“
A significant number of people believe tribal people still live and dress as they did 300 years ago. During my tenure as principal chief of the Cherokee Nation, national news agencies requesting interviews sometimes asked if they could film a tribal dance or if I would wear traditional tribal clothing for the interview. I doubt they asked the president of the United States to dress like a pilgrim for an interview.
”
”
Wilma Mankiller
“
I never leaf through a copy of National Geographic without realizing how lucky we are to live in a society where it is traditional to wear clothes.
”
”
Erma Bombeck
“
Everyone wears clothing, yes? Society divides these clothing up into Men & Women’s, Boys & Girls’, Jr. & Miss. But society cannot decide who wears what. While the fabric may be cut to suit a traditionally male or female body (boy or girls body), the second the buyer purchases the item, that clothing no longer becomes 'boys' or 'girls' clothes, but rather, the buyers clothes. This is an example of the individual defining the identity term vs. the identity term defining the individual.
”
”
Kent Marrero
“
traditional Winterian clothing for women consists of pleated, ivory, floor-length dresses, most of the men wear blue tunics and pants under lengths of white fabric that wrap in an X around their torsos.
”
”
Sara Raasch (Ice Like Fire (Snow Like Ashes, #2))
“
Whether you call it Attachment Parenting, natural parenting, or simple maternal instincts, this false "return" to traditional parenting is just a more explicit and deliberate version of the often unnamed parenting gender divide. Whether you're wearing you baby or not, whether you're using cloth diapers or teaching your four-week-old to use the toilet; it's still women who are doing the bulk of child care, no matter what the parenting philosophy. Putting a fancy name to the fact that we're still doing all the goddamn work doesn't make it any less sexist or unfair
”
”
Jessica Valenti (Why Have Kids?: A New Mom Explores the Truth About Parenting and Happiness)
“
usually rents a white dress that’s been worn hundreds of times. The man wears something clean that’s not mining clothes. They fill out some forms at the Justice Building and are assigned a house. Family and friends gather for a meal or bit of cake, if it can be afforded. Even if it can’t, there’s always a traditional song we sing as the new couple
”
”
Suzanne Collins (Catching Fire (The Hunger Games, #2))
“
Secret Teachings on Preparing Shinobi Missions: The most important thing you should keep in mind when you go on a shinobi mission is to imitate well the language of the target province and the ways of the local people. This includes their appearances, the way of wearing clothes, the way of shaving the head, the way of making up their hair, the way of making up a sword or short sword, and the way of refinement and luxury.
”
”
Yoshie Minami (The Secret Traditions of the Shinobi: Hattori Hanzo's Shinobi Hiden and Other Ninja Scrolls)
“
AUTHOR’S NOTE The Morris dance . . . . . . is traditionally danced on May 1, to welcome in the summer. Its history is a bit confused, possibly because it’s often danced near pubs, but it is now the English folk dance. The dancers usually wear white, and have bells sewn on their clothes. It is danced by both men and women, and is certainly now danced in the United States too. I know this because I saw the Dark Morris danced in a bookshop in Chicago some years ago. I’d invented the Dark Morris for another book called Reaper Man (at least I think I invented it), and a Morris team (officially known as a side) turned up in all black, just for me. They danced it in silence and perfect time, without the music and bells of the “summer” dance. It was beautifully done. But it was also a bit creepy. So it might not be a good idea to try it at home. .
”
”
Terry Pratchett (Wintersmith (Discworld, #35))
“
The witch is a dangerous person. Neither his appearance nor his behaviour betray his satanic nature. He does not wear special clothing, he does not have magical instruments. He does not boil potions, does not prepare poisons, does not fall into a trance, and does not perform incantations. He acts by means of the psychic power he was born. Malefaction is a congenital trait of his personality. The fact that he does evil and brings misfortune owes nothing to his predilections. It brings him not special pleasure. He simply is that way.
”
”
Ryszard Kapuściński
“
The alienating effects of wealth and modernity on the human experience start virtually at birth and never let up. Infants in hunter-gatherer societies are carried by their mothers as much as 90 percent of the time, which roughly corresponds to carrying rates among other primates. One can get an idea of how important this kind of touch is to primates from an infamous experiment conducted in the 1950s by a primatologist and psychologist named Harry Harlow. Baby rhesus monkeys were separated from their mothers and presented with the choice of two kinds of surrogates: a cuddly mother made out of terry cloth or an uninviting mother made out of wire mesh. The wire mesh mother, however, had a nipple that dispensed warm milk. The babies took their nourishment as quickly as possible and then rushed back to cling to the terry cloth mother, which had enough softness to provide the illusion of affection. Clearly, touch and closeness are vital to the health of baby primates—including humans. In America during the 1970s, mothers maintained skin-to-skin contact with babies as little as 16 percent of the time, which is a level that traditional societies would probably consider a form of child abuse. Also unthinkable would be the modern practice of making young children sleep by themselves. In two American studies of middle-class families during the 1980s, 85 percent of young children slept alone in their own room—a figure that rose to 95 percent among families considered “well educated.” Northern European societies, including America, are the only ones in history to make very young children sleep alone in such numbers. The isolation is thought to make many children bond intensely with stuffed animals for reassurance. Only in Northern European societies do children go through the well-known developmental stage of bonding with stuffed animals; elsewhere, children get their sense of safety from the adults sleeping near them. The point of making children sleep alone, according to Western psychologists, is to make them “self-soothing,” but that clearly runs contrary to our evolution. Humans are primates—we share 98 percent of our DNA with chimpanzees—and primates almost never leave infants unattended, because they would be extremely vulnerable to predators. Infants seem to know this instinctively, so being left alone in a dark room is terrifying to them. Compare the self-soothing approach to that of a traditional Mayan community in Guatemala: “Infants and children simply fall asleep when sleepy, do not wear specific sleep clothes or use traditional transitional objects, room share and cosleep with parents or siblings, and nurse on demand during the night.” Another study notes about Bali: “Babies are encouraged to acquire quickly the capacity to sleep under any circumstances, including situations of high stimulation, musical performances, and other noisy observances which reflect their more complete integration into adult social activities.
