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Milkmaids famously shaved their armpits after lathering them with double cream.
The girl’s shirt in the first panel is my favorite part of this comic.
Rf gay os creme?
Be gay do crime
Oh.
Thanks.
No bag of hot chip though
This is a trope in all middle ages media I’ve seen. I’ve been watching someone play KCD2, and it’s not as bad… but still there and jarring.
The only place where I can think of where it seems more fair is, ironically, some animation? Barring anime’s sexism… problems, there’s less incentive for that, heh. I liked Avatar’s peasants:
Help! Help! We’re being repressed!
But that’s because Avatar was good and stuff! I like the peasants though. They all seem at like the same level of dress and stuff! Look at that (Earth Kingdom?) people in the first picture! That’s real nice!
It’s Bolin/Mako’s Lower Ring family! And, clockwise, Jang Hui fishing folks and Republic City homeless.
Folks like this (along with some notably badass women) are the bread and butter of the shows, though. I don’t ever remember hitching to think ‘huh that farmer lady looks like a skimpy model’
Tbh milkmaids were the prettiest women because they would get mild cases of cowpox instead of skin wrecking smallpox and it was the origin of the smallpox vaccine (vacca means cow in latin).
And they had to be clean, so washed daily, and were always inside, in a very clean environment.
You are a milkmaid?
Edit: My joke was based on a corrected typo, “we’re”. IDGAF about online typos unless they have a humorous aspect. Cheers!
Huh I didn’t know humans could get mild cowpox
Same, I get it a couple of times a year, and it’s only ever extremely severe. I would love to know the secret.
Yes, it’s super interesting. The reason the word ‘vaccine’ derives from the Latin ‘vacca’ (cow) was because we observed that people who contracted the cowpox gained some protection from smallpox. We investigated that connection, did a bunch of testing and research (which included early scientists infecting themselves on purpose in some rather gross ways), and developed the theory of vaccines.
The history of early modern medicine is very cool.
A great many pathogens can be “weakened” with various processes, heat is one, but also the surviving strains in a living being that beat the disease via immunity may also carry weakened strains and this is where we learned to deliberately contract smallpox via poking someone’s skin pustule and poking ourselves with that pus.
Gross but highly effective. This is how George Washington inoculated his army. (Which of course he learned about through a Reverend in Boston who learned about it from his slave, Onesimus, which makes sense as smallpox was ravaging Africa for over 10,000 years, they figured it out eventually.)
Thank you so much for sharing this interesting information.
Do medieval shows only hire conventionally unattractive men? I always thought the convention was to have attractive people play important parts or “good” characters, regardless of gender, but admittedly I don’t really watch many medieval shows.
When your entire idea of middle ages comes from people funking around marginalia creatures this is what happens. But the middle ages were an early-capitalistic moment with more dynamism than you’re told. Even under feudalism people must have had personal interocurses, private and economical. Imagine the scams of the time.
Yep just look at the guilds. The Hansa (Hanseatic Trade League) owned several cities and harbours in the Baltic and North sea.
In Frankfurt, an inventor developed an early form of steam engine, but was bullied and denied by the boatsmakers guild.
Many interesting stories who are more than just peasants rolling in filth.
And even the city republics would destroy the primitive view of Hollywood on the freedoms of the medieval person. Not to speak of the Dithmarschen peasant republic or the swiss confederation and their wars of independence against the HR Emperor.
The one thing that went down would be international travel, because the Roman infrastructure was left to rot or became dangerous to use. On the other hand naval travel became more important, the gold standard was replaced by silver, with the exception of the Islamic empires of the time that still used the gold coin as the default.
The years following the fall of the Western roman empire up to the year 1000 were arguably the most unstable and maybe this is where a certain imagery comes from. Even than there had to be local markets.
The evolution of language and culture alone is interesting enough on its own. Than, there’s the whole deal with castle and fortresses. Castles were not these in the fairytales, early castles were settlements reminiscent of your minecraft builds. A set of enclosures, walled of course, with a central building followed by lesser houses and activities.
The kind of castle you’re thinking of used to belong to higher ones like princes or important people, the kind of thing you imagined in the Ivanhoe. The average feudal settlement was the aforementioned set of enclosures, that also served as an administrative layer.
Feudal Lords were absolutely vile in the way they used their right over the people under them. Occasionally even inbred. That is somewhat true. Also the more sophisticated castle were not funny places to be in if you weren’t the right person.
Witcher?
Game did a good job of having the ugliest polish man with a pitchfork in the town…
Then the local alchemist has a dump truck ass with eyeliner on.
If you’re talking about my girl Keira Metz, she’s a witch, not a standard alchemist. Woman definitely engages in performance enhancing magic
Had to look up. Got alchemist and herbalist confused.
