Snowsuit Up 3: The Iceman Cometh

Icy streets of Chicago: 3
Shoshi's balance and physical well-being: 0.

Clearly, I'm losing the battle with the asphalt. My ass has gotten a bit too friendly with Chicago sidewalks recently. LL Bean, HURRY UP.

Snowsuit Up 2: Revenge of the Snow

I am no longer so excited about this snow business. On Friday afternoon on my way home from work I managed to find the ONE patch of ice in a 30 yard radius and slip on it, falling in the middle of the street and narrowly avoiding getting hit by a turning Ford Taurus. The 75-year-old grandmother resting on her walker apologized for not being quick enough to grab me.

Then I stumbled out of bed this morning still sore from the fall and came face to face with this outside my window. SNOW. I called L.L. Bean in a panic, wondering why my snow boots hadn't arrived yet, only to find out that they're still at the warehouse and won't make it to Chicago until Friday. Don't they know that I am a delicate California flower? I don't know if I can survive four more days of this. If nothing else, my body doesn't have enough cushioning for all the falling I"m going to be doing between now and then.

The worst part? It's only in the 30s. We've got another 25 degrees to drop before it's really winter. A DELICATE CALIFORNIA FLOWER, I TELL YOU.

Deep thoughts about history, feminism, clothes, and so on.

So I've been thinking a lot about this costume collection internship, and what makes it so different from my stint at Grey Towers (and isn't it funny that I've basically turned being a perpetual intern into my post-college career plan?), and while I was sorting through scads of wedding gown information today I think I finally put my finger on it.

I love history, right? Because it's tells us about ourselves or other people (or ourselves AND other people), and about where we come from and what we're heading for and ultimately, what we need to do (and avoid doing) to make the world a better place. And because it's awesome. But to be honest, the majority of history we encounter is dude-focused. And while I am certainly a fan of dudes, sometimes it gets a bit old.

And I don't mean this in a "damn the Man, down with the Patriarchy" sort of way (although really, damn the Man, down with the Patriarchy). It's just that the events that we memorize, the wars we commemorate, the nation-building we praise or deride, all of it reflects the work of men. And it's not just how we learn history in school, either. Look at the collection of any history museum and you'll see famous documents, antique guns, impressive furniture, important pieces of art - all made for or by men. And sure, there are pieces of a museum's collection that relate to women, but those are almost always a minority . Except, of course, in costume collections. At the Chicago History Museum, our costume collection is probably 85% women's clothes. The number of men's clothes are FAR outmatched by women's, and the women's clothes tell a much richer and deeper story. They span centuries, countries, ages and class levels.

Really, what I love about costume collections is not just that they showcase pretty clothes (though they do), or that they're amazing capsules of history (although they are.) What I love about them is that they don't just tell history - they tell the history of women. What a woman in a given time period valued, what she had to account for in her daily life, how she lived, even what she was called by those around here; it's all there in her dress.