”
”
Sebastian Junger (Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging)
“
We do have some strong traditions of community in the United States, but it’s interesting to me that our traditionally patriotic imagery in this country celebrates the individual, the solo flier, independence. We celebrate Independence Day; we don’t celebrate We Desperately Rely on Others Day. Oh, I guess that’s Mother’s Day [laughter]. It does strike me that our great American mythology tends to celebrate separate achievement and separateness, when in fact nobody does anything alone. Nobody in this auditorium is wearing clothing that you made yourself from sheep that you sheared and wool that you spun. It’s ridiculous to imagine that we don’t depend on others for the most ordinary parts of our existence, let alone the more traumatic parts when we need a surgeon or someone to put out the fire in our home. In everyday ways we are a part of a network. I guess it’s a biological way of seeing the world. And I don’t understand the suggestion that interdependence is a weakness. Animals don’t pretend to be independent from others of their kind—I mean no other animal but us. It seems like something we should get over [laughter].
”
”
Barbara Kingsolver (The Bean Trees)
“
The secrets of the kitchen were revealed to you in stages, on a need-to-know basis, just like the secrets of womanhood. You started wearing bras; you started handling the pressure cooker for lentils. You went from wearing skirts and half saris to wearing full saris, and at about the same time you got to make the rice-batter crepes called dosas for everyone’s tiffin. You did not get told the secret ratio of spices for the house-made sambar curry powder until you came of marriageable age. And to truly have a womanly figure, you had to eat, to be voluptuously full of food.
This, of course, was in stark contrast to what was considered womanly or desirable in the West, especially when I started modeling. To look good in Western clothes you had to be extremely thin. Prior to this, I never thought about my weight except to think it wasn’t ever enough. Then, with modeling, I started depending on my looks to feed myself (though my profession didn’t allow me to actually eat very much). When I started hosting food shows, my career went from fashion to food, from not eating to really eating a lot, to put it mildly. Only this time the opposing demands of having to eat all this food and still look good by Western standards of beauty were off the charts. This tug-of-war was something I would struggle with for most of a decade.
”
”
Padma Lakshmi (Love, Loss, and What We Ate: A Memoir)
“
The alienating effects of wealth and modernity on the human experience start virtually at birth and never let up. Infants in hunter-gatherer societies are carried by their mothers as much as 90 percent of the time, which roughly corresponds to carrying rates among other primates. One can get an idea of how important this kind of touch is to primates from an infamous experiment conducted in the 1950s by a primatologist and psychologist named Harry Harlow. Baby rhesus monkeys were separated from their mothers and presented with the choice of two kinds of surrogates: a cuddly mother made out of terry cloth or an uninviting mother made out of wire mesh. The wire mesh mother, however, had a nipple that dispensed warm milk. The babies took their nourishment as quickly as possible and then rushed back to cling to the terry cloth mother, which had enough softness to provide the illusion of affection. Clearly, touch and closeness are vital to the health of baby primates—including humans. In America during the 1970s, mothers maintained skin-to-skin contact with babies as little as 16 percent of the time, which is a level that traditional societies would probably consider a form of child abuse. Also unthinkable would be the modern practice of making young children sleep by themselves. In two American studies of middle-class families during the 1980s, 85 percent of young children slept alone in their own room—a figure that rose to 95 percent among families considered “well educated.” Northern European societies, including America, are the only ones in history to make very young children sleep alone in such numbers. The isolation is thought to make many children bond intensely with stuffed animals for reassurance. Only in Northern European societies do children go through the well-known developmental stage of bonding with stuffed animals; elsewhere, children get their sense of safety from the adults sleeping near them. The point of making children sleep alone, according to Western psychologists, is to make them “self-soothing,” but that clearly runs contrary to our evolution. Humans are primates—we share 98 percent of our DNA with chimpanzees—and primates almost never leave infants unattended, because they would be extremely vulnerable to predators. Infants seem to know this instinctively, so being left alone in a dark room is terrifying to them. Compare the self-soothing approach to that of a traditional Mayan community in Guatemala: “Infants and children simply fall asleep when sleepy, do not wear specific sleep clothes or use traditional transitional objects, room share and cosleep with parents or siblings, and nurse on demand during the night.” Another study notes about Bali: “Babies are encouraged to acquire quickly the capacity to sleep under any circumstances, including situations of high stimulation, musical performances, and other noisy observances which reflect their more complete integration into adult social activities
”
”
Sebastian Junger (Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging)
“
Kimbanguism is an extremely peace-loving religion, yet brimming with military allusions. Those symbols were not originally part of the religion, but were copied in the 1930s from the Salvation Army, a Christian denomination that, unlike theirs, was not banned at that time. The faithful believed that the S on the Christian soldiers’ uniform stood not for “Salvation” but for “Simon,” and became enamored of the army’s military liturgy. Today, green is still the color of Kimbanguism, and the hours of prayer are brightened up several times a day by military brass bands. Those bands, by the way, are truly impressive. It is a quiet Monday evening when I find myself on the square. While the martial music rolls on and on, played first by the brass section, then by flutes, the faithful shuffle forward to be blessed by the spiritual leader. In groups of four or five, they kneel before the throne. The spiritual leader himself is standing. He wears a gray, short-sleeved suit and gray socks. He is not wearing shoes. In his hand he holds a plastic bottle filled with holy water from the “Jordan,” a local stream. The believers kneel and let themselves be anointed by the Holy Spirit. Children open their mouths to catch a spurt of holy water. A young deaf man asks for water to be splashed on his ears. And old woman who can hardly see has her eyes sprinkled. The crippled display their aching ankles. Fathers come by with pieces of clothing belonging to their sick children. Mothers show pictures of their family, so the leader can brush them with his fingers. The line goes on and on. Nkamba has an average population of two to three thousand, plus a great