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Of course I put the blame squarely on all that bra-burning back in the 60’s; but for a bit of perspective, and before we get to that, we need to step back a bit...
The Black Death plague of the late 1340s, which swept through Europe like a ...um ... like a plague, is a perfect example of unintended consequences. You see all that the Black Death was interested in at the time was in increasing the ranks of Dead White European Males---and I suppose of Dead White European Females too for that matter. And of course in this it was really, really successful---possibly doing for half of the people who up till that time were quite adequately maintaining their status as Live White European Males (or Females for that matter)---and to the absolute horror of historians of the period, it left a devastated Europe, and a well satisfied plague indeed. But what this short-sighted pestilence hadn’t realised was that for the remaining, the Non-Dead White Europeans, things were looking up, especially for the ones that had hitherto been serfs; their wages increased, their freedoms increased, their mobility increased: yes, suddenly everybody who wasn’t somebody was running about gleefully yelling “Hey! Serfs up!”---At least they did for a while; you see by a strange coincidence the period right after the Black Death was exactly the time that the Mediæval Climatic Optimum was being replaced by the Little Ice Age and soon nobody (whether somebodies or not) was in a mood to make anachronistic Californian beach-blanket puns but instead they all stood around in several layers of underclothing (under their clothing of course) claiming through chattering (not to mention gritted) teeth how wonderful the Renaissance was---and what a warming influence it had on Europe before running off shivering to the nearest witch or heretic burning to keep warm. (It is a little known fact that most of that stuff with the witches, and the heretics, and the stakes, and the faggots, and the fire, and so forth was perpetrated, not in the relatively warm mediæval period, but during the Renaissance and was actually more a form of early modern communal central heating than an expression of intolerance.)
Now it seems to me that there must be some sort of correlation between the sudden drop in the working population and the sudden drop in the climate and that the effect must have been enormous since it wasn’t ameliorated much by the concurrent rise in witch and heretic burning.
Anyway.
To get back to the burning bras...
It’s always struck me that burning her bra was an incredibly brave sacrifice for a women to make, especially before someone realised that it was much easier and so terribly much less painful to burn them if they took them off first.
Anyway.
As I’m sure you know this bra-burning phenomenon led directly to a complete reversal of the effect on the working population of the Black Death; as women swarmed into the workforce (with or without inflammatory undergarments) and it is surely no co-incidence that during the same period wages have effectively decreased, as have freedoms and mobility (and if you don’t believe me on those last two, try getting onto a plane with a big black beard and smoke coming out of your bra!).
And one final word, or rather phrase, ‘Global Warming’. When the Black Death halved the workforce the warm Mediæval Climatic Optimum gave way to the Little Ice Age, but in the sixties with workforce numbers soaring, we find the first mentions in the literature of Global Warming as the Little Ice Age succumbs in its turn!
Need I say More?
Oh! Yes I do! I should add that that’s not even taking into account the pollution caused by all the burning bras, which in a most disturbing divergence from the events of the end of the fourteenth century, and unlike the burning witches and heretics, is pushing up in the same direction as the workforce.
Cheerio for now
from
Richard Howland-Bolton
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Notes:
Wow I'm not the only one this guy agrees with me!
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