#and did a whole paper on the stereotype of women and witches

[thegoblinwitch]

Hans Baldung Grien, Witches Sabbath, 1510, woodcut with tone block, 379 x 260 mm, Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg.

[pregnant-piggy]

Summer Games - three

Blaise Zabini x reader

masterlist

warnings: no pronouns used for the reader, 

A/N: I had so much fun writing this part and coming up with all the stupid things! I really hope you like it :)

written for @omgrachwrites​​​ writing challenge with the prompts: ‘I can’t have this argument with you again.’ ‘But—’ ‘No, I’m done.’ and ‘Sorry… your hair was in your face… thought  I should move it so I could see you better.’

word count: 3.9k

The next morning Blaise awoke before Draco and rather than waking his friend too, Blaise got dressed in silence and slipped out of the room. He walked down to the kitchen, where he found you sitting at the table with a mug in your hands, reading the morning papers.

‘Might rain this afternoon,’ you said without looking up.

Blaise hummed something as he sat down opposite of you and poured himself a cup of coffee. He looked up and studied your face as you read the newspaper. Your eyes scanned the pages quickly, picking out the things worth reading. Blaise watched you for a few minutes until you had finished and looked up at him.

‘What you’re doing?’ he asked when you kept looking at him.

‘Looking at you,’ you smiled.

Blaise chuckled nervously. ‘I noticed that, yeah. But why?’

‘I’m probably not gonna see you all day,’ you shrugged. ‘Don’t wanna forget that pretty face of yours.’

Blaise straightened his back and blinked. ‘Don’t wanna—’

‘Good morning, lovelies!’ Pansy interrupted as she threw open the door of the kitchen and strode in.

Blaise was still turned to you and watched as you hugged Pansy shortly before she sat down next to you. She poured herself some coffee and looked at Blaise.

‘Blaise, stop staring, that’s rude,’ Pansy said and she waved her hand in front of Blaise’s face.

He quickly looked away from you and shot Pansy a nasty look before he turned to his coffee.

‘Pansy don’t bug him,’ you scolded and shot Blaise a kind smile. ‘It’s only morning.’

‘Fine, fine,’ Pansy said and she waved your words away with her hand. ‘I won’t bug him until later this day.’ She took a sip from her coffee and pulled a face before quickly scooping two spoons of sugar in her cup. ‘Where’s Draco?’

‘Still asleep,’ Blaise muttered. ‘I considered hexing him awake, but I still have to sleep here for two nights and Draco with a grudge is not someone you want to sleep next to.’

‘I am not that bad,’ a grumpy voice at the doorframe said. Draco walked into the room and flopped down on the chair next to Blaise. ‘Coffee, please.’

‘Sure, you’re not that bad,’ you snickered as you poured coffee in Draco’s mug.

While Draco drank his coffee, you told your friends what Game today would be. ‘It’s the last day before the winner gets announced. Yesterday while we were at the lake the other half of the teams played games in the fields. Before we set off today we’ll get the ranking so far, so you know what team to beat.’

‘But what are we doing today?’ Pansy asked.

A big smile spread on your face. ‘It’s the best Game of the whole festival. The organisation has put out a big scavenger hunt. It goes through the whole village and we have to solve riddles and collect things. You’ll get a list with things to collect and usually the team splits up in little groups and each group gets a part of the list.’

‘What sort of things do we have to collect? Because I’m really not interested in breaking my back from carrying a lot,’ Draco said.

‘I don’t know,’ you replied. ‘Usually there’s a theme to the hunt. My grandma helps to put it together and previous years she’d tell me what the theme was but she hasn’t this year.’

‘So we’ll just go around town collecting things? Isn’t that boring?’

Your smile faltered a bit and Blaise kicked Draco under the table. ‘Don’t listen to him, he’s a jerk in the morning. It sounds fun!’

You smiled thankfully at Blaise and after Pansy also reassured you that it sounded great, your smile was back on your face, and it stayed there for the rest of the morning.

/\/\/\

The scavenger hunt had officially started. A little earlier the scores of the teams had been disclosed; the Sly Foxes were on top with only two points difference between them and the Red Titans. Next were the Oiled Machines and at the bottom the Raging Angels. But just by a few points so all could change with the scavenger hunt.

The organisation had handed out the lists with the things to collect and the theme had quickly been clear.

Book of Spells … 7 pts

Iron Cauldron … 15 pts

Vial with Sleeping Potion … 12 pts

Witch Hat … 5 pts

Unnecessarily the woman of the organisation had added that the theme of this year’s hunt was ‘magic’ and both Blaise and Draco had had to refrain their laughter at the stereotypical items they had to collect. There was a whole list on ingredients for potions that no real wizard would ever think of using, such as goat milk and rabbit turds. Apparently Muggles still thought of witches as old, weary women in little shacks in the woods.

Blaise and Draco had been teamed up with three other Foxes. Neither of them knew any of the three, but after his little spat with Alysia two days ago, Blaise was more than happy that he wasn’t in her team.