many pilgrims and believers on retreat. People come from Kinshasa and Brazzaville, as well as from Brussels or London. Thousands of people come pouring in, each evening anew. For an outsider this may seem like a bizarre ceremony, but in essence it is no different from the long procession of believers who have been filing past a cave at Lourdes in the French Pyrenees for more than a century. There too, people come from far and near to a spot where tradition says unique events took place, there too people long for healing and for miracles, there too people place all their hope in a bottle of spring water. This is about mass devotion and that usually says more about the despair of the masses than about the mercy of the divine. After the ceremony, during a simple meal, I talk to an extremely dignified woman who once fled Congo as a refugee and has been working for years as a psychiatric nurse in Sweden. She loves Sweden, but she also loves her faith. If at all possible, she comes to Nkamba each year on retreat, especially now that she is having problems with her adolescent son. She has brought him along. “I always return to Sweden feeling renewed,” she says.
”
”
David Van Reybrouck (Congo: The Epic History of a People)
“
Advika was given a chance at coaching to speak on
any topic she wishes, as it was their fun day.
As she was a good speaker she drafted a poem for people
like her who too were in the same level game of life,
dealing with the same hell, just different devils -
“If you like wearing short clothes, wear it,
If you like makeup, do it,
If you like going to pubs, go for it,
If you love pretending fake, pretend it,
If you like drinking, smoking, just do it,
But
If I like traditional clothes, let me wear it,
If I don’t put makeup, let me be that way,
If I don’t go to pubs, don’t force me to come along,
If I stay real and hate pretending fake, deal with it,
If I don’t want to drink, smoke, then don’t tag
me as old-fashioned.
If I do not go with the trend just let me breathe in
my comfort zone do not try to steal oxygen to make
me die someday just because I do not fit in your space.
Great ones usually do not fit it, so it is okay!
Everybody is unique so what if I am antique.
”
”
Garima Pradhan
“
Advika was given a chance at coaching to speak on
any topic she wishes, as it was their fun day.
As she was a good speaker she drafted a poem for people
like her who too were in the same level game of life,
dealing with the same hell, just different devils -
“If you like wearing short clothes, wear it,
If you like makeup, do it,
If you like going to pubs, go for it,
If you love pretending fake, pretend it,
If you like drinking, smoking, just do it,
But
If I like traditional clothes, let me wear it,
If I don’t put makeup, let me be that way,
If I don’t go to pubs, don’t force me to come along,
If I stay real and hate pretending fake, deal with it,
If I don’t want to drink, smoke, then don’t tag
me as old-fashioned.
If I do not go with the trend just let me breathe in
my comfort zone do not try to steal oxygen to make
me die someday just because I do not fit in your space.
Great ones usually do not fit it, so it is okay!
Everybody is unique so what if I am antique.
”
”
Garima Pradhan (A Girl That Had to be Strong)
“
Hatshepsut began to wear the traditional Pharaonic false beard and other accoutrements of office, and men’s clothing with body armor to conceal her breasts and other female attributes, as can be seen in statues created at Deir el-Bahari, her mortuary temple. She also changed her name, giving it a masculine rather than a feminine ending, and became “His Majesty, Hatshepsu.” In other words, she ruled as a man, a male pharaoh, not simply as regent.
”
”
Eric H. Cline (1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed)
“
When a young employee gasped at his blue language, Simons flashed a grin. “I know—that is an impressive rate!” A few times a week, Marilyn came by to visit, usually with their baby, Nicholas. Other times, Barbara checked in on her ex-husband. Other employees’ spouses and children also wandered around the office. Each afternoon, the team met for tea in the library, where Simons, Baum, and others discussed the latest news and debated the direction of the economy. Simons also hosted staffers on his yacht, The Lord Jim, docked in nearby Port Jefferson. Most days, Simons sat in his office, wearing jeans and a golf shirt, staring at his computer screen, developing new trades—reading the news and predicting where markets were going, like most everyone else. When he was especially engrossed in thought, Simons would hold a cigarette in one hand and chew on his cheek. Baum, in a smaller, nearby office, trading his own account, favored raggedy sweaters, wrinkled trousers, and worn Hush Puppies shoes. To compensate for his worsening eyesight, he hunched close to his computer, trying to ignore the smoke wafting through the office from Simons’s cigarettes. Their traditional trading approach was going so well that, when the boutique next door closed, Simons rented the space and punched through the adjoining wall. The new space was filled with offices for new hires, including an economist and others who provided expert intelligence and made their own trades, helping to boost returns. At the same time, Simons was developing a new passion: backing promising technology companies, including an electronic dictionary company called Franklin Electronic Publishers, which developed the first hand-held computer. In 1982, Simons changed Monemetrics’ name to Renaissance Technologies Corporation, reflecting his developing interest in these upstart companies. Simons came to see himself as a venture capitalist as much as a trader. He spent much of the week working in an office in New York City, where he interacted with his hedge fund’s investors while also dealing with his tech companies. Simons also took time to care for his children, one of whom needed extra attention. Paul, Simons’s second child with Barbara, had been born with a rare hereditary condition called ectodermal dysplasia. Paul’s skin, hair, and sweat glands didn’t develop properly, he was short for his age, and his teeth were few and misshapen. To cope with the resulting insecurities, Paul asked his parents to buy him stylish and popular clothing in the hopes of fitting in with his grade-school peers. Paul’s challenges weighed on Simons, who sometimes drove Paul to Trenton, New Jersey, where a pediatric dentist made cosmetic improvements to Paul’s teeth. Later, a New York dentist fitted Paul with a complete set of implants, improving his self-esteem. Baum was fine with Simons working from the New York office, dealing with his outside investments, and tending to family matters. Baum didn’t need much help. He was making so much money trading various currencies using intuition and instinct that pursuing a systematic, “quantitative” style of trading seemed a waste of
”
”
Gregory Zuckerman (The Man Who Solved the Market: How Jim Simons Launched the Quant Revolution)
“
The standard fiber of world history, America's traditional crop, hemp, could provide our textiles and paper and be the premier source for cellulose. The war industries—DuPont, Allied Chemical, Monsanto, etc.,—are protected from competition by the marijuana laws. They make war on the natural cycle and the common farmer.
