me: is sad
me: remembers that george washington’s doctor recommended that he take some time and relax for his health so naturally the most relaxing thing he could think of doing was taking alexander hamilton and thomas jefferson fishing with him which went about as well as you’d expect
me: still sad but now i’m laughing through the pain
No, no, you have no idea. It actually IS the beginning of the whole so-called “kawaii culture”. And it started because girls started using mechanical pencils, which provided fine handwriting. After being banished (more precisely, during the 80s), this kind of writing started being used in products like magazines and make-up. And, during this time, icons we usually associate with the whole kawaii industry (like the characters from Sanrio) came to life too.
And what many people don’t realize is that this subculture was born as a way for young girls to express themselves in their own way. And it was also used as something against the adult life and the traditional culture, often seen as dull and boring and oppressive. By embracing cuteness, these young girls (and adult women, after a while) were showing non-conformation with the current standards.
So yep. Kawaii is important, and it all started with cute, simple handwritting a few hearts and cat faces in some girls’ school notebooks ❤
!!!!!
NO OK THIS IS SO IMPORTANT!
This is also how the kawaii fashions started! Girls began dressing in cute and off beat styles for themsleves, they were criticized by adult figures telling them “you’ll never find a husband if you dress that way!” to which they began to reply “Good!”
All the japanese subcultures and fashions that evolved out of this became a rebellion to tradition and the starch gender roles and expectations the adults were forcing on the younger generations. As early as the 70s and still to this day you’ll see an emphasis on child-like fashion and themes in more kawaii styles and the dismissal of the male gaze with styles like lolita (a lot of western people assume lolita is somehow sexual due to the name of the fashion, but ask any japanese lolita and they will tell you that men hate the style and find it unattractive which is sometimes a large reason they gravitate towards the style – they can express their femininity and individuality while remaining independent and without the pressure to appeal to men)
Its so so so important to understand the hyper cute and ‘odd’ fashions of Japanese girls carry such a huge message of feminism and reclaiming of their own lives.
so are you telling me that Japan’s punk phase was really the kawaii phase
Yep. Kawaii has a lot in common with punk when you think about it. Fun quirk in cultures.
– James Madison “accidentally” buys prostitutes for foreign ambassadors
– Jefferson eating a tomato like an apple at a dinner and everyone rushing off to find a doctor because Americans thought tomatoes were poisonous
– Washington and Lafayette falling asleep under a tree after Monmouth
– Washington cursing out Charles Lee after his retreat
– James Armistead Lafayette, who was a badass spy during the revolution and gave Lafayette vital information which led to the victory at Yorktown. Lafayette freed him and James was so grateful he took Lafayette’s last name
– Lafayette being given an alligator as a gift and, not knowing what to do with it, regifting it to John Quincy Adams
– the Constitutional Convention going out and getting turnt two days before the signing of the Constitution, and some of the additional charges being a broken chair, cups, and chamber pots
– John Hancock being smol
– Alexander Hamilton’s argument against hanging John Andrè basically being “he’s too pretty”
– Aaron Burr sleeping through Valentine’s Day
– Lafayette naming his ONLY son after George Washington
– Ben Franklin and John Adams once having to share a room with one bed and falling asleep arguing whether or not they should sleep with the window open or closed
– Ben Franklin taking “air baths” which consisted of him sitting naked in a bathtub for hours a day
– Aaron Burr having a knife hidden in the handle of his umbrella, and then LOSING said umbrella
– John Adams’ kid Charles once ran naked across Harvard Yard
– Alexander Hamilton losing his check book and having to write the bank of New York for a new one, while also requesting his account balance which he didn’t know, which he wrote in the check book, which he lost
– Aaron Burr hitting his head on the same pipe twice jfc he’s such a mess
– Thomas Jefferson getting a terrible headache for two days after behaving awkwardly in front of a girl
– John Adams naming his dog Satan
– Alexander Hamilton’s letters to his totally hetero bro™ John Laurens being censored by his descendants
– George Washington running for the House of Burgesses and getting his constituents totally smashed so they would vote for him
Aaron Burr once ate ice cream too quickly, got a brain freeze, and then thought he was dying
Thomas Jefferson had a ram that he called “this abominable animal”, the ram attacked and hospitalized some pedestrians and killed a small boy. The ram was killed only after it killed some of Jefferson’s other rams
George Washington was given the highest rank in the US military. When he died, he was only a two star general. Over the years after his death, more stars were added to his title; he now has six stars. By law,no one can ever outrank him
John Adams died on the 4th of July, 1826. His last words were, “Thomas Jefferson still survives.” He was sooo wrong, Jefferson died around 5 hours before Adams on exactly the same day
Aaron Burr tried to light a candle with gunpowder. He failed, caught himself on fire, then tried again. Burr was literally a human disaster
Alexander Hamilton had a pay book during the Revolutionary War. In the pay book, he wrote about “how in ancient Rome…naked young noblemen whipped young, married women
during the celebration of Lupercalia” to help conception, and how orgies helped make
“married women more robust and capable of vigorous offspring” To say he was busy during the war is an understatement
Tea leaves collected from Boston harbor the morning after the Boston Tea Party.
Label reads:
“Tea that was gathered up on the Shore of Dorchester Neck on the morning after the destruction of the three Cargos at Boston December 17, 1773.”
i’m so pleased that this means someone during the event was like “yeah this is probably gonna be historically interesting” and just ran out there with, like, what, a net? some cloth? fishing around in the fucking bay to collect tea to put in a bottle? you go, buddy
Good job, anonymous 18th century person. Your commitment to historic preservation pleases me.
