Watching this (and fearing broken ankles with each loop) I can’t helping thinking about that old quote Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, except backwards and in high heels.
But no, if you watch closely you’ll see she doesn’t even step on the last chair. That means she had to trust that fucker to lift her gently to the ground while he was spinning down onto that chair. That takes major guts. I’d be pissing myself and fearing a broken neck if I were in her place. Kudos to her.
Okay so this is true, but a tiny part of a wider truth.
Ginger Rogers was a FUCKING BADASS. Ignore for a sec the rampant sexism in Hollywood (they once bleached her hair blonde in wardrobe without telling her beforehand), the fact that she fought her whole career against typecasting and stereotyping from fellow actors (Katharine Hepburn famously said of the Astaire/Rogers partnership “she gave him sex. He gave her class” ) for starting out in musicals, and went on to have a career lasting over fifty years, winning a Best Actress Oscar (Kitty Foyle, 1940). But… JUST focusing on the Astaire movies…
Not only did she dance “backwards” in high heels, the dances were a task in themselves. Astaire was an absolute perfectionist and choreographed for himself, so as a younger, less experienced dancer Rogers came in at a disadvantage and worked her ass off to match him.
Then there’s the filming complications… these numbers were filmed in ONE TAKE. So one thing goes wrong and you have to start over. Maybe you make a mistake or maybe your dress flies up because…
Ginger had to contend with her wardrobe. Dancing in heels is the norm at this time, but dancing in a dress designed for cinema cameras… not so much. They were heavy, embellished, uncomfortable, restrictive and cumbersome and essentially a third member of the dance, strapped to the body of one partner.Not only did she have to dance and look good, she had to control the dress too!
Take this routine from Swing Time… (it gets going proper at 1:30ish)
This dress has weights, YES WEIGHTS, sewn in to the hem to make it fly out and create a visual effect. So it’s heavy, it hurts if it hits you, and your partner gets mad if it hits him. So you gotta control it.
Well it turns out all these factors on this set, this particular day aren’t going so well. So you’re doing take after take, here’s no labour laws, so at 4am after 18 hours you’re still going, even though part of the routine requires you to spin up those curved stairs with no rail at high speed….
Okay so now back to those high heels. In Ginger’s autobiography she vividly remembers this night as the night she bled though her shoes. They did so many takes, her feet blistered, bled, and the white satin high heels she was wearing finished he night pink because they were literally full of blood. And still they keep shooting. She keeps dancing.
The take they use in the film is the last. Early hours. Bloody feet. And she spins, acts and bosses out until that last second. Because she was that professional, talented and bloody minded. This is the last set of spins…
So I say once again. Ginger Rogers was a badass.
She did everything Fred Astaire did backwards, in high heels, wearing a 20 pound dress, exhausted, injured and standing in a pool of her own blood. And watching her perform, you would never know.
Let’s talk about wizards and witches. There is a tendency to talk of them in one breath, as though they were simply different sexual labels for the same job. It isn’t true. In the fantasy world, there is no such thing as a male witch. […]
Sorceress? Just a better class of witch. Enchantress? Just a witch with good legs. The fantasy world, in fact, is overdue for a visit from the Equal Opportunities people because, in the fantasy world, magic done by women is usually of poor quality, third-rate, negative stuff, while the wizards are usually cerebral, clever, powerful and wise. […]
According to my eight-year-old daughter’s book on wizards, a nicely illustrated little paperback available at any good bookshop, ‘wizards undid the harm caused by evil witches’. There it is again, the recurrent message: female magic is cheap and nasty. […]
It’s going to be a long time before there’s room for equal rites.
Sir Terry Pratchett, “Why Gandalf Never Married”, A Slip of the Keyboard.
If you want to read the full essay, which is packed with more insight than posted above, you can find it here.
One of the many, many reasons I loved Pratchett’s magic series – the Unseen University, the Granny Weatherwax books, the Tiffany Aching series – is that he built this dichotomy into the story – showed the sexism and showed the ways in which it might be overcome or even used to benefit others. There’s no doubt that Tiffany, for example, is more powerful than any of the wizards at the University; that she is unrecognized for this is part of the point.