”
”
Jack Herer (The Emperor Wears No Clothes: A History of Cannabis/Hemp/Marijuana)
“
Over the last decade, entire neighbourhoods have lost their identity to the ever-growing clothing retail market. Since my first visit to the Marais quarter of Paris in 2003, I have seen the area shift from a charming, off-beat district featuring a mix of up-and-coming designers, traditional ateliers, bookstores and boulangeries to what amounts to an open-air shopping mall dominated by international brands. In the last five years, an antique shop has been replaced by a chic clothing store and the last neighbourhood supermarket transformed into a threestorey flagship of one of the clothing giants. The old quarter is now only faintly visible, like writing on a medieval palimpsest: overhanging the gleaming sign of a sleek clothes shop, on a faded ceramic fascia board, is written ‘BOULANGERIE’. In economically developed countries, people’s motivations for spending money have long since shifted from needs to desires. There’s no denying we need places to live in, food to nourish us and clothes to dress ourselves in, and, while we’re at it, we might as well do these things with a certain degree of refinement to help make life as pleasurable as possible. But when did the clothing industry turn into little more than a cash machine whose main purpose seems to be its own never-ending growth? Just as clothing retail shops are sucking the identity out of entire neighbourhoods, so that the architecture becomes little more than a backdrop for their products, the production of the garments they sell is eating away at the Earth’s resources and the life of the workers who are producing them. Fashion has become the second most polluting industry in the world. And with what result? Our wardrobes are cluttered with so many clothes that the mere sight of them becomes overwhelming, yet at the same time we feel a constant craving for the next purchase that will transform our look.
”
”
Alois Guinut (Why French Women Wear Vintage: and other secrets of sustainable style (MITCHELL BEAZLE))
“
He’d asked his father why it mattered. What was a pair of slacks over a pair of jeans? How was an uncomfortable collar or a tie relevant to showing respect? If they had to be grieving, couldn’t they at least do it in comfortable clothes? He’d been eleven then and his father, patience wearing thin from grief, had let out a tired sigh as he knelt in front of Jonathan to help him with his tie. “Traditions get passed down; they become the rules. Some make sense, some seem pointless, but others,” Douglas said, “others only show their value when you don’t obey them.” “This one seems stupid,” Jonathan responded, squirming in his tight collar as his father finished. “Well,” Douglas said, standing and turning to the mirror to put on his own tie, “I don’t think today is the day that we test the rules.
”
”
T. Ellery Hodges (The Never Hero (Chronicles Of Jonathan Tibbs, #1))
“
Rather than a state of equal brotherhood and sisterhood, Kim had introduced an elaborate social order in which the eleven million ordinary North Korean citizens were classified according to their perceived political reliability. The songbun system, as it was known, ruthlessly reorganized the entire social system of North Korea into a communistic pseudofeudal system, with every individual put through eight separate background checks, their family history taken into account as far back as their grandparents and second cousins. Your final rating, or songbun, put you in one of fifty-one grades, divided into three broad categories, from top to bottom: the core class, the wavering class, and the hostile class. The hostile class included vast swathes of society, from the politically suspect (“people from families of wealthy farmers, merchants, industrialists, landowners; pro-Japan and pro-U.S. people; reactionary bureaucrats; defectors from the South; Buddhists, Catholics, expelled public officials”) to kiaesaeng (the Korean equivalent of geishas) and mudang (rural shamans). Although North Koreans weren’t informed of their new classification, it quickly became clear to most people what class they had been assigned. North Koreans of the hostile class were banned from living in Pyongyang or in the most fertile areas of the countryside, and they were excluded from any good jobs. There was virtually no upward mobility—once hostile, forever hostile—but plenty downward. If you were found to be doing anything that was illegal or frowned upon by the regime, you and your family’s songbun would suffer. Personal files were kept locked away in local offices, and were backed up in the offices of the Ministry for the Protection of State Security and in a blast-resistant vault in the mountains of Yanggang province. There was no way to tamper with your status, and no way to escape it. The most cunning part of it all was that Kim Il-Sung came up with a way for his subjects to enforce their own oppression by organizing the people into inminban (“people’s groups”), cooperatives of twenty or so families per neighborhood whose duty it was to keep tabs on one another and to inform on any potentially criminal or subversive behavior. These were complemented by kyuch’aldae, mobile police units on constant lookout for infringers, who had the authority to burst into your home or office at any time of day or night. Offenses included using more than your allocated quota of electricity, wearing blue jeans, wearing clothes bearing Roman writing (a “capitalist indulgence”) and allowing your hair to grow longer than the authorized length. Worse still, Kim decreed that any one person’s guilt also made that person’s family, three generations of it, guilty of the same crime. Opposing the regime meant risking your grandparents, your wife, your children—no matter how young—being imprisoned and tortured with you. Historically, Koreans had been subject to a caste system similar to India’s and equally as rigid. In the early years of the DPRK, the North Korean people felt this was just a modernized revitalization of that traditional social structure. By the time they realized something was awfully wrong, that a pyramid had been built, and that at the top of it, on the very narrow peak, sat Kim Il-Sung, alone, perched on the people’s broken backs, on their murdered families and friends, on their destroyed lives—by the time they paused and dared to contemplate that their liberator, their savior, was betraying them—in fact, had always betrayed them—it was already much, much too late.