The oldest of their team was Ivanna, a woman of thirty-four with a pale face and sleek brown hair. Despite the heat she was wearing long trousers and a jacket over her shirt. She’d told the rest of the team that she had a little baby of just two months old, so that if she seemed tired it meant she probably was.

The second of the three was the twenty-three year old student Mica. They had a dark golden skin and black, curly hair that had been cut short and dyed blue in the ends. Under the blue bangs lay two dark eyes that glittered with excitement and competitiveness. Mica was a student in London, but they had come back to the town where they’d grown up for the Summer Games.

The last teammate was the very young Raoul. He was the son of the man Draco and Blaise had met the first day of the festival at the stand with the cherry pastries, Hank. Raoul was just eleven years old, but he brought a childlike enthusiasm with him that made everyone in the team energized.

They were by far the youngest team, as all the other teams had the more aged villagers, so they called themselves the Sly Pups. Quickly they set to work and looked at the items on their list.

‘Does this make any sense to you?’ Ivanna asked as she handed the list to Blaise and Draco.

Errn rq srwlrqv … 7 pts

Eurrpvwlfh … 17 pts

Fordn … 9 pts

Fdqgohv .. 10 pts

‘I don’t get it,’ Draco said to the rest of the team and then he whispered to Blaise: ‘You didn’t take Ancient Runes, did you?’

‘No, I didn’t,’ Blaise answered and he looked at the sheet in his hand. ‘But I doubt these are runes.’

Blaise looked around at the rest of the Sly Foxes but they didn’t seem to have the same problems, as they were already heading off. Then he looked at the other teams on the field and realised that from each team one group would stay bent over their list while the others took off. In one of the remaining teams Blaise recognised you and Pansy.

‘You don’t think it’s a mistake, do you?’ Ivanna asked with frowned eyebrows.

‘No, the other teams have it too,’ Blaise said and he nodded to the three groups left behind around them.

‘Wait, this one we can read!’ Mica said and pointed out the first line on the paper. ‘”To understand the magic you must always think three steps ahead.” What does that mean?’

The whole team silenced as they thought about the possible meaning of the sentence. Raoul looked around on the ground as if he would find the answer literally three steps ahead of him. For minutes it was quiet and Blaise’s annoyance grew.

To make his irritation even worse two of the other teams around them, including your team, had found the solution to the weird texts and were now running off the field. Blaise let out an exasperated sigh and he shook his head.

‘It can’t be this hard,’ Draco said.

‘It’s some sort of secret language, but I don’t understand the three steps,’ Mica admitted and they rubbed their temples with their knuckles.

‘My dad taught me a secret language once,’ Raoul said. ‘So we could write each other without my other dad finding out. We changed each letter with the one next in the alphabet.’

‘Of course!’ Mica exclaimed and they took the paper from Blaise. ‘Does someone have a pen?’

Ivanna gave Mica a pen and they turned Draco around to use his back. ‘What are you doing?’ Draco snapped but Mica ignored him as they started to write the alphabet on the top of the paper.

‘Look, it’s actually really easy,’ they said. ‘Each letter is swapped for a letter three steps ahead in the alphabet! Just like Raoul said!’

‘So that would mean that the e in the first word is actually a…’

‘A b!’ Mica completed Blaise’s sentence. ‘So the first word is… book… on… pot—potions! We have to find a potions book!’

‘I’ve got one of those in my bag,’ Draco muttered, but Blaise kicked him softly on his leg.

‘We have to go the library!’ Raoul said and he ran off.

‘Raoul! Wait a minute! Not so fast!’ Ivanna yelled after him and the group quickly followed the little boy.

/\/\/\

Your team had quickly figured out the solution to the weird text and found a potions book in the library, accompanied by a little paper with the next clue. Now you were sitting on the wall around the garden of the library with your team.

On your right sat Pansy and on your left Quincy. Quincy was your grandparents’ neighbour and you knew him very well so you were glad he was on your team. He was fifty-five and he had studied philosophy at the university in the nearest big city when he was younger. You hoped his intelligence would be applicable in the hunt, and so far it had for he had figured out the secret language.

Opposite of you stood Chantelle, the forty-two year old town’s librarian. Despite her being in her early forties she looked much older. She had a wrinkled face and neck and always stared at you with big eyes from behind her thick glasses. Her appearance was deceiving however, because her mentality was as quick as that of a young adult.

The last in your team was a teenage boy only a year older than you and Pansy. His name was Christopher and you had known him since you were a small child and you went to your grandparents in the summer. He had dark curls framing his olive face that was always painted with a bright smile. This time there was something other in his smile too and it only made sense to you after he told you that his boyfriend was in the other team and he desperately wanted to beat him.

‘y/n too,’ Pansy had said and Christopher had raised his eyebrow.

‘Really?’

‘No! Blaise is not my boyfriend!’ you’d cried to which Pansy had laughed.

