice! (Or woman’s doublet, I’m not sure what they called them.) Makes me think of this pic of Charles and Henriette Marie going hunting. I think she has a leather jerkin over her dress; notice the brown colour on the tabs?
That 1562 suit is gorgeous. Is it velvet? It looks way more practical for duelling, especially if one cheated a bit on the stiffening. 😉
Your second link didn’t work. 🙁
This is the model portrait of Richard I mentioned:
I see the same artist has done a reconstruction of Mary, Queen of Scots, too:
On fashion – how about those men’s collars with points so high and stiff on either side of the CHEEK that a well-dressed man could not turn his head?
@kittehserf – I’m so glad to hear I’m not the only one who can’t stand Savage.
I’m curious about who does like Savage, since everyone I know seems to think he’s kind of a jerk.
RE: Shadow
Ooh, I hadn’t heard this! (I’m terrible with music, I pretty much find some songs and never wander from those.) This is awesome! Thanks for the links.
RE: cassandrakitty
I’m curious about who does like Savage, since everyone I know seems to think he’s kind of a jerk.
Only person I knew who liked him was a straight cis guy who thought the complaints were exaggerated.
BTW, starting link for Massive Attack, since this is probably the song the largest number of Americans would know.
Michelle – yup, fashion was at least as much about men’s gear as women’s, much of the time. Beau Brummell has a lot to answer for. ::stinkeye::
I would so love to see Mr K wearing the sort of clothes he’d have worn for grand occasions at court, just once, but I don’t think he’d be keen. He didn’t like dressing up then (except literally, for the grand ballet productions) and he’s wedded to jeans and knitwear these days. Sigh.
Michelle – yeah, and it was from reading here that I learned what a douchecanoe Savage is, too.
Those collars, oy! The Germans called them “father murderers”.
@dustedeste – Ooooh, pretty!
As for tailoring to fit your boobs into a doublet – it can be done. Start with a larger size, and then take it in, using darts. Trousers are more problematic, but for a top, as long as it fits around your bust, you can take in the rest fairly easily. That’s just the torso, of course. Arms are another matter.
Did you know that men’s armholes are designed with more space? Yeah, if you can’t find a woman’s pattern to follow, then take a man’s pattern to fit your bust, and just take it in at the waist and under the bustling, and you’ll do fine. Your arms will probably be more comfy, too.
Another option is the same technique armorers use for women’s armor. Take men’s armor that fits around the bust (NOT boob-sleeves, points on the nipples, etc.) and pad it out all over. Extra padding around the middle and vital organs is good, anyway, and you really do want your armor to be flatter in the front. Iron boobs direct the sword right to the sternum, after all.
So, if you don’t mind looking like a fat man in a doublet, that technique would work.
For a more traditionally feminine look, though, darts are your friend.
Third comment in a row, I’m going for a record here …
Those pluderhosen (?) are amazing, I’ve never seen ones that full.
Or this one, just because her voice is so pretty any some people might not be familiar with the band she’s best known for.
Hmm, linking to things that are part of a list may not be working well. First link should be Safe from Harm, second should be Protection.
@kittehserf – “Very young marriages were the exception, more an upper-class thing, and children were not usually cohabiting. ”
How about all those marriages, often by proxy, where the husband and wife would not even meet each other for a few years AFTER THE WEDDING. Yeah, upper-class people did weird stuff for politics.
“So, what’s your husband like?”
“Don’t know. I’ve never met him.”
Just guessing here, but could it also be that the type of misogyny and the way it’s presented is more acceptable to white people because it’s less obvious against the background of misogyny that they’re used to.
Personally, I don’t really notice the misogyny in most music unless I am listening for it because it’s the same sort of stories/attitudes I hear in movies and tv a lot of the time.
Ah… big boobs. The scourge of clothes making. I use Ravelry to check whether or not the sweater pattern I want to make looks good over big boobs or not, which has worked really well in the past.
Also, Kittehs, some pics of my new bag fabric are up. The color looks good, at least from the front–the back is brown where the front is turquoise, and I have a hard time getting a good look at it. But I was planning to use the mostly-turquoise for the bag front anyway.
@kittehs:
Mmmm, that portrait of Richard… looks a little like my husband. I can get on board with that dreamboat 😛
I’m not 100% sure of the material of 1562 suit; it looks like it could be velvet, but it’s hard to tell; it could also be silk, or velvet on the bottom and silk on top. I’d make it out of a more modern cotton brocade so that I could stick it in the wash; not exactly the most accurate, but sometimes compromises must be made.
Speaking of velvet, though, I scored a lovely bolt of brown velvet at the thrift store a while back that I’m planning a Burgundian gown for. I need an excuse to wear a hennin (truncated tho; the pointy ones are just too much, even for me, haha)
Sorry the last link didn’t work; I posted it again when I realized I’d managed to screw it up, so if you want, it’s back up in the thread somewhere…
@Michelle – I actually don’t work off premade patterns, generally speaking; I try to draft them myself where I can. So it’s more the “how to draft this right” than the “how to alter this” issue. But yeah, I’m sure I can do it; it just remains to be seen whether I can do it on the first try, lol.
