Monster Mashers

July 1, 2018 10:02 PM

How women confronted harassers with fashion.
posted by MovableBookLady (25 comments total)

Interesting article, though I am really dubious about the claim here:

"For example, in 1850s, the invention of the hatpin had released women from face-concealing hats held on by neck-constricting bonnet strings."

Um... there were plenty of big picture hats worn in earlier eras. Like this. And this. And "hat-pin" dates to 1761, as per the Oxford English Dictionary. (There is a cite from the London Chronicle from 1761 mentioning a "Cloak and Hat-Pins.")

Other than that, uh, huge historical error, nice article!
posted by suburbanbeatnik at 11:02 PM on July 1, 2018 [4 favorites]

HA i knew this was going to be about hatpin stabbery, which is of course something i naturally support wholeheartedly and without reservation.
posted by poffin boffin at 11:26 PM on July 1, 2018 [35 favorites]

Around Broadway, anyone overcome with feelings of love was said to be “mashed,” as Segrave explains, to “a state of idiotic infatuation, softness, or pulpiness.” Sometimes a lovelorn man wrote his favorite actor a “mash note,” which might tell her she’s beautiful, confess his love, or suggest she meet him for a rendezvous.

Wow, so this is the origin of mash note, a term we were still using in middle school in the 90s (the 1990s, to be clear).
posted by lollymccatburglar at 11:38 PM on July 1, 2018 [3 favorites]

MASH to me in middle school was that game where you put down a bunch of stuff and see what your future is going to be by counting it out. MASH = Mansion Apartment Shack House
posted by LizBoBiz at 12:53 AM on July 2, 2018 [18 favorites]

Um... there were plenty of big picture hats worn in earlier eras. Like this. And this. And "hat-pin" dates to 1761, as per the Oxford English Dictionary.

Yes, that timeline looks a bit off, but early outliers and etymology also don't necessarily draw a representative picture of trends, do they? From what I gather, until the 1830s hatpins were relatively expensive. Making them was literally a cottage industry, with entire families of (bonnet-wearing?) people turning out hatpins for women who could afford them. Then some American came up with a machine to crank out hatpins like barbed wire, making them more generally affordable. But then bonnets and ribbons and strings came (back) into style around 1850, and it wasn't until the 1880s that hats and hatpins for the masses really took off (and killed off the bonnet for good). So hatpins, from a regular person's point of view, probably weren't feasible fashion until the 1830s or 1840s and weren't ubiquitous until the 1880s. Something like that, anyway. I may be off by a century or so here and there.
posted by pracowity at 2:42 AM on July 2, 2018 [3 favorites]

Yes, that timeline looks a bit off, but early outliers and etymology also don't necessarily draw a representative picture of trends, do they?

Yes, but the article specifically claims that they weren't even invented until the 1850s, which is nonsense. Here's a blog post about 18th century hat pins, which even includes a period image from 1789 of hat pins stuck into a cushion.

I wouldn't be surprised to hear that the mass production of hat pins made certain hat styles more affordable and widespread, but I was objecting to the bald statement that hat pins did not exist prior to 1850s.
posted by suburbanbeatnik at 4:04 AM on July 2, 2018 [1 favorite]

I was unexpectedly saddened by the fact that, if you go by the tone of the contemporary articles they quote, it looks like the public generally believed women about the prevelance of street harassment more than they do today.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 4:53 AM on July 2, 2018 [20 favorites]

it looks like the public generally believed women about the prevelance of street harassment more than they do today.

So, yes - but it may also be that believing women in the historical case played into the dominant narrative of men as helpless slaves to desire and women as creatures of purity who needed chivalrous protection. Now that we’ve “solved sexism” it’s impossible to believe that anyone would behave that way, so she must have imagined it.
posted by nickmark at 6:25 AM on July 2, 2018 [1 favorite]

Or she’s believed, but then immediately blamed for it because of dressing wrong, being out late, leading him on, or some other bullshit.
posted by Celsius1414 at 6:35 AM on July 2, 2018 [4 favorites]

In an 1899 letter to the “Washington Post” editor, Thomas W. Gilmer claimed mashing didn’t happen if the woman didn’t participate.

In other news, as recently as 2012, women couldn't become pregnant if they were raped. How heartening to know women's imaginary powers have not diminished over the years.
posted by pangolin party at 7:44 AM on July 2, 2018 [10 favorites]

My mother, a later-stage flapper, said that yes, she did keep a hat pin handy if she thought she might need it. But the main line of defense was a tiny pocket sewed into the clutch purse. The clutch purse would be so ridiculously small, in order to signal and to preclude any idea that the woman might pick up the check. One dime was hidden in there, so that the woman could bail at any time, by calling a cab from a phone booth, with the common expectation that the parents would pay upon arrival.
posted by StickyCarpet at 8:24 AM on July 2, 2018 [7 favorites]

Apologies for the derail, but WHO EVEN WHAT?

Useless colonial here, but FFS....
posted by pompomtom at 8:33 AM on July 2, 2018

My great-grandmother was a woman who tolerated no nonsense from anybody; her level of independence and self-sufficiency would probably be considered unusual even today. I inherited one of her hat pins, a big, long, strong pointy bugger as practical as it is ornamental. I can easily imagine it having been poked into the soft flesh of any masher who tried it on.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 9:33 AM on July 2, 2018 [1 favorite]

“Before the Civil War, women who did walk the streets alone at night were assumed to be prostitutes . . .”