‘Who said anything about Blaise? I merely said ‘boyfriend’.’

Now you were all looking at the new paper in your hand. The next item on the list was an eurrpvwlfh; a broomstick. Though finding out what the next item was had been easy, the real problem was finding the place where. The text on the paper you had gotten from the person in the library didn’t exactly help you very much.

Where I am is always a mystery.

Over mountains I fly,

Or I cross above the trees.

Down on the ground I rest,

Still and motionless I stand.

Pansy sighed and she threw her head back, closing her eyes as she thought about the riddle. Next to you, Quincy was staring at the text as if that would make him any wiser. Every once in a while he would hum but he didn’t come with an answer.

‘We’re gonna lose our lead like this,’ Christopher sighed as he looked around the street for other teams.

‘Surely we’re not seeing something,’ Pansy said and she tilted her head to the side, looking at the paper from a different angle. ‘No offense, but the organisation isn’t exactly a group of highly intelligent people, so maybe we have to think easier.’

Christopher chuckled and you faked a scowl at Pansy. ‘That’s my grandmother you’re talking about!’ you cried and Pansy just shrugged. ‘But you’re right. I am sure there is something clear that we’re overlooking.’

Chantelle cleared her throat and pointed at the text. ‘Maybe we should take a literal approach. You know, look at the text rather than the meaning?’

‘Here,’ you said and gave Chantelle the paper, allowing her to put her full focus on it.

Down the street you noticed a group of people approaching the library. Running ahead of the others was a young boy you recognised as Raoul. He had a big smile on his face and was waving the list with things to collect through the air. In the group behind him Blaise and Draco were walking together, followed by Mica and Ivanna. They noticed your team and Blaise and Draco waved.

‘Not to put pressure on you, but I really hope you can figure it out now because if we don’t win from Blaise and Draco I will be hearing that for the rest of my life,’ you sighed and Pansy nodded.

Chantelle looked up from the paper and winked at you. ‘I got it.’

Your team cheered and Blaise’s team, that was just about to enter the library, looked around. Upon seeing your team so happy, their faces turned sad.

‘See you tonight, boys!’ Pansy shouted. ‘Losers have to do the dishes!’

/\/\/\

Blaise and his team stepped out of the woods with the broomstick in their hand. The broom was old and twitchy and Blaise had to stifle a laugh thinking of how different the real broomsticks were in the wizarding world.

Again it had been Mica who had guessed the answer of the riddle. Blaise wondered where the team would be if they hadn’t been here. Probably still working on the first puzzle. But Mica had figured out that the first letters of the sentences in the little poem formed the word woods, the place where they had found the broomstick.

Now they only had the next word, fordn, meaning cloak, and a silver pin. It was not much to go on but Ivanna had recognised the pin straight away.

‘It comes from Mrs. Heath’s studio!’ she exclaimed and looked at the little pin in her fingers. ‘It’s what she uses for her dresses!’

Unfortunately Mrs. Heath’s studio lay on the other side of the village and it would take at least forty minutes before they’d get there.

‘Forty minutes?!’ Draco cried and when the team set off he turned to Blaise. ‘Stupid Muggles, why can’t we just apparate?’

‘Oh shut it, Malfoy,’ Blaise said. ‘It’s fun!’

‘I’m gonna curse y/n for making us do this…’

Grudging Draco followed the rest of his team and though Blaise would never say it to his friend, he had to admit that his feet were beginning to hurt.

The Sly Pups passed little houses with colourful front yards, full of flowers and bushes. The main street was silent and all the shops were closed, as most of the inhabitants were participating in the Games and there was no need for the stores to be open. They ran into a few other teams, but none of those had the same list as they had.

After forty-five minutes they arrived at the old house of Mrs. Heath. In the garden there was a little path, past pink flowerbeds and a small pond with fish. Halfway in the garden the path split in two. One side led to the bright yellow front door, the other led to a wooden door with a sign on it that said the Heath atelier.

Ivanna stepped through the garden and knocked on the yellow door. A minute it was silent and then an old lady opened the door. She was wearing an orange with blue flowers dress that reached to the ground and her grey hair hung in a braid over her shoulder. Her lips spread into a smile when she saw the five people at her door.

‘You’re the first ones!’ Mrs. Heath smiled and she stepped out of the door. ‘Come, come, follow me!’

Blaise sent Draco a questioning look as they followed Mrs. Heath to her studio. Your team had been far ahead of Pups, having figured out where to find the broomstick before Blaise’s team even had the riddle. In the forest there had been two brooms already collected, but apparently the Sly Pups were the only ones who had found where the silver pin came from.

Inside the Heath atelier stood four mannequins with colourful robes. Each had a different colour and pattern. There was a dark blue one with yellow stars, a green one covered with red flowers and one coloured yellow with orange and red flames. Blaise snickered at the cloaks; the only one he had even seen wearing such colours was Dumbledore and he couldn’t exactly be called a normal wizard.