And so much of what witches and wizards do is not magic, and is not magic in very different ways – witches’ medicines and visits and assistance only rarely incorporates magic but they are out there doing good every day, while wizards use their magic as a bludgeon, so that whenever they’re not doing magic, the absence of harm from it is somehow considered a benefit. It’s a fascinating universe Pratchett cooked up and I love how much it’s given me to think about over the decades.
Protip for men: if marriage is a horrifying concept for you and you think it is an evil trap, do not buy a ring and ask a woman to marry you
I’m way over seeing radical feminist bullshit on my dash. This isn’t even social justice or a real issue.
sorry that not marrying someone you dont loathe is radical feminism i guess?
women: don’t propose or get married if u don’t like the thought of marriage
men: what kind of sjw fuckery
the other bit that this implies is:
If you like your wife, act like it. Even around your friends. Be open and honest about liking your wife, liking spending time with her, and not being resentful of the shared work of building a household. Let your buddies know you can’t hang out with them because you’d rather be home with your wife, whom you like, because she is your legit bff, even though you know your buddies are gonna mock you for it.
Stand up to your buddies. Tell them mocking isn’t cool and you don’t want them to do it anymore. Challenge the other men in your life to be better men.
That is what “don’t get married if you think marriage is an evil trap” implies to men who are married. And while it’s all completely reasonable I imagine that it’s scary as fuck when it’s just so much easier to har de har har the little woman’s such a nag, ain’t she, don’t we all hate being married so much? with other men.
In that context, “don’t get married if you think marriage is an evil trap” is kindof a radical statement.
The number of guys I work with who are engaged who started pulling the “uh oh, life over soon, har har” shit that I have completely shut down with a simple “well if you don’t want to get married, then don’t”…*sigh* And they’re just like, hem, haw, welllll if I don’t then she might not stay with meee, which I respond to with “well, sounds like you need to have a pretty serious and honest conversation with your fiancee about your feelings then” and then the *panic!* look…When you remove that easy “hah hah ball-and-chain” narrative, watch the reaction. Some of them (to a female friend) will mumblingly admit that they love their fiancee and are excited to be married. Others…all you get is fear.
That’s the disservice we do men by refusing to teach boys how to explore their emotional needs. It hurts everyone. I watched three male friends walk into marriages I can tell they weren’t ready for and didn’t want, just because it was expected and they had no tools for emotional self-examination. Two of those marriages are (shockingly) in crisis, a couple years later. One has kids involved now. It’s more than a little heartbreaking. The marriages I see that are working? Are the guys with the emotional maturity to talk to their wives and who don’t care if everyone knows they’re in love with them.
SERIOUSLY.
Yeah, so? Superman had a skintight outfit that showed every little ripple, didn’t he? Doesn’t he have a great big bulge in his crotch? Hello! So why don’t they complain about that? And who says Wonder Woman is “white”? I’m half-Mexican. Gal Gadot is Israeli. The character is an Amazonian princess, not “American.” They’re trying to put her in a box, and she’s not in a box.
This article made me never want to read anything ever again.
why are cishets like this
“Girls’ defence mechanisms are temporarily deactivated”
…How can someone type that, or even think that, think this is a good thing to take advantage of, and not feel disgusting about themselves? It’s straight up preying on women.
Can straight men stop?
Holy shit no
…Can we keep cishet straight men out of gay bars to begin with.
anyway, i hate straight men
I legitimately feel so bad for straight women. Like. This is what you have to deal with I’m so shocked our population is growing.
How can you be so overtly fucking predatory and still be able to live with yourself. I don’t understand at all
This entire article is literally “Hey straight bros, I found out where the straight girls go when they want to feel safe. Let’s invade and attack, bitches love when they lose the few safe havens they have left.”
at work I called out his coffee order and he was like “that’s not how women usually call out my name 😉 😉 ;)” so I just blinked and said “I’ll try to sound more disappointed next time then” then walked away
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