This weekend was HOT. The West Coast is suffering. I grew up in Alaska, so the extreme temperature there was COLD. In extremes of temperature, on both sides of the spectrum, the way to cope is to stay indoors.<\/p>\n
Enclosed in my house, I looked for something to watch on TV, and discovered that a second season of Poldark was available.<\/p>\n
Hooray! Poldark is a period piece that is basically a romance novel come to life. A vastly handsome young British Lord who falls on hard times. The plot is very melodramatic, but the people and the dresses are so beautiful it is very good entertainment.<\/p>\n
The nobleman hero Poldark does marry a commoner (swoon!) and because he has fallen on hard times, both of them must work very hard.<\/p>\n
So Demelza has to straddle both worlds, working as hard as a servant sometimes but still being the lady of the house.<\/p>\n
One of the things that I find unrealistic about these shows is how the ladies do their hair. Demelza is beautiful with HuGe free-flowing red wavy hair. It’s magnificent, and as she travels the coastline to fish or gather driftwood to feed the fire, she leaves it free to blow in the wind.<\/p>\n
It’s beautiful.<\/p>\n
As a woman with magnificent hair, every time I watch her picturesque windblown hair I rage. It would be a complete rats nest after a day walking in the wind like that! How ridiculous! She would tie it back, cover it or at least braid it so that she didn’t have to spend an hour trying to comb it into civility after she returns indoors.<\/p>\n
That part is so unreal.<\/p>\n
There was another part where Demelza took a walk along the beach because her lord husband did something that disturbed her.<\/p>\n
I remembered she was straddling the lady\/servant role. She did have servants, but not enough to keep body and soul together. Their 17th century wood fire heating and fish meals required a lot of work. Many times she would have to go to the shore to get those two materials.<\/p>\n
But this time, she was the lady of the house. The activity of walking on the beach because you needed to think was a highly privileged activity. For people who had to work tirelessly for their food, that kind of luxury was unheard of.<\/p>\n
Only people with servants had that kind of freedom.<\/p>\n
This occurred to me as I was sitting in my boudoir, with my laptop on my lap and the AC keeping me cool as I spent my Saturday binge-watching season two of Poldark.<\/p>\n
I have a lot of freedom.<\/p>\n
I have a lot of privilege.<\/p>\n
I even have a lot of product for my hair to keep it civilized if I want to let it wave free instead of tying it back.<\/p>\n
It’s a good time to be alive.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This weekend was HOT. The West Coast is suffering. I grew up in Alaska, so the extreme temperature there was COLD. In extremes of temperature, on both sides of the spectrum, the way to cope is to stay indoors. Enclosed … Continue reading