‘You take this one,’ Mrs. Heath said and she pulled a bright pink cloak with yellow and green crescents embroidered in it from a mannequin. ‘And also—’ she opened a drawer and pulled out a thin object in the shape of a circle ‘—this one. Good luck!’

Ivanna took the object and the cloak and ushered the team outside. In the garden she handed over the cloak to Draco, who took it with a frown, and looked at what Mrs. Heath had given her.

‘It’s a coaster,’ Mica said, raising one eyebrow. ‘Why would she give us a coaster?’

Before anyone of the team could guess, however, another group arrived at the house. You and Pansy were walking ahead, both with tired and sweaty faces, and the rest of your team seemed just as exhausted.

Blaise waved at you and you gave him a weak smile back as you walked with your team inside.

‘Does anyone recognise this?’ Mica asked and they looked around the team.

Everyone shook their head and they sighed as one. Ivanna brought the coaster closer to her face and examined it. She dropped her shoulders and shook her head again. ‘I don’t know what it is.’

‘It probably has something to do with the next item,’ Mica said and they pulled out the list. ‘Candles. Is there a place here that sells candles or anything?’

‘But what has that got to do with the coaster?’ Blaise asked.

‘I don’t know,’ Mica admitted.

Your team came out of the studio with the green cloak and Pansy had a coaster in her hand. You huddled a little away from Blaise and your team formed a protective circle around the object in Pansy’s hand.

Blaise was standing with his back to your team, but he could hear the whispers. While his team tried to think of a solution for the weird puzzle, Blaise tried to listen to what your teammates had to say. And it seemed like your team had sorted it out as quickly as Ivanna had sorted out the solution of the pin.

‘I know where this is from,’ Quincy said. ‘At Mikey’s they use these coasters.’

‘And that would make sense, because in a restaurant they surely have candles!’ Chantelle added and the rest of your team mumbled approvingly.

Blaise looked around and saw your team leaving the garden and heading for the main street. You caught his stare and smiled enthusiastic at Blaise, making him weak in the knees with the innocent laugh on your face. Butterflies were fluttering through his stomach and he felt bad for eavesdropping on your team.

‘Blaise?’

‘Yeah?’ Blaise tore his gaze from you and turned to his team, finding them all looking at him.

Mica laughed and shook their head. ‘Ivanna said that she knows someone who makes candles,’ they said. ‘I know we haven’t got much time left, but it’s worth a try.’

The scavenger hunt would only last till four, then everyone had to return to the fields, whether they had found all the objects or not. Now there were only thirty minutes left, so they had to hurry.

Blaise looked at his team and thought of what he had heard a minute earlier. If they went to the candle-maker they would never get to the restaurant in time, and that would mean that they’d lose from your team. However, when Blaise thought of you and how happy you’d be when winning, he just couldn’t tell.

‘Sure,’ he said. ‘Sounds great.’

/\/\/\

You were lying in bed, staring at the shapes the lamp cast on the ceiling. Pansy was hopping around in the room, trying to find the pyjamas that she had thrown off this morning. Her footsteps were heavy sounds on the wooden floor.

There was a faint smile on your face. This afternoon your team had been the only one to return with all four of the items on the list. Though that didn’t guarantee that the Red Titans had won the entire scavenger hunt, it did mean that you and Pansy’s team had won from Blaise and Draco’s.

However, there was one more thing that added to your smile.

‘He knew,’ you said and sat up against the headboard of the bed.

‘Who knew what?’ Pansy asked as she was bent over in the closet.

‘Blaise knew where to find the candles.’

Pansy looked up at you. ‘What do you mean? His team didn’t find them.’

‘No, his team didn’t know,’ you said while Pansy took off her shirt and trousers. ‘But he did.’

Pansy neatly folded her clothes and placed them on a shelf in the closet. Then she closed the door and looked around the room. ‘Where the hell are my clothes?’ she mumbled before she looked back at you. ‘How do you know?’

‘He overheard Quincy telling where the coaster came from,’ you said and you lifted the pillow on the bed and revealed Pansy’s pyjamas. ‘He looked at me before we walked away. I could see it in his face.’

Pansy had sat down on the bed and pulled the shirt over her head. ‘So if he knew, why didn’t he tell his team?’ she asked and then a wicked smile spread on her face. ‘He let you win.’

‘He let us win, Pansy,’ you corrected, but even you couldn’t suppress a smile. ‘But yeah.’

‘So that’s why you’ve been smiling so much all evening!’ Pansy exclaimed loudly and you shushed her.

‘Shh! He’s still in the room next to us!’

Pansy rolled her eyes and crawled under the covers next to you. ‘Will you now believe he’s totally into you?’

You turned off the light on the nightstand and lay down, pulling the duvet up to your chin. You stared at the dark ceiling for a moment, thinking back of today. With a smile you took Pansy’s hand and gave it a little squeeze.

‘Perhaps.’

- - - - - - -

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MASTERLIST

[louisa-townsend-fmp-hair]

1.