”
”
Paul Fischer (A Kim Jong-Il Production: The Extraordinary True Story of a Kidnapped Filmmaker, His Star Actress, and a Young Dictator's Rise to Power)
“
February 4–15: The couple visits holy places, Osaka, Mount Fuji, Yokohama, and the Izu Peninsula. Marilyn looks especially comfortable among a group of women dressed in traditional Japanese clothing. In some shots she wears a hat and a modestly cut suit. Marilyn accepts the Japanese emperor’s gift of a natural pearl necklace. In Korea to entertain the troops General John E. Hull invites Marilyn to entertain American troops in Korea. A disturbed DiMaggio opposes the invitation, but Marilyn accepts it. Marilyn writes photographer Bruno Bernard from Japan: “I’m so happy and in love. . . . I’ve decided for sure that it’ll be better if I only make one or two more films after I shoot There’s No Business Like Show Business and then retire to the simple good life of a housewife and, hopefully, mother. Joe wants a big family. He was real surprised when we were met at the airport by such gigantic crowds and press. He said he never saw so much excitement, not even when the Yankees won the World Series.
”
”
Carl Rollyson (Marilyn Monroe Day by Day: A Timeline of People, Places, and Events)
“
When I visit schools, I explain that modern Indians dress like everybody else and speak English. That our tribal regalia, the buckskin and feathers, are not everyday garb but are reserved for special events. I say that we are proud of our beautiful, colorful clothing, which is important in our traditions, but it is only a part of being Indian. The part that they can’t see, our beliefs, our values, make us Indian even though we no longer wear buckskins, beads, and feathers and don’t live in teepees. As an adult I can handle the stereotypes, and as an author I try to correct the misconceptions and tell the truth about American Indians. Unfortunately, Indian children can have negative feelings about themselves because they don’t fit this false image. Educators have found that the way children view themselves is important to their success in school and how they relate to others. But an unrealistic idea of what and who Indians are supposed to be confuses a child when he or she compares those images to his or her parents and other relatives. Some
”
”
MariJo Moore (Genocide of the Mind: New Native American Writing (Nation Books))
“
She had not seen Rahul since her wedding night, a fact that was incredible to her. "Hi, Didi," he said when she opened the door, still using the traditional term of respect their parents had taught him. She felt no awkwardness, the sight of him after over a year and a half standing under the portico of the house, completing a part of her that had been missing, like the clothes she could wear again now that the weight of her pregnancy was gone.
”
”
Anonymous
“
On all the roads we traversed between Yozgat and Kayseri, about 80 per cent of the Muslims we encountered (there were no Christians left in these parts) were wearing European clothes, bearing on their persons proof of the crimes they had committed. Indeed, it was an absurd sight: overcoats, frock coats, jackets—various men’s and women’s European garments of the finest materials—on villagers who were also wearing sandals and traditional baggy pants [shalvars]. Barefoot Turkish peasant boys wore formal clothes; men sported gold chains and watches. It was reported that the women had confiscated many pieces of diamond jewelry, but [as they were sequestered] we had no way of encountering them.34
”
”
Thomas de Waal (Great Catastrophe: Armenians and Turks in the Shadow of Genocide)
“
Would that all was as well within the castle. Alas, that you have inflicted me with one Simus of the Hawk.
Never mind the fact that Simus strides from his chambers to the mineral baths naked as a plucked chicken, smiling and greeting all and sundry with a cheerful smile.
Never mind the fact that he and Warren have taken to weapons practice in the Great Hall, jumping from table to table swords in one hand, flagons in the other, fighting and laughing, and cursing each other, causing ladies to swoon and leaving heel marks on all the tables.
Never mind that half the lords want to kill him, the other half want to befriend him and that all of the ladies seem entranced. Which includes my own Lady Wife, thank you very much.
Oh no, the worst of it is that Simus is having relations with Dye-Mistress Mavis, or so the sounds echoing in the castle halls at all hours of the night announce to all and sundry.
By his tradition, Simus does no wrong, or so Dye-Mistress Mavis has informed me, Warren, and the Archbishop. Further, when we confronted her, she told us in no uncertain terms that she is an adult and Master of her trade and that her behavior is none of our concern. She added something to the effect that you aren't the only one willing to make sacrifices for her guild.
Which had the Archbishop clutching for his holy symbol.
I think Dye-Mistress is only after the cloths that Simus wears like a peacock. I have tried to explain that to Simus, but he just smiles that wide smile of his and indicates that he sees no harm to being 'used'.
