Wednesday, December 12, 2012

Not really "the good ol' days"

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/12/bad-love-advice-_n_2279562.html#slide=1869828

Although it is meant to be funny today when we look at it, and it is, much of it was very real during the time the book was published. In this case we see how gender roles and disability were connected in those days. The ideology that in order to find a husband women shouldn't talk, they should just sit and look pretty because a conversation with substance was too much for us to handle. (Slide #6 & #12) But also, in slide #8 where it speaks of not becoming engaged to "someone who has a serious affliction of health" because of the possibility of children from "tainted stock was cruel". It was in those days a legitimate reason to not marry someone because they had some sort of disability and for women it was twice as hard when being a woman was a disability itself.

1 comment:

  1. It really frightens me that disability would be a reason to consider not marrying someone. Americans are way too obsessed with the idea of perfection. As well, people choose who to marry based on the possibility of having children with them. And people are more than likely to not marry someone with a health issue, which in itself, is a poor reason to not marry someone.

    ReplyDelete