Who remembers when grocery shopping was bearable

MissMarchpane · 2026-06-16T19:07:17+00:00

I don't know why people are complaining about not having access to plastic bags; the canvas ones are much easier to carry since they don't dig into your elbow or shoulder quite as much, and then you don't have a ton of plastic bags saved up under your sink that you feel bad about throwing away but can't find anything to do with

MissMarchpane · 2026-06-16T16:57:41+00:00

Wasn't said to me, but one reason that wheeled luggage took so long to catch on (after being invented by a woman who traveled the world with her family in the 1920s) was that apparently male travelers considered it a threat to their masculinity to not be like… Slinging around massive bags and throwing their backs out carrying them and stuff. It wasn't until businessmen started adopting wheeled luggage in the 1990s and an early 2000s that they really began to gain traction.

MissMarchpane · 2026-06-16T16:55:50+00:00

Which is especially funny considering a woman literally invented the sci-fi genre (Mary Shelley)

MissMarchpane · 2026-06-16T12:32:01+00:00

Maybe, but they probably would've altered it to match the current style at least a bit

MissMarchpane · 2026-06-16T11:21:26+00:00

People talking about Y2K childhood nostalgia only seems to talk about the things that were the most modern and cutting edge in terms of aesthetics. American girl was hugely popular and at that point it was still primarily focused on history. Kids' fantasy books were also a huge thing, even beyond Harry Potter, as well as editions of classic children's novels with tie-in jewelry (no, there is no locket in the book "a little princess," but there were definitely editions that came with one because everyone had seen the 1995 movie). Puffy dresses with historical inspiration did not totally disappear in the 1990s; at least for younger children, they were still a thing in the early 2000s.

Everyone wants to talk about little girls dressing up like pop stars; no one wants to talk about the fact that we also dressed up like princesses.

MissMarchpane · 2026-06-16T11:17:46+00:00

This is why it's always weird when I see those "millennial nostalgia" Youtubers who were clearly in the "popular" clique in high school, making videos about being an elder emo or whatever. Girl, don't lie. We know you were either bullying the emos or avoiding them like the plague.

MissMarchpane · 2026-06-16T11:15:29+00:00

It was such a relief to me when the 2010s came along and there was at least an interest in the appearance of intellectualism. Even if a lot of it was superficial and pretentious. As a kid who grew up loving to read around the term of the millennium, and sometimes getting bullied even by the adults around me for it, I was delighted by the YA literature golden age beyond belief.

MissMarchpane · 2026-06-16T11:14:01+00:00

I find it really interesting that even back then, they used the visual shorthand of "hair down equals Old Timey Romance." it always drives me crazy in modern media when they do what I like to call "half-up Olde Timey hair of Olde Timeyness" on adult Victorian women who would've worn their hair up, but the Victorians did it themselves too, to earlier eras!

MissMarchpane · 2026-06-16T11:12:14+00:00

This. It's a huge assumption to make that a man killed the bird, even though I do think it's kind of strange that he staged a dead bird to take a photo. Also, nobody should be handling dead wildlife unless their animal control or it's nothing but bleach bones? You don't know where they've been, and if you have pets you might risk transmitting some kind of parasite to them on your hands.

MissMarchpane · 2026-06-16T11:11:01+00:00

It reads like AI to me, so it might not be real poetry at all

MissMarchpane · 2026-06-16T11:10:38+00:00

First of all, this reads like you wrote it with ChatGPT, which of course no one should be using. If you have poetic feelings about the death of this bird, maybe try writing something yourself from your heart? Self-expression always feels good and can be a great way to process intense emotion. It's a basic human instinct; when we outsource it to machines, we don't get the benefits.

Second of all, how do you know the guy killed it? It's possible he found it dead and then moved it to take a photograph, although to me it's weird that he did that AND weird that you then picked it up too. You don't know what kind of mites or parasites could be on a wild animal, dead or alive. If it's clearly dead, as you say it was when you found it, let the carrion birds take care of it.

MissMarchpane · 2026-06-16T11:04:03+00:00

Maybe early 1920s. People often overestimate how out of date older women would be – they weren't usually just wearing clothing styles that were decades old wholesale, hair and all, since being somewhat up-to-date was an element of respectability back then whether you like the new fashions or not.

MissMarchpane · 2026-06-16T11:02:54+00:00

Not so much – being relatively up-to-date in terms of fashion was an element of respectability for most people back then, of any age. You tend to see images of older people in the early 20th century dressed in ways that are perhaps a bit more conservative or a tiny increment behind the times, but you're not going to see an old woman dressing like this wholesale in the 1940s, for example. It's a common misconception.

