tea berry-blue

As of yesterday, I saw my fifty-first movie of the year in theaters.

This means that in six months, I have seen over fifty movies, and puts me well on track for seeing 100 in theaters by the end of the year, assuming I don't relocate to somewhere where seeing movies is more difficult.

I am thinking that if I do relocate in New York, I want to move up closer to Lincoln Center so I can go to the Lincoln Square cinemas more often and still be near a regular first-run theater. Because there are a lot of movies that only play at Lincoln Square, and also, they have homemade cookies.

Anyway, yesterday I saw Une Vieille Maitresse. It wasn't as good as I was hoping-- although it did have gorgeous clothing. It was just rather...been there, done that. I've seen plenty of "love turns into dangerous obsession" stories, and while Asia Argento plays a damn good madwoman, it didn't do anything new for me.

Except for one thing, and this is going to sound as silly as silly can be, but since she is nude for about half the movie, it is absolutely impossible to notice that she has, being a European woman and all, very natural, unshaven armpit hair.

And this got me to thinking. How many times in American period romances do we see women with pit-hair? I mean, women in this country didn't start shaving their pits till about the 1910s. So all those movies with naked women from the 16-17-1800s? They should all have hairy pits and hairy legs! But the actresses don't!

I am thinking about this because there are so many things we do in movies to try to invoke a certain era, or to make things as 'realistic' as possible-- actors gain or lose weight, color, curl, straighten their hair or wear wigs, we make certain no one has an electrical line anywhere there wouldn't be one...but we don't insist on our actresses having the proper body hair. In fact, I think a lot of people would see a movie about people in the 1700s and see a woman with underarm hair and make comments about it being gross or unattractive.

I shave, most of the time. I don't really feel strongly one way or another about it. In the winter, I don't shave my legs as much, but armpit hair tends to be itchy, so I do usually shave that. I don't have any opinions on the feminism or anti-feminism of hair-shaving. But I do have an opinion on the fact that when something offends our standard of beauty, we ignore anachronism in favor of modern ideas about what is beautiful, which is weird. We think a lot of things are beautiful now that aren't appropriate to previous periods in history, and we don't let them slide.

I think this is something I am going to notice from now on.

As of yesterday, I saw my fifty-first movie of the year in theaters.

This means that in six months, I have seen over fifty movies, and puts me well on track for seeing 100 in theaters by the end of the year, assuming I don't relocate to somewhere where seeing movies is more difficult.

I am thinking that if I do relocate in New York, I want to move up closer to Lincoln Center so I can go to the Lincoln Square cinemas more often and still be near a regular first-run theater. Because there are a lot of movies that only play at Lincoln Square, and also, they have homemade cookies.

Anyway, yesterday I saw Une Vieille Maitresse. It wasn't as good as I was hoping-- although it did have gorgeous clothing. It was just rather...been there, done that. I've seen plenty of "love turns into dangerous obsession" stories, and while Asia Argento plays a damn good madwoman, it didn't do anything new for me.

Except for one thing, and this is going to sound as silly as silly can be, but since she is nude for about half the movie, it is absolutely impossible to notice that she has, being a European woman and all, very natural, unshaven armpit hair.

And this got me to thinking. How many times in American period romances do we see women with pit-hair? I mean, women in this country didn't start shaving their pits till about the 1910s. So all those movies with naked women from the 16-17-1800s? They should all have hairy pits and hairy legs! But the actresses don't!

I am thinking about this because there are so many things we do in movies to try to invoke a certain era, or to make things as 'realistic' as possible-- actors gain or lose weight, color, curl, straighten their hair or wear wigs, we make certain no one has an electrical line anywhere there wouldn't be one...but we don't insist on our actresses having the proper body hair. In fact, I think a lot of people would see a movie about people in the 1700s and see a woman with underarm hair and make comments about it being gross or unattractive.

I shave, most of the time. I don't really feel strongly one way or another about it. In the winter, I don't shave my legs as much, but armpit hair tends to be itchy, so I do usually shave that. I don't have any opinions on the feminism or anti-feminism of hair-shaving. But I do have an opinion on the fact that when something offends our standard of beauty, we ignore anachronism in favor of modern ideas about what is beautiful, which is weird. We think a lot of things are beautiful now that aren't appropriate to previous periods in history, and we don't let them slide.

I think this is something I am going to notice from now on.