![torayot:
I do love images like this for various reasons.
I’m obviously not one for uncritically wishing to live decades in the past. I recognise the valid arguments against romanticising historical eras and turning them into mere snippets of attractive fashions and lifestyles, ignoring any actual lives that were lived and experienced during those times.
However, the fact remains that I enjoy bits and bobs of old-fashioned things. The way I write and speak is tinged with slightly and definitely pretentious fragments and structures of outdated novels. I like seeing vintage photographs and styling myself with fashion influences from the 20s or the 40s. I pin curl my hair. I love brogues, high-waisted trousers, waist-coats, a dapper hat. I also love fitted dresses which flare from the waist. But I certainly have no wish to actually go back to these eras: people who think that it was a time of refined and “proper” manners and good music are kidding themselves, and I usually scoff at them before catching myself.
So what am I doing, then?
I can’t even pretend that I’m able to defend these tastes of mine. Perhaps my frowning at people who critique this trend for retro, usually well-meaning (augh) white middle class feminists, is knee-jerk defensiveness.
But I cannot help but feel that more stories need to be told here. I read on Tumblr once that a POC enjoyed seeing photos like the above because they loved seeing and knowing that people like them existed in the past. Indeed: the most visible versions of these retro worlds - at least the ones which exist in the popular imagination - are almost uniformly white and thin.
When [white middle class etc.] people long for their vintage world, they all but say that they want it to be visibly populated with only the sort of people that “look” right. They sigh over the vintage photographs where there’s not a single brown face, approve of a time when men where gentlemen and women were ladies, note with pleasure their trim waistlines and apparent “good health”. It’s so unlike nowadays, what with all this “diversifying”, and no-one knowing how to dress properly or treat a lady right - all those things are just PERLIDICKAL CORRICKISS GORN MAID and a symptom of an unruly and confused modern world.
But obviously there have always been a huge range of identities out there since… for ever. People whinge about “revisionist” history even when it’s based on considerable amounts of material and written evidence. It’s not like brown queers suddenly sprang up in the 1960s: it is simply a matter of which set of identities is taken into the dominant mainstream and showered with visiblity. I just wish I could confidently say that the dominant narratives and representations are more diverse and accepting in the early 21st century in comparison to the early 20th century…
So that is part of why I like to see these vintage photographs in addition to others and myself dressing up in vintage-inspired styles. We were really there in the past. We are here now. And we’re terribly stylish.](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m199guSAgk1qc0vl1o1_250.jpg)
![lostsplendor:
Hazel Lee [1912-1944]
Experienced women pilots, like Lee, were eager to join the WASP, and responded to interview requests by Cochran. Members of the WASP reported to Avenger Field, in wind swept Sweetwater, Texas for an arduous 6-month training program. Lee was accepted into the 4th class, 43 W 4.[2] Hazel Ying Lee was the first Chinese American woman to fly for the United States military.
Although flying under military command, the women pilots of the WASP were classified as civilians. They were paid through the civil service. No military benefits were offered. Even if killed in the line of duty, no military funerals were allowed. The WASPs were often assigned the least desirable missions, such as winter trips in open cockpit airplanes. Commanding officers were reluctant to give women any flying deliveries. It took an order from the head of the Air Transport Command to improve the situation.
Upon graduation, Lee was assigned to the third Ferrying Group at Romulus, Michigan. Their assignment was critical to the war effort; Deliver aircraft, pouring out of converted automobile factories, to points of embarkation, where they would then be shipped to the European and Pacific War fronts. In a letter to her sister, Lee described Romulus as “a 7-day workweek, with little time off.” When asked to describe Lee’s attitude, a fellow member of the WASP summed it up in Lee’s own words, “I’ll take and deliver anything.”
Described by her fellow pilots as “calm and fearless,” Lee had two forced landings. One landing took place in a Kansas wheat field. A farmer, pitchfork in hand, chased her around the plane while shouting to his neighbors that the Japanese had invaded Kansas. Alternately running and ducking under her wing, Lee finally stood her ground. She told the farmer who she was and demanded that he put the pitchfork down. He complied.
Lee was a favorite with just about all of her fellow pilots. She had a great sense of humor and a marvelous sense of mischief. Lee used her lipstick to inscribe Chinese characters on the tail of her plane and the planes of her fellow pilots. One lucky fellow who happened to be a bit on the chubby side, had his plane dubbed (unknown to him) “Fat Ass.”
Lee was in demand when a mission was RON (Remaining Overnight) In a big city or in a small country town, she could always find a Chinese restaurant, supervise the menu, and often cook the food herself. She was a great cook. Fellow WASP pilot Sylvia Dahmes Clayton observed that “Hazel provided me with an opportunity to learn about a different culture at a time when I did not know anything else. She expanded my world and my outlook on life.”
Lee and the others were the first women to pilot fighter aircraft for the United States military.
Image (via World War II Database)
Text [click for full article] (via Wikipedia)](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lzvpdvTodm1qbwvhpo1_250.jpg)
The 30s and 40s in colour.
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