The entire Court and Council is scandalized. They all come to me and complain, taking the greatest pleasure in going over every juicy detail.
”
”
Elizabeth Vaughan (Warsworn (Chronicles of the Warlands, #2))
“
The point of making children sleep alone, according to Western psychologists, is to make them “self-soothing,” but that clearly runs contrary to our evolution. Humans are primates—we share 98 percent of our DNA with chimpanzees—and primates almost never leave infants unattended, because they would be extremely vulnerable to predators. Infants seem to know this instinctively, so being left alone in a dark room is terrifying to them. Compare the self-soothing approach to that of a traditional Mayan community in Guatemala: “Infants and children simply fall asleep when sleepy, do not wear specific sleep clothes or use traditional transitional objects, room share and cosleep with parents or siblings, and nurse on demand during the night.
”
”
Sebastian Junger (Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging)
“
Please take it off Lupe.
She hates wearing clothes.
”
”
Cindy L. Rodriguez (Three Pockets Full: A story of love, family, and tradition)
“
In the Catholic world, it is well established that modesty is more than just a hemline, but we cannot ignore the elephant in the room either. Few Catholics have yet to understand what it truly means to dress appropriately for Mass; many people dress as if they just came back from the beach or just rolled out of bed. Then we have the few, yet the loud, Catholics who seemed to have made it their life’s duty to remind others, regardless of time, place, or charity, that, according to them, their particular outfit is “of the devil.” While at the same time, many more Catholics, men and women, have come to believe that the amount of clothing that we wear doesn’t matter, as long as we have love in our hearts. But neither of these ideologies seem to coincide with Church Tradition. What we Catholics need to ask ourselves is,
“If how we dress, most especially in the Presence of the Blessed Sacrament, is as vitally important as the Church has always said until lately, how then is it suddenly not an issue?
”
”
Julia Black (Catholic Modesty: What It Is, What It Isn't, and Why It's Still Important)
“
I said to him at last, 'I don't want your damn pity.'
'It's not pity. Tamlin said I shouldn't tell you-' He winced a bit.
'I'm not made of glass. If the naga attacked you, I deserve to know-'
'Tamlin is my High Lord. He gives an order, I follow it.'
'You didn't have that mentality when you worked around his commands to send me to see the Suriel.' And I'd nearly died.
'I was desperate then. We all were. But now- now we need order, Feyre. We need rules, and rankings, and order, if we're going to stand a chance of rebuilding. So what he says goes. I am the first one the others look to- I set the example. Don't ask me to risk the stability of this court by pushing back. Not right now. He's giving you as much free rein as he can.'
I forced a steady breath to fill my too-tight lungs. 'For all that you refuse to interact with Ianthe, you certainly sound a great deal like her.'
He hissed, 'You have no idea how hard it is for him to even let you off the estate grounds. He's under more pressure than you realise.'
'I know exactly how much pressure he endures. And I didn't realise I'd become a prisoner.'
'You're not-' He clenched his jaw. 'That's now how it is and you know it.'
'He didn't have any trouble letting me hunt and wander on my own when I was a mere human. When the borders were far less safe.'
'He didn't care for you the way he does now. And after what happened Under the Mountain...' The words clanged in my head, along my too-tense muscles. 'He's terrified. Terrified of seeing you in his enemies' hands. And they know it, too- they know all they have to do to own him would be to get ahold of you.'
'You think I don't know that? But does he honestly expect me to spend the rest of my life in that manor, overseeing servants and wearing pretty clothes?'
Lucien watched the ever-young forest. 'Isn't that what all human women wish for? A handsome faerie lord to wed and shower them with riches for the rest of their lives?'
I gripped the reins of my horse hard enough that she tossed her head. 'Good to know you're still a prick, Lucien.'
His metal eye narrowed. 'Tamlin is a High Lord. You will be his wife. There are traditions and expectations you must uphold. We must uphold, in order to present a solid front that is healed from Amarantha and willing to destroy any foes who try to take what is ours again.
”
”
Sarah J. Maas (A Court of Mist and Fury (A Court of Thorns and Roses, #2))
“
What’s most funny is that my composer friend confuses and confounds the racial
stereotypes of everybody. He is very traditionally ‘well spoken’ - even posh -
and a classical composer. He is also one of the best-dressed men going and manages to pull off 'out there’ fashions that most brothers would never try, such
as tweed suits and ponchos. Black people sometimes hear the accent, see the
clothes and assume 'he wants to be white’, because they have sadly internalised
the idea that there are only certain types of authentic ways to be black. I’ve seen
their shock too, when they realise how ‘black’ his politics are despite the suits,
the piano and the RP. He actually knows far more about African history and
culture than the vast majority of dashiki-wearing Afrocentrists. White people
often make the same mistake and say the strangest of things to him, again
thinking that he is not one of ‘those’ black people - you know, the ones that
respect and love themselves.
”
”
Akala (Natives: Race and Class in the Ruins of Empire)
“
What is religion?"
"It's a doctrine that prescribes a way of living built on rituals created to give a sense of security.
Some has rituals that included when and what to eat, what clothes to wear, how often to pray, who to socialize with, and who to marry. Often the priests would tell horrible stories about awful things that would happen if people broke these traditions."
"Was it true?"