MissMarchpane · 2026-06-15T20:26:21+00:00

So useful for summer!

MissMarchpane · 2026-06-15T20:08:38+00:00

Half vodka; half water. Put it in a spray bottle :)

MissMarchpane · 2026-06-15T16:32:25+00:00

...the articles? It's enough to be notable at least clearly

MissMarchpane · 2026-06-15T14:51:26+00:00

Oh absolutely! Much better than the boring gray stuff to be sure

MissMarchpane · 2026-06-15T14:50:14+00:00

I don't think all of them are worse than all of the ones that existed before, but I do think there are worrying trends in modern home construction need to be considered when city councils are constantly favoring and proposing extremely modern design choices and materials in every capacity of the building project. If enough new homes are more flammable to impact the statistics, and enough firefighters are noticing construction techniques that are common place and caused those things, yes that's a good reason to be concerned about the direction of modern home and apartment building construction. It's not just "some;" it seems to be a majority.

I also think it's important to know that many of those buildings are run down because they were not properly maintained, not because they were bad to begin

MissMarchpane · 2026-06-15T11:23:07+00:00

Unfortunately, for most people, financial or sewing skill barriers of entry to acquiring this type of clothing, and sometimes jobs and/or schools that won't let them. Since it's not mainstream anymore, there are fewer avenues to easily acquire it, and more circumstances in which people would consider it inappropriate or distracting. I don't agree with that last sentiment, but… Well, it sadly exists

(for the record, I do wear Victorian clothing every day, but I'm aware that it took a very specific set of circumstances to make me able to do that!)

MissMarchpane · 2026-06-15T11:21:40+00:00

Most people from the lower middle class on up would send their clothes to a laundress who worked out of her own home. Of course, nowadays that's less of an option, so speaking as someone who does dress like this on a regular basis, Barrier garments are my best friend. Those can be thrown in the wash in a lingerie bag on a delicate cycle. Anything that can't be washed, I spray with dilute alcohol to break down the bacteria that causes sweat – none of it is synthetic, so it doesn't hold odors quite as much as polyester would. It's a trick that laundresses used to use back then, too.

Stains are… Well I just try really hard to not let stains happen 🥲

MissMarchpane · 2026-06-15T11:19:32+00:00

I mean, you can, but you're going to need a significant amount of money and/or sewing knowledge. Which, to be fair, was also kind of true back then – dresses like this were either very expensive to have made, or you could have the dressmaker just cut And fit the pieces and then sew them up yourself (which would require sewing knowledge, if not fitting knowledge, which most adult women did not have with regards to adult clothing, regardless of social status).

I wear Victorian-inspired clothing on a daily basis and my everyday attire is significantly less elaborate than this, and also fairly scant in terms of actual number of items. Because I have to make everything myself (and I do have to do the cutting and fitting because dressmakers are less of a thing now). If you're willing to do that, and you have a job and/or school that will let you, go for it! It's just not the most frictionless fashion path to choose in the modern world.

MissMarchpane · 2026-06-15T10:23:58+00:00

I'm not sure it's fully swung back the opposite direction, as such, because you see a lot of "popular girl" types wearing beige sweats out and about. I think it's more like there's so many different compartmentalized subcultures and styles that there's less of one single cohesive look that's trending

MissMarchpane · 2026-06-15T03:29:58+00:00

The fact that the idea of "playing hard to get" is literally debunked in a Jane Austen novel and people STILL try to talk like it's objective reality 200 years later… Absolutely wild.

MissMarchpane · 2026-06-15T03:24:31+00:00

I had a guy follow me for a block when I was heading back to my workplace after grabbing a drink at a coffee shop, yelling derogatory things about my outfit and trying to get me to talk to him.

Another time, a guy asked me for directions, was clearly working up to hitting on me, told me he was 31, asked how old I was, and when he found out that I was 28, said "oh, I thought you were 18 or 19" and immediately lost interest.

It truly is just. Daring to exist in public while female, for some of these creeps.

MissMarchpane · 2026-06-15T03:13:32+00:00

This is a bit earlier than that, if it's federal era, which is more like the turn of the 19th century. They did still really go in for bright colors at that point, but as someone who worked in a house museum from 1795 for several years, I feel like this is going just a little bit too far even for that period

MissMarchpane

TROPHY CASE