Oh, David. I just read the original post you were quoting, and I have to ask, why did you not include this gem?
“not so many posts lately, but of course this is the sort of carefully worded zen wisdom that you come here for. which today, mission accomplished.”
I have to clean my keyboard now.
yh, that’s kind of creepy. it like positions a person as a punishment.
@kim
yeah i kind of tune stuff out b/c it’s common and then the like, fiftieth time i hear a song i’ll finally catch the meaning and it’ll be ruined forever.X| not saying people can’t listen to misogynistic music and enjoy it for the music, but it always ruins my listening experience.
@dustedeste – Oh, you make your own patterns? Cool!
So, do you use cheap muslin for the first try, or just go for it with the real cloth? How brave are you?
Michelle, exactly!
I just started watching Aristocrats the other night. The Duke and Duchess of Richmond are trying to persuade their eldest daughter Caroline that marrying a stranger isn’t so bad. They were married as teens, his father more or less said, “Get up, you’re getting married today” out of the blue, and current Duke’s impression was “eww urgh who’s this dowdy girl”. Then he goes on his Grand Tour for a few years, comes home, sees this Amazing Hot Woman at the theatre, gets insta-lust, asks who she is and finds out oh, hai, she’s my wife.
Caroline isn’t impressed, btw. “And what if she hadn’t been beautiful?” she asks.
wordsp1nner – cool, will check! 🙂
@kittehs:
Yeah, the plunderhosen are amaaaazing; not at all right for my Savoyard persona, but they’re just soooo preetttttyyyyy. I’d feel so fancy floofing around in them! (Also let’s see if I manage the three-in-a-row, here :P)
@Michelle – I’ll do a mockup with bedsheets from the thrift store if I’m feeling like taking my time about it (and, after all, then I can use the original mock up to line the end piece), but most of the time I just go for it because I’m lazy about it! Also it helps that I very rarely spring for cloth from a sewing store, since I’ve been quite lucky with thrift store finds, so I’m not as afraid of screwing up a project as I would be if I’d sunk the kind of money new material costs by the yard.
Relevant to the clothes discussion, my siblings have been buying more femme wear now — and although I will never wear that shit of my own accord for myself, I’m really happy that they’re into it, and that I’m at the point where I can wear it and not clutch my macho pearls over it.
wordsp1nner, that cloth is amazing! So intricate and such a lovely colour. I am full of admiration!
Oooh …
::snicker:: yeah, the Burgundian fashions were about as extreme as they came in Western Europe, weren’t they? I’d love to know what sort of structure held the steeple hennin at the right angle. I imagine the hair was tightly plaited inside, but there’s only that little V-shaped thingy on the forehead to suggest what sort of wire form it might have sat on.
That’s another thing where current film/TV costume designers have so much fail – there was no hair showing under those headdresses. Even the English gable covered the hair completely. As for showing women wearing earrings with them, YES I’M LOOKING AT YOU DAVID STARKEY, no, just no. It wasn’t possible.
XD love that phrase!
@kittehs:
As far as the hennins go, from the research I’ve looked at, either a wire form curving back over the head, or a tight headband that the hennin could be pinned to seem the more likely choices. Also, though, the hennin probably wasn’t as extreme as it was often depicted, because it was heavily romanticized and reimagined on paper after it went out of vogue. So they were probably shorter than some of the more crazy versions; I think the figure I heard was definitely not more than apprx 2 feet, though I don’t have the source in front of me at the moment.
I still don’t want to go swanning about with 2 feet of pointy on my head, though, and I find the truncated hennin much more aesthetically pleasing.
Also the US tends to treat our ex-pats and tourists like rich people’s spoiled children and to try to get them off any criminal charges whenever they break the laws of other countries. Remember that American kid who did vandalism in Singapore and the US threw a shitfit when they caned him?
It does make navigating doorways a bit problematic!
Are you going for the sort that had a black veil around it, or the barer look?
Hey, speaking of learning things – just saw this pic, and it’s the first time I’ve ever seen any hair under a hennin (and it’s still not the “soft romantic fringy bits under the front” beloved of later illustrators).
OT: Good news! My mom and my older siblings are okay with me moving in with my trans woman friend in California. Knowing that they’re okay with my plans has taken a huge amount of stress off my shoulders. I should be leaving before the end of this month. I’m so looking forward to this. Finally some nice things are starting to happen.
Great to hear Ally!