Two weeks ago, my sister decided to cut her shoulder length hair to a number 2 buzzcut. As a woman in her early 20’s with few formal responsibilities, this haircut was simply a way for her to take authority over her appearance and celebrate her youth. Whilst she knew that people’s responses would be polarised, she wasn’t expecting how attached other people had become to her old hair. Comments such as “oh, but she had such lovely hair” and “why did she go so drastic” have been frequent from family friends and neighbours and have left me wondering what hair really does mean on a person. Whilst it’s clear some of these viewpoints come from more conservative understandings of femininity and others merely come from the shock of a big change, I have become astonished by the significance people attach to the hairstyle choices of other people.

My sister’s decision to shave her head stemmed from her dislike for the inconvenience of having longer locks. Personally this is a feeling I cannot relate to. For as long as I can remember I have desired Rapunzel-esque flowing lengths of hair. As a child I was jealous of anybody and everybody with a few extra inches than me. I longed for the day that my hair would be comparable to the waist-length manes of the dolls I played with and women I watched on screen, and as embarrassing as it is to admit, I still to this day sometimes find myself comparing the length of my own hair to those around me. Whilst this desire for long hair may have initially been a result of social conditioning and the feminine ideals I have been brought up to emulate, the attachment I now have to my long hair is for the strength I feel it gives me. As I have grown, so has my hair; its structure withholds information from each year that it has been attached to me. Whilst it has an attachment to the past, I see my hair as a reminder for how much has changed and how much will continue to change and that i will also grow and evolve alongside it. Where I gain confidence from having a long mass of hair, my sister has found a new confidence with having very little. Describing what these past few weeks have been like, she told me that there is a particular vulnerability without having the security blanket of hair to hide behind. Often our hair detracts some of the focus from our face, thus can feel like an extra layer of protection. With that added layer gone she has found herself to become more comfortable in her natural state and thus has gained a new confidence in not needing that added barrier. For much of human history, long hair had been adopted by people in positions of power as it provided a visual representation of their wealth and higher status. In many cases authoritative figures have forced those beneath them to cut their hair in order to reinforce the sense of power and ownership they hold over them. In other cases, most noticeable within the skinhead subculture emerging in London in the 1960s, people chose to shave their heads in an expression of their rejection of austerity and conservatism. Hair length can provide such a strong sense of empowerment depending on the context it is in; I find it intriguing that these two opposites (long and short) can in essence provide the same feeling for the wearer. Each of these examples of strength are dependent on the wearer having autonomy over how they chose to style their hair; I think there is an interesting concept within what people intend their chosen hair length to represent and how it is really seen by others. There is also the exploitative side to the history of hair length. Within this there could be a valuable study on how important hair is for the expression of self identity and the consequences of this being denied or taken away from an individual.

We cannot view hair now without applying a political connotation to it. Even if it is unintentional, the way we present our hair has been politicised to such an extent that it is now an inescapable inevitability. Hair has been such an integral way in which people depict their race or ethnic background, religion, their sexuality, their political leanings, their age, gender, the music they listen to and so on. As a gay woman, an assumption she recieved in response to the cut was that she had done it to “look more gay”. Whilst hair can be and often is used to illustrate a part of someone’s personality, these damaging stereotypes reiterate the misogynistic beliefs that remain in the way society views women’s appearance. Unfortunately these assumptions between hair length and sexuality have not changed much over the past sixty years. In an interview Simon Mayo did with Bruce Springsteen for BBC Radio 2’s ‘Drivetime’, Springsteen describes the attitudes of America when the Beatles brought the long hair trend across the pond in 1964: “they thought, you know, are you gay?... That's what my father asked me, you know, when I grew my hair like an inch, and he wasn’t kidding”. Whilst western society has strict customs for the lengths acceptable for each gender and sexuality, they haven’t always been the same, thus making each one entirely arbitrary. It would be interesting to compare these regulations from across history to find where each of our supposedly inflexible rules for hair have come from. On top of this, I would be interested to know how hairstyles may have been used as a form of secret messaging. Much like earrings being worn on the right ear of homosexual men were utilised to share a message only with others who knew about the code, I wonder if, and how, hair has been used through history on the subject of showing sexuality through code. Another form of identity shown through hair can be race. Braids have been an important part of many African cultures. Thought to have started with the Himba people of Namibia, different tribes have since continued to create different styles of braids. Through different traditional styles, braids could indicate a person’s tribe, religion, wealth, marital status and age. When the slave trade was initiated by Europeans in the early 16th century, one of the first acts of exploitation was shaving off their prisoners’ hair. This removed all indications of cultural identity as depicted through hair and reduced slaves to just one character. Racism towards people of colour did not end with slavery and hair, whether worn in a natural afro style or in braids, has frequently been used as a reason for descrimination. Due to this troubling history, the appropriation of these styles has been especially problematic and is an important aspect to look into on the subject of politicised hair.