So I learned my new favorite history fact in my AP US class today. It’s hilarious and goes a bit like this
In 1989, President Bush sent troops to Panama to capture the dictator and drug lord, Manuel Noriega. But Noriega had fled to (I had to look up the full name) the Apostolic Nunciature of the Holy See. The troops couldn’t exactly get in, so they surrounded the place and has to wait him out, or somehow force him out.
And it’s crazy how they did it.
The literal United States Navy SEALs did this
And it is real history
They blasted rock and roll music for days until he gave up
Apparently, Noriega only liked opera, so this annoyed him.
But it gets better.
The playlist was not only obnoxiously loud and obnoxiously American, it had a sense of irony.
Here are some highlights:
Danger Zone
Freedom Fighter
Gonna Tear Your Playhouse Down
Give It Up
I Fought the Law and the Law Won
If I Had a Rocket Launcher
Nowhere to Run
Panama
Paranoid
Prisoner of Rock and Roll
Rock and a Hard Place
Stay Hungry
They’re Coming to Take Me Away
This Means War
Wanted Dead or Alive
And my personal favorite, and a thing that actually happened:
Never Gonna Give You Up
I just…
Imagine the board meeting
“Huh, how are we going to force this guy out of hiding?”
“Oh, I have an idea! Why don’t we blast loud rock music?”
“That just might work! And we should do it with a sense of irony, just to make it funnier!”
One aspect of the Hamilton-Laurens relationship that doesn’t seem to get discussed very much is the amount of trust that Hamilton and Laurens had in each other – and this trust was so crucial.
For Hamilton, almost everyone he loved or had a close relationship with either died or left him. As a result, Hamilton closed much of himself off. He didn’t trust or form relationships easily out of fear (or rather expectation) that the relationship would eventually fall apart. It was easier to close himself off from close relationships and avoid significant emotional attachment so that he would not have to suffer the losses later. Laurens was one of the few exceptions. Hamilton’s letters to Laurens (and even other people’s descriptions of Hamilton and Laurens) exhibit, yes, a romantic attachment, but they also exhibit an emotional attachment and trust that went beyond the level of many of Hamilton’s other relationships. Some of Hamilton’s letters even hint at Laurens having a knowledge of Hamilton’s life from the West Indies. This is unusual, as that history was not something Hamilton readily shared – this again speaks to the level of trust Hamilton had with Laurens. Hamilton opened himself up to Laurens and trusted Laurens with his most vulnerable parts. When Laurens died, Hamilton’s fear that all close relationships would end in abandonment or death was unfortunately reaffirmed, and Hamilton never again formed a relationship (outside of his family) on par with his relationship with Laurens.
And then we have Laurens. His father was a strict Christian and the president of Congress, and the Laurens family had already been rocked by the Egerton Leigh sex scandal. As a queer man, Laurens likely feared any threat of rumor or blackmail that could have destroyed his family’s reputation or his relationship with his father. He also seems to have suffered from depression and from self-loathing over his sexuality. Laurens forming such a close emotional and romantic relationship with Hamilton speaks to the level of trust that Laurens had in Hamilton. He had to believe that Hamilton would never expose the true depth of their relationship and had to allow himself to love another man. I’ve mentioned before that Laurens’s letters to Hamilton, while less passionate than Hamilton’s letters to him, were some of the most emotionally expressive letters he ever wrote. This again demonstrates the level of love and trust that these two men had for each other. But one thing I’ve never compared are the letters from Laurens to Hamilton and the letters from Laurens to Kinloch. In all honesty, I would argue that Laurens’s letters to Kinloch were more passionate than Laurens’s letters to Hamilton. This may be an unfair comparison as many of Laurens’s letters to Hamilton were either destroyed or are missing, so we will never fully know all the language that Laurens used to express his love for Hamilton. However, from the evidence we have, it seems that Laurens was willing to be more open about his emotions and affection in his relationship with Kinloch. While the differences between the Laurens-Hamilton letters and the Laurens-Kinloch letters are not stark, Laurens’s letters to Kinloch seem to have a more lighthearted feel about them and occasionally contain some more overt declarations of love. The best example of the latter would be in Laurens’s April 12, 1776 letter to Kinloch:
You and I may differ my Dear Kinloch in our political Sentiments but I
shall always love you from the Knowledge I have of your Heart.
In Laurens’s letters we Hamilton, the most similar statement that he uses is “My love as usual.” Because Laurens seems to have become more closed off to same-gendered relationships after his breakup with Kinloch, I think it’s very likely that this breakup significantly impacted Laurens and caused him to fear trusting others with his heart (Laurens’s response to Kinloch’s “breakup letter” is overflowing with rage and hurt that really speaks to how much Laurens mourned the loss of his friend and lover). I think this change in Laurens’s letters can also be explained by Laurens losing his boyhood naïveté as he grew older and transitioned from a student to a soldier, but I don’t think we should disregard the impact that Laurens’s relationship with Kinloch (likely Laurens’s first same-gendered romantic relationship) and the subsequent breakup had on him. Laurens being willing to open himself up to another man in a romantic and emotional sense shows how much he trusted Hamilton with his true feelings and true self.
teakepp 