#sofi thanhauser

[bigcats-birds-and-books]

Sending Gifts to Myself, or: Book Mail!

[softfolks]

“With rights neither to land, nor wealth, nor their own children or bodies, women made their mark on linen. Unlike land, which can be traced in deeds, movables flowed, by definition, outside the law. However, it is possible to trace, albeit sketchily, lines of female inheritance, because women took care to mark linens with their own initials if not their full names. One property survey noted: “two pair of sheets marked EC, new sheets marked MC, and a pair of sheets called Hannah’s." Women adorned linens with their names, their insignia, and sometimes with the desire not to sink into obscurity, like the eighteenth-century woman who stitched:

When I am dead and in my grave,

And all my bones are rotten.

When this you see remember me,

That I won’t be forgotten.”

Sofi Thanhauser, Worn: A People's History of Clothing

[sleepdeprivedreads]

"Burch made her fortune peddling the costume of the Upper East Side to a nation of women in middle management. Massenet and Burch were the emblems of a neoliberal feminism determined to frame exploitation in terms of opportunity and advancing freedoms. Burch's taglines were #Embrace Ambition and "Feminism is about equality." This kind of "feminism" celebrates the upward mobility of a few women capitalists. It props up the narrative of steady progress for American women, and swallows minor inconveniences like the endemic and structural impoverishment of foreign and immigrant women laborers. As the garment industry left the United States, it undid the work of industrial feminists like Clara Lemlich and Rose Schneiderman, who had the audacity to demand that intellectual satisfaction was the birthright of every sewing machine operator. This new brand of feminism didn't care to protect sewing work as good work; rather it scoured the earth to find the cheapest new sources of exploitable, female labor."

Worn: A People's History of Clothing, Sofi Thanhauser

[sleepdeprivedreads]

The demographics of cotton farms in Lubbock resemble those of the U.S. agriculture industry as a whole: the farm operators are older, white, and U.S.-born, while most hired farmworkers are younger, immigrant, and Latino. Estimates vary, but it is likely that 75 percent of the agricultural workforce is undocumented. Those charged with using Roundup on cotton are in an almost impossible position to seek legal redress when their work exposes them to known carcinogens.[*] The average life expectancy for Latino farmworkers in the United States is forty-nine, compared to seventy-three to seventy-nine for the rest of the population.

Worn: A People's History of Clothing, Sofi Thanhauser

[nathanabhaltersmith-shelf]

[redstarnotebooks]

Worn: A People's History of Clothing by Sofi Thanhauser (2023)

from Chapter 08, The Rise of Mass Fashion

"A man expects to find daintiness, charm, refinement in the women he know," Woodbury Soap reminded readers in 1922. "And when some unpleasant little detail mars this conception of what a woman should be -- nothing quite effaces his involuntary disappointment."

[jawbonejoe]

That’s Sofi Thanhauser’s Worn: A People’s History of Clothing done. Very informative and depressing, very glad I read it

[jawbonejoe]

Among other plates in the air I've been reading Worn: A People's History of Clothing by Sofi Thanhauser and holy christ the history (and modernity re: large scale agriculture) of textiles is so fucked...