Other assumptions we make of people's personalities through their hair comes from its colour and texture. Literature has long used the metonymic description of hair to help inform the details of a character’s whole personality and behaviour. As Susan J Vincent notes in Hair, An illustrated History, ‘Jane Eyre’s brown tresses are neat and unassuming, their wayward potential smoothed and disciplined; Blanche Ingram’s are a showy raven-black, glossily curled and becoming; and the insane, bestial Bertha Rochester gibbers in her attic under ’a quantity of dark, grizzled hair, wild as a mane’. From these simple physical descriptions we are encouraged to assume that these women are three wildly different characters. Indeed we do make uneducated judgements about people’s personalities solely from the appearance of their hair. Medical practice from the middle ages included the study of the ‘four humours’: blood, phlegm, yellow bile and black bile; with this style of medicine, it was believed that physical features showed what was happening with these four elements inside the body. Along this school of thought it was also believed that specific bodily features related to different psychological traits and hair was used as one of the main indicators. With this practice, many stereotypes were formed about the characters relating to different hair, and many of these remain today. In 1796 a ladies’ almanac created a guideline for the moral qualities relating to some hair types. The examples it gave were that “black smooth hair in both men and women denotes mildness, constancy, and affection, whereas black curly hair indicates inebriety, a quarrelsome temper and a nature inclined to amorousness. In men, long red hair ‘denotes cunning, artifice, and deceit’, and in women, a glib tongue, vain nature and ‘an impatient and fiery temper’”. Whilst we may not exactly follow these associations today, we still allow stereotypes to colour our judgement of people’s appearances. With depictions of Venus, the goddess of beauty, love and fertility, emerging from the water with cascading fair hair, the connotations of purity with blondes has been well rooted in our society. Following the theory that ‘blondes have more fun’ a research paper in 1997 by psychologist Dr Tony Fallone writes of the blonde psychology, stating that “blondes equal innocent, fragile, youthful, cool, chaste and ultimately sexy, kittenish and irresistable- not a colour, then, but a state of mind.” Red hair has received similar regard in terms of the character it represents, however rather than any connections to godliness, it has long received the most prejudice. The first hair dyes created were advertised for people with grey or ginger hair. In 1254 St Louis King of France ordained that all prostitutes must dye their hair reed, automatically connecting the colour with sexual behaviour, however in the middle ages, redheaded women were considered to be witches and were executed. By the end of the 1800s red hair had been praised so highly through literature that it became a symbol of rare and natural beauty. These examples prove the importance people have held throughout history on hair reflecting internal attributes, a focus that still remains to a certain degree in our judgements of hair today. This too could be a rich topic of research to consider.

[bestmovies0]

6 Terrible Stereotypes (That Came From Positive Things)

You probably expressed the view that every slur and negative stereotype jump from the minds of history’s most bigoted people, like that time Sir Misogynist fabricated sexism whole cloth in 1204. But history is more nuanced than that. Sometimes inventions, positive trends, and good aims end up harming the exact people they were supposed to help. Take how …

6

Every Witch Stereotype Comes From Women Working A Cool Job

Picture your favorite witch. Unless you moved with ‘9 0s Sabrina, you’re likely picturing an old woman wearing all black, with a pointy hat, a broom, and maybe hovering over a black kettle. You might have a felines in the mingle as well. Everything you portrait was a relic of a kind of cool minute in history when women could earn a living doing a very concrete task: brewing beer.

Medieval people who didn’t know jack about how the Universe operated, how to read, or why someone should fabricate toilet paper as soon as possible understood at least one thing us sophisticated modern characters can agree with: Their clean drinking water was garbage. Which was why some of them skipped water wholly and booze brew instead. In a world in which hunting, warring, whoring, and maybe cobbling (?) took up most of the day, boys didn’t have time to wait near a kettle to make their own beer. So the brewers were usually( pause for dramatic impact) … females . i>

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You could find them if you knew the right signs. Typically she’d be near a big black kettle. And she’d have a cat to retain all the barley-eating vermin at bay. She’d likewise have an ale stake, which they were required by law to display. What’s an ale bet? A long wooden pole with a bunch of branches at the end, like a broom. And if you were out and about at the market, you could look for the big black pointy hat they wore to stand out while selling their brewskies at marketplace. Sound familiar yet?

David Loggan The green skin thing may have been from a hangover.

But everything started to change for lady brewers in the 1300 s. Men suddenly decided that they craved in on the rising booze market, which entailed girls had to move their ass out of the behavior. And when they refused? Well, there was a certain medieval saying about smart, strong-headed females: witch! She’s a witch! Burn the witch!

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Suddenly , now that it suited the men, the tall hat became the witch’s evil uniform, and the barley-protecting feline a “familiar” given to her by Satan. And the broomstick? She plainly rode it to go to her secret devil sessions. And that simmering brew wasn’t beer anymore, but some sort of evil beverage that would induce you go all weird — you know, unlike brew. By the 14 th century, people had been poisoned( ironically) against the idea of female homebrewers, right in time for large-scale breweries to take over. And so today, super vexing guys will make sure you know all about their latest microbrew , not realizing their shitty hobby get girls burned at the stake.

