beckpoppins:

butim-justharry:

licieoic:

rush-keating:

npr:

thegetty:

The story behind The Laundress.

This is so good. -Emily

I find that hard to reconcile with how 18th century dresses had boobs practically hanging out of them. Maybe the chest wasn’t as sexualized as the ankles were back then…

I have a dim memory from back in high school… I think someone once told me that breasts were no big deal back in corsetry-and-necklines-down-to-there days, they were considered a food source for children and that’s it.

But ANKLES. Oh, GOD. ANKLES. The ANKLE was connected to the LEG, which connected to THIGHS, which hid a woman’s SECRET FLOWER. The ankle was the gateway to the secret flower, so it was considered quite a stirring sight!

I have never considered that “leg bone connected to the ankle bone” song as a sexy tune before but

Ok, calm down nerds, step back, there is more than meets the ankle with this one.

Think about your average 18th century portrait, large scale, grand, bought by the wealthy, featuring the faces of the wealthy, focus on grandeur or allegory, or nature. This is non of those things.

The laundress is a cabinet painting, something small to be put up in an office or bedroom, it wasn’t meant to impress a guest or memorialize the person in the painting.

The setting of the painting is a crumbling room, the washing utensils are simple, this could very well be the laundress’s personal home.

Her pose says she wasn’t posing for a picture, this is meant to appear not just as a snap shot but like you walked in on her, she did not expect you.

I also gotta bring in the old curse word ‘slattern‘. If you were rich you could get away with having your hair down and relaxing and if you were too poor to worry about your hair who gave a shit. But middle class… Clinging to respectability. A woman with her hair escaping her cap, hunched over, knees spread, skirt riding up enough to show a bitta leg. That kind of slatternly look could invite the neighbors to think she has loose morals. You walk in on her unexpected and she might be a bit embarrassed and blushy.

also there is this weird thing with 18th century mildly dirty art and hands. It was a super common short hand to say a lady had been masturbating by drawing a fully dressed woman with a finger or two tucked in a novel sitting on her lap. To us its fine, she’s holding a book, but back then the audience knew it was rowdy. So to have her hands squeezing wet warm folds of fabric…. it could mean… things.

So put it all together.

This is the 1700s version of this:

There is nothing that naughty to modern audiences about stocking tops or the flash of a tiny bit of granny panties but we are a little closer to the age when this was painted so we get the language of naughty its trying to show us. ‘the laundress’ is a pin up, a private moment where a woman is mildly exposed but seemingly not bothered by it. Both the laundress’s busy hands and the pin up’s hand that seems to be lifting the dress instead of pushing it down imply that they might not mind that the viewer is getting an eyeful. 

It also didn’t help that the painter, Greuze, had a particular boner for this ‘common woman caught in a moment of slatternly behavior’

It’s more than just the ankle.

larrydraws:

IDW Transformers have ended, may lost light shine eternal

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