3 Comments

  1. Emily

    That story is truly dated and sexist, but I must admit it was still fun to read. The best part was when Chandler offers one million dollars in the hopes of besting the other guy’s one million francs. I laughed out loud when the author says, without missing a beat, “This settled the matter.”

    I feel as though a crucial scene was cut right there; surely the greedy mother busted out a calculator (or, rather, an abacus) to figure out the exchange rate between francs and American dollars before deciding which of her daughter’s potential husbands was richer, LOL.

    In all seriousness, the story is rather troubling because it objectifies both men and women, and along such predictable lines at that. Men were valued for their money or their physical courage, and women were valued for their youth, beauty, and deference to others.

    What I find particularly curious and offensive about wartime stories like these is the notion that men are strongly encouraged to go to war because women find servicemen irresistibly attractive.

    Did you ever hear of the white feather as a symbol of pacficism and/or wartime cowardice? Women would go around and hand out white feathers to men who hadn’t enlisted. The idea was to publicly embarrass the men for falling short of a patriotic ideal and a masculine ideal:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_feather

    I feel sorry for the poor men who were given feathers. It was hard enough getting criticized by the women in their lives, but to be given feathers by women on the street who they didn’t even know? That feels even more insulting.

  2. Emily

    Sometimes, I feel like we’re already rolling that way. It’s a ridiculously surreal time to be alive in America.

    Thanks again for maintaining such an interesting blog. We seem to read many of the same publications, e.g., The Atlantic and The Guardian, but you still manage to find some interesting news articles, both old and new, that I haven’t come across myself.

    Stay safe and healthy.

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