Since moving into the city from the burbs a year and a half ago, I’ve twice been assumed to be a prostitute and solicited. Presumably because I was walking alone at night. The most recent happened last week. Like other forms of harassment mentioned, this is far from a behavior in the distant past or a solved problem.

(It wasn’t even that late. Before midnight, probably between 10 or 11 both times. Not that it should matter. And the first time I spent so much time wondering if how I dressed was the problem. I know, I know, it’s not my fault, but I was dressed up and in heels, couldn’t help to think maybe I was to blame for dressing “too sexy”. Even though it was an outfit I wore to a professional networking group and I chose something I felt was professional but trendy. Suddenly I was doubting all that. Then last week, I walked in the most boring T-shirt and jeans, ill fitting grubby, cleaning around the house clothes and it still happened. I feel myself needing to explain and justify, even though the problem is the behavior of these men, not anything I’m doing. And yet, here I am, doing it anyway.
posted by [insert clever name here] at 9:51 AM on July 2, 2018 [12 favorites]

In A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, when newly-employed Francie gets pinched on the El train (circa 1916), her mother tells her to learn to stand without holding onto the strap, and to keep a long, sharp pin in her pocket. Francie begins carrying a “vicious “ pin, and seems a bit disappointed not to get a chance to use it.
posted by elphaba at 10:10 AM on July 2, 2018 [4 favorites]

Hatpins are badass, but I'm also delighted by the woman who hid a freaking boxing glove in her muff.
posted by Ruki at 10:20 AM on July 2, 2018 [4 favorites]

But the main line of defense was a tiny pocket sewed into the clutch purse.

My mother, also from that era, had a different definition of "mad money" than the norm. She and her friends defined it as the money you kept in reserve to take a cab home if a date went bad.
posted by happyroach at 10:25 AM on July 2, 2018 [7 favorites]

A family friend told me that she would grind her spike heel into the insteps of men pressing up against her in the subway.
posted by brujita at 10:50 AM on July 2, 2018 [2 favorites]

I deploy my elbow – jab it into a rib. Followed up with pointed unblinking eye contact as I say "oh I'm sorry!" in a sugar-drippingly-polite tone. Dudes who are being asses immediately get what the unwavering eye contact means. Everyone else hears politeness, which makes it very difficult for dude to escalate.

I've said it before too, but I particularly like the "I'm sorry, I don't speak [language]!" in whichever other language of your choice, and in an impossibly cheery tone. I'll add another thing this accomplishes: the purpose of these dudes, as laid out in the article, is to make we women feel uncomfortable. Being fucking cheery is a first hatpin-stab, and speaking a language that they don't is another.

It's only "backfired" once: a dude started talking to me in the language I had used (English, in France), but he was thrown off his game because it wasn't his native language. He outright said at one point that he could follow me and talk as long as he wanted, to which I answered, "yes! You can! It's a free country. I'll keep telling you I don't want to talk to you!"
Dude: "So why do you keep answering me??"
Me: "Because I'm having fun playing with you? It's not often you meet someone you say 'no' to a dozen times and they keep insisting."
Dude: "But... you could just ignore me?"
Me: "So could you?"
Dude: "mais c'est quoi ce bordel..."
Me: "I think I'll just start asking you a bunch of questions too. Where did you learn English?"

Dude made a beeline out of there.
posted by fraula at 11:47 AM on July 2, 2018 [8 favorites]

A family friend told me that she would grind her spike heel into the insteps of men pressing up against her in the subway.
posted by brujita

Yes! When my mother graduated university in 1961 with a journalism degree she got hired on as a cub reporter at the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal. Her boss was grabby lout and she made a habit of being 'clumsy' and mashing his feet with her high heels.
posted by workerant at 1:23 PM on July 2, 2018 [2 favorites]

The descriptions of street harassment in the article remind me of the descriptions I've heard of Eve teasing in Southeast Asia. Techniques of patriarchal repression don't change much, do they?
posted by Lycaste at 1:47 PM on July 2, 2018

I like my husband's suggestion for how to get rid of public creeps; he picked it up from a number of girls who followed the Grateful Dead and so were often traveling alone:

Take a step away from him (or half-step, if he's grabbed your arm), look offended, and say, in a loud clear voice, "HELL NO, I DO NOT WANT TO BUY ANY OF YOUR GODDAMN HEROIN."

I have not tested this, but have been told that the number of men who will stick around to insist "I was not trying to sell drugs; I was just trying to get into her pants" is gratifyingly small.
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 1:59 PM on July 2, 2018 [12 favorites]

(Husband did not have this used on him; husband was one of those "loom over the creep and ask the much smaller girl if this jerk was bothering her" types, and so some of them shared their anti-creep techniques with him.)
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 2:01 PM on July 2, 2018 [1 favorite]

But the main line of defense was a tiny pocket sewed into the clutch purse.

My mother, also from that era, had a different definition of "mad money" than the norm.

Yes, that's it, now that you mention it my mother did call that one dime "mad money".
posted by StickyCarpet at 5:29 AM on July 3, 2018

Yes, in that thread ^^ I testified about the efficacy of the long sharp pointy.
posted by a humble nudibranch at 12:08 AM on July 4, 2018