@kittehs:
More for the one with the black lappets… I don’t think it’s actually a veil? I understand it was more like a velvet hat that went under the other hat. I believe there’re some illuminations floating around that show women wearing just the undercap alongside women wearing the hennin, and they look remarkably analogous, but I’m in the middle of making pizza, so you’ll have to excuse my lack of sources 😛
And yeah, the hennin with braids! My bet would be that they were falsies; fake hair was quite a thing! I kinda want to do that look at some point, if only for how completely ridiculous it is!
I don’t really sew (trying to learn, though–but I like weaving and spinning and knitting too, and I work full time, so…) but weaving and spinning has really taught me an appreciation for all the work that went into making clothes before industrialization. Regular fabric takes a while to weave (though weaving is faster than knitting) but all those additions to the weaving process… yeah, those took time. Not to mention all the spinning and sewing you had to do afterwards… Fiber arts video spamming ahead.
Velvet:
More here: http://peggyosterkamp.com/category/velvet-weaving/
Overshot:
(I have heard that overshot is an American development, from combining monks’ belt with twill drafts, but I am not sure of that. It certainly is a classic American weave, and really easy to do complicated patterns on 4 shafts. Monks’ Belt is similar, but with less design possibilities.)
Card Weaving:
Spinning on a wheel:
Spinning wheels are relatively recent inventions. Prior to their invention, all thread was made via spindles, like below:
Bobbin Lace:
I have worn fake hair. I joined a flag team in high school (terrible choice–I should have dropped it when the warning signs came up in summer* but sunk costs fallacy, you know) and I had fairly short hair. Everyone else had longer hair they put up in pony tails with multiple braids, so they attached fake braids from, like, Claire’s** or somewhere to mine. Let’s just say that they did not look real and leave it at that.
* Let’s just say that one time I was about to pass out from exhaustion and my coach yelled at us for being lazy. Yeah. It was that kind of team.
** Costume jewelry for girls. Gaudy, cheap, and beloved by elementary-age girls.
dustydeste – lappets! That’s the word I couldn’t remember (it’s years since I did my reading on fashion and a lot of the correct names have fogged out – like the proper term for the skirts of a doublet. Oh, wait, tassets, that’s it.)
I didn’t know fake hair was the thing in the more northern European fashions! I knew they went in for it in Italy – blond wigs made of silk were quite the thing, iirc – but come to think of it, big hair was rather a thing for the guys at some of the courts, wasn’t it? I’d bet a bit of help was welcome there.
wordsp1nner – fibre arts spamming FTW! 😀 I’ll watch those after lunch, which my stomach tells me is overdue.
Oh, and for bonus points my uncle Jeremy is a victim of Misandry™ – his wife, a woman who he met in high school and who helped him kick his addiction drugs and get out of the gang he had been in is not only past manosphere expiration date – she’s 30 now – but she’s TWO whole years older than him. The audacity, an woman marrying a man younger than him.
(yes, my youngest uncle is only 7 years older than me – my oldest one is about 17 years older than me. my youngest aunt is only 3 years older than me and my oldest one is 15 years older).
I’ve encountered plenty of people who do. They tend to think a) that he’s apologized for the shit he’s said that was actually bad* (as opposed to the shit that really wasn’t so bad in context and b) the good he’s done with the It Gets Better campaign, advocating for gay rights, and mocking homophobes** far outweighs the damage he’s done.
*he hasn’t
**making “Santorum” into a euphemism for semen and shit was absolutely awful and I feel really sorry for all the other people who share that last name
Honestly, I’ve always been pissed off by “It gets better.” I like to be optimistic, but that phrase tends to give me the impression that I’m somehow stupid or unreasonable for not believing that things aren’t getting better for me. Maybe I take it the wrong way, but that’s how I react to it.
are getting better for me*
@LBT
Are we also discussing strange music incidents? My friend went on her first date with her bf in late March/early April and when they were down by the river they were about to start kissing when bagpipe music started playing quietly across the river and proceeded to get louder and louder until it reached a crescendo and just abruptly stopped.
@kittehs:
Well, I am more into southern European fashions, so I can’t speak for northern use of false hair, but it was definitely big in Italy, even back to the Romans. It also didn’t always look very real at all; silk wigs can look a bit silly, and not everyone could afford silk, so false hair made of wool was also a thing. And really, as far as proper terminology goes, I only know lappets because I am obsessed with hats, and because some of my more recent researching was for the hennin to go with the Burgundian getup! I’m mostly useless at knowing what things should be called, haha.
@dustydeste – yeah, non-hair wigs have always had some strange results. Look at some of the Egyptian ones, for instance. They used false hair to bulk out the real thing in the later 17th century, too, when hairdos were getting bigger but before the guys gave in and just started wearing wigs. I always enjoy the bit in Pepys’s diary where he’s agonising over whether to get his hair cut and wear a wig, and when he finally does and swans off to church in it … nobody notices.
Though my favourite fashion fail in the diary is his friend (can’t recall his name) who was dressing and put both his legs through one leg of his petticoat breeches. They were so wide he went the whole day without even noticing.