cultural translation thought

[ritaxis]

So a hundred years ago little boys wore pink ("light red" -- the word "pink" usually meant a particular range of light red colors at the time) and little girls wore baby blue.  Though colors in general were less gendered, and you just did not see the monochromatic pallettes for small children you see now.

So if I put little Yanek into light blue trousers, in context, they are not exactly "girl's clothes," but they are less manly for the time than a pink baby dress (assuming he's three or under when he's wearing the baby dress and older than that when he's wearing the trousers).  But a modern reader would see a graduation from a pink baby dress into a pair of blue trousers as a strong affirmation of his little masculinity.

I think I'm leaving the blue trousers in as an easter egg, and giving them another cue.  It doesn't matter.  The very fact of never being breeched by his caregivers and having to dig up his own trousers years after he ought to have been wearing them is enough to hint that he's going to be struggling and fighting for his manhood. 

Why, yes, I too am surprised that a thread of the book is apparently about masculinity, a subject that doesn't usually interest me much.  How did that happen?  I guess just because I realised that the conditions of Yanek's life kind of lead him in that direction.  Also could have to do with some other stuff I'm suddenly feeling like being coy about, and his two childhood nicknames -- Panachek (little man) and Palachek (Tom Thumb).

Yeah, and I have done away with the little antennas on letters and replaced them wuith dumb-English style spellings because this is a fantasy world and nobody's actually speaking a real particular Western Slavic language.

Comments

[frogs_of_war]

People always think what's happening now is the way things have always been. In one story (set in the 1659) I had the character pick a red ribbon for his hair because it was the manliest color and I had several comments about what that color should have been.

Didn't the rich breech their boys much later than everyone else? I've heard the poor/working class breeched their sons at two or three and the richer you were the longer you waited, until your son was six or sometimes later, as a way I believe to show that you didn't need you son's help to complete your work.

I wish I remembered where I read/hear/saw this. It was about social pressure of the new Victorian middle class when it came to breeching boys. These social climbing people had come from families that breeched their boys as soon as they were potty trained and unbreeched boys were more work for their mothers (this was in a mother's advice column, I think), but they wanted to emulate the rich, but that meant waiting longer, despite the extra work. (although I'm not sure where the extra work comes from.)

My grandmother has a picture of her family before she was born (in 1920) and although her family had bent to the necessity of breeching their son (he was six), he still had his long beautiful ringlets.

[ritaxis.livejournal.com]

It might be true that the poor breeched their kids earlier, but I saw no reference to that. I would love it if you found it. Because right now Yanek's pretty pissed and also proud that he had to breech himself at the age of seven and his foster brother was breeched at three.