"No, but it was a way for the priests to gain control, and unfortunately it divided people …
”
”
Elin Peer (The Seducer (Men of the North, #4))
“
the University of the South, a Tennessee
liberal arts college with a handful of graduate students, known informally as Sewanee (because that’s the name of the
town). The first thing you’ll notice on visiting Sewanee is that most of the men are wearing jackets and ties, while most of
the women are wearing makeup and skirts. Forty years ago, most colleges had a similar dress code. Today, Sewanee is one of a handful. The majority of students pledge fraternities and sororities and social life revolves around a never-ending stream of “big-weekend” beer bashes. The biggest of them all is homecoming weekend, where students get a date and dress up for a huge see-and-be-seen fashion show that includes innumerable cocktail parties before and after. Conservative, well-heeled, and All-American, Sewanee is the perfect place for a carefree 1950s-style college education. In the words of one student, Sewanee has “the happiest college student body I have ever encountered.”
No one would ever say such a thing about Bard College, a school of similar size about an hour north of New York City. Though the students may find happiness there, too, it is well hidden beneath a thick veneer of liberal artistic angst. Bard students, it seems, carry the weight of the world on their shoulders. If there is an oppressed group anywhere to be found, Bard students can be counted on to buy T-shirts, sell
buttons, and organize protests on its behalf. As for clothes, you would be hard-pressed to find a Bard man who even owns a jacket and tie. Nor would the typical Bard woman be caught dead in a dress—unless it was paired with combat boots. Jewelry and makeup worn in traditional ways are nonexistent, but there is plenty of spiked hair, fluorescent hair, tattoos, and piercings protruding from every conceivable body part. As for football and fraternities? Take a wild guess. The biggest social event of the year at Bard is called Drag Race, where everyone dresses in drag and parties nonstop.
”
”
Fiske Guide To Colleges (Fiske Guide to Colleges 2005)
“
I met Chris at the Student Union. We both used to study there between our 9:30 and 11:30 classes.
I had seen him on campus before. He was always wearing this yellow sweatshirt and giant headphones. The kind of headphones that say, “I may not take my clothes seriously. I may not have brushed or even washed my hair today. But I pronounce the word ‘music’ with a capital ‘M.’ Like God.”
So I had noticed him before. He had Eddie Vedder hair. Ginger brown, tangly. He was too thin (much thinner than he is now), and there were permanent smudges under his eyes. Like he was too cool to eat or sleep.
I thought he was dreamy.
I called him Headphone Boy. I couldn’t believe my luck when I realized we studied in the Union at the same time.
Well, I studied. He would pull a paperback out of his pocket and read. Never a textbook. Sometimes, he’d just sit there with his eyes closed, listening to music, his legs all jangly and loose. He gave me impure thoughts. (...)
There we were. In the Student Union. He always sat in the corner. And I always sat one row across from him, three seats down. I took to leaving my 9:30 class early so I could primp and be in my spot looking casual by the time he sauntered in.
He never looked at me – or anyone else, to my relief – and he never took off his headphones. I used to fantasize about what song he might be listening to… and whether it would be the first dance at our wedding… and whether we’d go with traditional wedding photography or black and white… Probably black and white, magazine style. There’d be lots of slightly out-of-focus, candid shots of us embracing with a romantic, faraway look in our eyes.
Of course, Headphone Boy already had a faraway look in his eyes, which my friend Lynn attributed to “breakfast with Mary Jane.”
This started in September. Sometime in October, one of his friends walked by and called him “Chris.” (A name, at last. “Say it loud and there’s music playing. Say it soft and it’s almost like praying.”) One Tuesday night in November, I saw him at the library. I spent the next four Tuesday nights there, hoping it was a pattern. It wasn’t. Sometimes I’d allow myself to follow him to his 11:30 class in Andrews Hall, and then I’d have to run across campus to make it to my class in the Temple Building.
By the end of the semester, I was long past the point of starting a natural, casual conversation with him. I stopped trying to make eye contact. I even started dating a Sig Ep I met in my sociology class.
But I couldn’t give up my 10:30 date with Headphone Boy. I figured, after Christmas break, our schedules would change, and that would be that. I’d wait until then to move on.
All my hope was lost.
And then… the week before finals, I showed up at the Union at my usual time and found Chris sitting in my seat. His headphones were around his neck, and he watched me walk toward him. At least, I thought he was watching me. He had never looked at me before, never, and the idea made my skin burn. Before I could solve the problem of where to sit, he was talking to me.
He said, “Hey.”
And I said, “Hi.”
And he said, “Look…” His eyes were green. He kind of squinted when he talked. “I’ve got a 10:30 class next semester, so… we should probably make other arrangements.”
I was struck numb.
I said, “Are you mocking me?”
“No,” he said, “I’m asking you out.”
“Then, I’m saying yes.”
“Good..,” he said, “we could have dinner. You could still sit across from me. It would be just like a Tuesday morning. But with breadsticks.”
“Now you’re mocking me.”
“Yes.” He was still smiling. “Now I am.”
And that was that. We went out that weekend. And the next weekend. And the next. It was wildly romantic.
”
”
Rainbow Rowell (Attachments)
“
Civilized human beings wear clothes, therefore there can be no portraiture, no mythological or historical storytelling without representations of folded textiles. But though it may account for the origins, mere tailoring can never explain the luxuriant development of drapery as a major theme of all the plastic arts. Artists, it is obvious, have always loved drapery for its own sake—or, rather, for their own. When you paint or carve drapery, you are painting or carving forms which, for all practical purposes, are non-representational-the kind of unconditioned forms on which artists even in the most naturalistic tradition like to let themselves go. In the average Madonna or Apostle the strictly human, fully representational element accounts for about ten per cent of the whole. All the rest consists of many coloured variations on the inexhaustible theme of crumpled wool or linen. And these non-representational nine-tenths of a Madonna or an Apostle may be just as important qualitatively as they are in quantity. Very often they set the tone of the whole work of art, they state the key in which the theme is being rendered, they express the mood, the temperament, the attitude to life of the artist.