5

“Dumb Blondes” Was Accidentally Birthed By The Suffrage Movement

Once upon a time, a troupe of blonde performing women arrived in New York from Great Britain. They set up shop doing a burlesque performance and constructed indecent sums of money. The purpose. Except that the particular day this story was in was 1868, so a lot of sexist bullshit then occurred.

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When we say these blonde wives performed burlesque, it wasn’t burlesque as we think of it today, which is basically stripping with better music and nipple tassels. No, this was the extremely-risque-for-its-time burlesque, wherein women put on a play-act while presenting their legs ! Legs covered in thick tights, like they’re some kind of comfortably warm prostitutes. Some of them even dressed like boys. The nerve! Being a living, breathing girl would have been enough for most misogynists at the time, but add in the sexy prancing, the cross-dressing, and the fact that these British immigrants were taking indecent American occupations, and you have massive outrage on your hands.

Via Musicals1 01. com “Is that a dog garmented as a lamb ?! Will these loose wives stop at nothing ?! “

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So far, so depressingly normal, right? Nonetheless, at the same time, these UK gals were drawing the ire of American suffragettes. These proto-feminists had a difficult tightrope to stroll. On the one hand, the burlesque musicians were owning their sexuality and succeeding at a task in public. On the other, they were openly mocking the suffragist movement — among many other things, like Shakespeare, way, and marriage. In the end, many decided to speak out against the blonde British beauties, enabling another stereotype: that of the sour-faced suffragette who can’t take a bloody joke.

One in particular, Olive Logan, simply couldn’t let it go, even denouncing the women in front of Susan B. Anthony, who had most significant shit to deal with than throwing tint. Logan talked at length about how these blondes were a detriment to the gender, as they had nothing to give intellectually or talent-wise, and people simply went to see them for their bodies. Soon the latter are being put down with the insult “British Blondes, ” which we’re sure we’ve understood printed on a Maxim cover somewhere.

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Eventually, this jargon wasn’t used to refer to simply the burlesque dancers anymore, but to any woman who was famous for her appears, the so-called “professional beauties.” “British Blondes” transformed into “dizzy blondes, ” which is an old-timey term for hella dumb, and so we arrived here the quaint insult still used to this day. It certainly is tragic that Susan B. Anthony, who fought her entire life for equality, could have nipped one of the most damaging female stereotypes in the bud by telling her friend to chill for a second.

4

Cops Eating Donuts Came From Long, Terrible Hours

During the daytime, you can stop in for little bit anywhere, but in the old days, if you were working the night shift and craved something to feed, your options were limited. Sure, you try to find an all-night diner or pack a big lunchbox and thermos, but for cops on the job, one of those is very impractical and the other constructs your collaborator call you a big ol’ nerd.

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But after World War II, a new food fad made the entirety of the U.S .: donut shops. And because donut shops basically operate like bakeries, they open crazy early. Abruptly cops had a one-stop shop to grab food and coffee on the go, keeping them fed and alert as they roved the street. And “its been” cheap too, so even when other options becomes available, they bided loyal to the hole.

Of course, donut stores enjoyed the fact that policemen would hang out at their venues — especially before dawn, when the drug fiends are at their most feral. Dunkin’ Donuts founder William Rosenberg claimed in his autobiography that he actively induced his stores the kind of places policemen wanted to hang out for a while.

3

The Idea That “Lesbians Drive Subarus” Saved The Company

Here’s one you might not “ve heard quite a bit about” “unless youre” homosexual: All lesbians drive Subarus. Weirdly specific, sure, but the stereotype has been hardwired into gay culture. Why? Because of a logical fallacy. Not all lesbians drive Subarus. But for a period, all Subarus were driven by lesbians.

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It all started when Subaru was completely bombing as a company. In the 1990 s, big flashy autoes were coming into manner, and the company’s modest, compact brand wasn’t cutting it anymore. Simply one part of their line was selling well: the four-wheel-drive vehicles. However, the company couldn’t figure why. Then, one executive had a mind-opening converses with a homosexual friend and realise the reason: lesbians.

Lesbians loved everything about the outdoorsy Subarus. They were small, dependable, and cute in an off-road culture that leaned more toward dick-swinging big rigs. This revelation did pose a problem, as Subaru couldn’t openly advertise to lesbians, because this was the ‘9 0s and even Friends was making a million gay gags. Alienating their heterosexual customers, nonetheless few there were, “wouldve been” corporate suicide. They had to stay in the wardrobe, advertising-wise, and had to be subtle. Their new ad bureau created a series of publish ads showing Subaru vehicles from behind, all of them with sapphic-signaling license plates. One plate said “Camp Out, ” and the other said “Xena Lvr, ” after lesbian icon Xena: Warrior Princess .

Subaru Since then, their ads have gotten a bit more direct.

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The final one said “P-towny, ” which supposedly stood for “Provincetown” and not the other favorite p-word.

By 2000, when we all started to loosen a bit more, Subaru decided to go all in, gay-wise. They hired ex-tennis-player and famous lesbian Martina Navratilova as their spokesperson. As dog whistles run, it perked all the ears in the country. And it worked! 12 months ago, and Subaru had its best-ever sales time. The lesbian gamble had paid for by in spades.( Lesbians like gardening, right ?)

2

Hollywood Made The Festive Latina Stereotype To Sell Movies To Latinos

During WWII, Hollywood had a problem. Europe was being overrun by Nazis, which means they weren’t buying American movies!( Likewise demise and demolition, etc. etc .) So the studios necessity a new foreign market to compensate for the loss in revenue. Fortunately, there used to be plenty of movie fans waiting for them south of the border. Simply one problem: They were the same people Hollywood had been racist to since day one.

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Previously, South Americans and Mexicans had been negatively typecast as the bad dudes in movie — bandits tying females to qualifies and things. But with this new upsurge of Latin-oriented movies, they had to become good guys. However, Hollywood kind of … overcompensated. Needing a new Hispanic stereotype, Hollywood looked to Brazilian Carmen Miranda.

20 th Century Fox

She was the fruit-wearing, banjo-strumming, happy-go-lucky Latina who managed to get people crazy about bananas. And despite her best intents, a new Hispanic stereotype was born, one of the constantly happy, guitar-playing, sing, samba-dancing dummy.

According to one novelist for The Washington Post in 1942, the new movies constructed it seem like it was always Carnival and everyone “re dressed like” Carmen Miranda with skimpy clothings and fruit on their heads. You can see why this didn’t go over so well with people who lived there, those hard workers who were mostly non-fruit-covered.

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Miranda’s influence can still be felt today, when you ascertain person like Sophia Vergara. Now the highest-paid wife on television, her “act” is the happy Latina — she even dyed her blonde whisker brown to conform to the dark and somewhat stereotype. A stereotype that trumps other stereotypes. Ay, caramba . i>

1

Most Racist Job Stereotypes Come From Success Stories

This might shock you, but Americans used to be rather shitty to immigrants. Hard to believe, we know. Not content to simply impair them economically, socially, and culturally, people had to start calling them names as well. But despite those severe limitations, many immigrants rose to the occasion, creating empires out of the scraps that had been left for them.

Which simply devoted people further ways of being racist.

While now a lighthouse of progressiveness and decent coffee, 1800 s San Francisco had a serious racism difficulty, what with the many immigrants “re coming out” over the Pacific. Most San Franciscans discovered them far too … what’s the word … not-white for their inclination, and refused to work with them. Eventually, the only two areas these Chinese immigrants observed openings were in the restaurant business and taking in laundry. The pioneer of laundry was Wah Lee, who called himself “King Lee”( awesome) and set up a laundry business in Chinatown around 1855. As his business thrived, his Chinese employees were inspired by his success and started setting up their own laundry enterprises. Soon there were dozens, then hundreds, and by the 1880 s, over 7,500 all across California. So naturally, as a reward for their ingenuity and drive, 150 year later, Chinese immigrants are still linked to the idea they are the absolute best at getting stains out.

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The exact same has come to Vietnamese. During the Vietnam War, Hollywood royalty Tippi Hedren( of The Birds fame) noticed two phenomena: 1) Many Vietnamese women fleeing their homeland were stuck in refugee camps with no way to earn money, and 2) Get your fingernails done cost a lot of fund. Hedren decided to kill two issues with one stone and fly in her own manicurist to teach Vietnamese the trade and give the free market of nails a shot in the arm. Soon, business was booming. These days, 51 percentage of all manicurists (8 0 percent in California) come from Vietnamese backgrounds. But while Hedren is celebrated as both a great actress and the godmother of the fingernail industry, Vietnamese females only get stereotyped to hell.

Via BBC Hedren in back row, middle.( We guess. All white people seem the same to us .)

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Of course, America didn’t invent occupational racism. For that, you have to look to the treatment of Jews in medieval Europe. They were are prohibited from doing or owning almost anything, but one field that was open to them was banking. Christians were are prohibited from accusing concern because of something Jesus had once said in the Bible, so they weren’t that keen on the whole banking nonsense. Nonetheless, Jews had no such restrictions, so European commonwealths utilized this religion loophole to get their financial infrastructures off the ground. Eventually, Jews had a decent job prospect, and all that was asked for in return was for them to live in ghettos and wear a badge or hat so that you are able tell who they were at first glance — a bargain that really didn’t work up in their favor.

Unfortunately, like bankers today, Jews didn’t build themselves popular by charging people interest, and soon the stereotype leapt up that Jews were greedy and money-hungry. So you force outsiders into a profession and then dislike them for doing that profession correctly? Stop being such a Christian stereotype.

Screw it, be a witch. Brew some brew at home. Here’s a good read on how to get started . i > b>

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