”
”
Aldous Huxley (The Doors of Perception)
“
When asked for their opinion men, more often than not, blamed western culture as the source of the rape epidemic. This most often found expression in blaming the victims, whose clothing styles showed that they had been corrupted by western culture. Men who come to big cities like Delhi looking for work are shocked at seeing young women wearing tight western clothing that, in their minds at least, leaves nothing to the imagination. Men from the villages who are accustomed to seeing women wearing the ghunghat, or traditional veil, in public arrive in Delhi to find themselves sexually overstimulated by the Delhi girls, who are like mangoes. What do you do with the fruit? You eat it, suck it, and throw it away. These women are being used and overused. Sometimes, they have ten boyfriends. In such a situation, how can you stop rapes? The current discourse is being created by elites and it ends there. You have all these rich people talking on TV, but if the rich want to have fun, they can afford to hire women and go to a hotel. Where will a poor man go?
”
”
E. Michael Jones (The Jews and Moral Subversion)
“
Nowadays, people often ask me what it’s like hunting with my dad. We’ve actually had offers of tens of thousands of dollars from people who want to spend a day in Phil’s blind. It always amazes us because when we were growing up, duck hunting was our everyday life. When we were kids, we were always in the blind with Dad. I don’t remember my first hunt or the first duck I killed, like other young hunters. It was a different time and Phil wasn’t exactly a traditional dad. He didn’t take pictures of our first duck. It wasn’t sentimental; it was just life. We hunted and fished because we wouldn’t eat if we didn’t. Phil’s number one concern was always safety. If you were careless with a loaded gun, you would not come back to the blind. You’d be stuck at home with Mom the next time.
Also, you had to be prepared because Phil wasn’t gonna baby you out there. If you didn’t wear the proper clothes, you were gonna freeze your butt off. And I did many times! You had to get your stuff together as well: shells, guns, and whatever you needed. I will never forget a time when I was about ten and we were all going on a dove hunt. It was opening day, and we were all excited. I was shooting a .410 shotgun, but I could only find one shell. Since we were leaving early in the morning, Phil let me know we wouldn’t be able to stop at a store because none of them would be open that early in the morning.
“You better make that shot count,” Phil told me.
So I shadowed Phil during the entire hunt, watching him drop ‘em. I rant to fetch the birds for Phil, and if any were still alive, he would pinch their heads. With one flick of Phil’s wrist, the dove’s head separated from its body. I was fascinated and yet a little freaked out. You can’t be sensitive when you’re hunting with Phil. I kept throwing my shotgun up to shoot, but I knew I had only one shot. Finally, about eleven o’clock in the morning, I saw my opportunity. I told Phil I was gonna take my shot. He was supportive and told me to make it count. Boom! Wouldn’t you know I smoked the dove? I couldn’t believe it. I went one-for-one with only one shell. As I turned to look at my dad with the biggest smile ever, I noticed he was putting his gun down. He’d shot at the exact same time. He wanted to make sure my shot counted.
“Good shot, Willie boy, put your safety back on,” Phil told me.
I didn’t know why the safety mattered since I only had one shell, but he wanted to instill the practice in my brain. We’ll never know who hit that bird, but believe me, I told Jase that I got it for sure.
”
”
Willie Robertson (The Duck Commander Family)
“
I don’t believe it, thought Marius, eyes following the parting of the people-ocean. To hear them cheer, they adore the man the way they adore no gods. To them it must look as if I’ve put the creature under arrest. But what are they doing? What they always, always do whenever they see a line of lictors marching-along with fasces on their shoulders and some purple-bordered toga strutting at their rear—they’re standing aside to permit the majesty of Rome the right of way. Not even for a Lucius Equitius will they destroy the power of the rods and the purple-bordered toga. There goes Rome. What’s a Lucius Equitius, when all is said and done? A pathetic facsimile of Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus, whom they loved, loved, loved. They’re not cheering Lucius Equitius! They’re cheering the memory of Tiberius Gracchus.
And a new kind of pride-filled emotion welled up in Gaius Marius as he continued to watch that lictorial dorsal fin cleave the ocean of Roman lowly—pride in the old ways, the customs and traditions of six hundred and fifty-four years, so powerful still that it could turn a tide greater than the German invasion with no more effort than the shouldering of a few bundles of sticks. And I, thought Gaius Marius, stand here in my purple-bordered toga, unafraid of anything because I wear it, and know myself greater than any king who ever walked this globe. For I have no army, and inside their city I have no axes thrust into the rods, nor a bodyguard of swords; and yet they stand aside for the mere symbols of my authority, a few sticks and a shapeless piece of cloth rimmed with less purple than they can see any day on some unspeakable saltatrix tonsa parading his stuff. Yes, I would rather be consul of Rome than king of the world.
”
”
Colleen McCullough (The First Man in Rome (Masters of Rome, #1))
“
Prosperity in those times would have probably meant enjoying enough to eat, having some warm clothes to wear, and being able to sleep in a dry shelter. The diamond shape, along with simple chip-carved patterns and some geometric designs, was probably initially included on the spoons because it could be easily executed with the simple tools available to the young carvers.
”
”
David Western (History of Lovespoons: The Art and Traditions of a Romantic Craft (Fox Chapel Publishing) Comprehensive Guide to History, Artifacts, Symbol Significance, Spoon Detail, and More with 250 Color Photos)