It was tomira. I did remember the ass lol
I looked her name up on google and half the images are indeed about said dump truck lol
I think the canon is that pretty much all witches do
*Attractive evil villain enters scene*
“…they’re gonna get a tragic backstory and sacrifice themselves for some noble cause.”
*3 seasons later*
“Oh goddamit.”
By “important or ‘good’ characters” I wasn’t trying to say “protagonists and morally good characters”, though there are certainly plenty of authors and directors who follow that rule.
they’re both drunk, though. so that’s more than normal.
Alcohol would be considerably safer to drink than most water you could find
This is largely a myth. It would only apply to large cities, and then, the fresh water sources were frequently protected by law in cities.
Alcohol itself doesn’t actually destroy the pathogens in question- booze was made by microbes, after all, and as for bacterial… only beer and liquors was boiled, and simply adding it to already-contaminated water wouldn’t make it safer; since that only happens at much higher concentrations of alchohol than you’d find, even in liquors. It does inhibit bacterial growth, though, usually people were mixing booze into water to make things taste better. (Similar to how modern restaurants will frequently add lemon slices to cover the taste of tap water.)
in terms of maintaining hydration, alcohol- even weak alcohols- are very much not good for that, even 3% alcohols, particularly in high-heat or under activity.
Boiling water was discussed in Roman and Greek writings well before the medieval period, as well- mostly in the context of making it not taste funky; and usually they were talking about filtering it to remove contaminants (for example, near mining operations.)
Again, streams rivers flowing were generally safe for consumption and would only become unsafe as a result from urban pollution, of which, there were controls in place to protect at least some water ways and wells.
And it was way tamer than what we commonly drink now.
It was similar to Table Beer, iirc.
for consumption by children and by servants.
I don’t know what’s wrong with your toddler, he has barely touched his lager.
through big chunks of human history, being sober was an exception.
Through big chunks of my Saturday being sober was an exception.
Your move.
Deploying patches at work sober is an exception.
The exceptions are when stuff really goes to shit.
Never patch sober. You’re too emotional.
This is what bothered me slightly in the Witcher games.
I had the witcher on my mind when I posted the comic.
KCD2’s not as bad, but has some of this too.
I don’t agree with you there are really attractive male characters in the witcher.
Yeah but all boobs on anyone (maybe apart from Ciri) were the exact same every time. Massive and perfectly round.
It was the Conjunction of the Spheres!
deleted by creator
What’s wrong with their noses?
They’re all drunk
That’s just the comic artist’s style.
I see. I find it distracting.
Allergies.
aminal crossing
orang
i don’t get it
The comic highlights the differences in the portrayal of women and men in media, often oversexualizing women in any number of contexts.
A medieval maid milking the cows would probably not have looked (or smelled) like a supermodel.
my peasant wife may not have regular access to soap but shes still the most beautiful piece of property i own
I got a cow for my wife. It was a good trade.
Nor perfectly shaved armpits. That’s definitely a target here
tbf humans are the most intensively bred species on earth
i mean, humans have selected favorable animals in their livestock since the beginning of domestication, but the same applies to humans as well. it’s very probable that humans have selected for hot-looking women since the very beginning of humanity. it’s only logical to assume that we’re seeing the results today, i.e. hot-looking women in general
Unless you’re claiming ugly people don’t get laid, that makes zero sense. And at average historical childbearing ages, in the late teens - early twenties, youth is a great beauty potion.
Female character during a time where only royals could afford cleanliness and health: is fit, healthy, and conventionally attractive
Male character during the same time: fuckin filthy, feeble, and gross
Afaik that’s a myth. People of all classes, always washed themselves and tried their best not to smell. Especially in the middle ages where it was widely believed that bad smells transmit disease.
It may vary from region to region, I once visited the Museum of Soap and History of Dirt in Bydgoszcz, Poland (wonderful experience!) and it was all au contraire to what you just said
And everytime I heard historians scratching that topic, they would always confirm this information. So historically not much hygiene in Eastern Europe, I suppose.
“The past” ^TM is a big place and a lot of very different things happend in a lot of different places at different times.
The same way it is true that “In the past people believed that fat was super unhealthy and suger was super healthy” and at the same time “in the past people believed that fat was super healthy and suger was super unhealthy”.
Both statements are correct for different times and regions.
But trying your best as a medieval peasant versus as a medieval noble would have significantly differing results
Which game is this?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_Come:_Deliverance
It could be the sequel also, but I highly recommend. An excellent story, challenging but interesting gameplay, and a dev studio that didn’t abandon their goals or devs for a quick cash out
Pretty sure it’s the sequel. Just after getting denied entry into Trosky castle.
Edit:
Yep I was correct
We should bring back some of those traditions. It would be great it people cleaned more often.
Because people watch TV for the realism (well some do but most don’t).
Exactly, let us look at some hot farmer dudes working a sweat
The problem is not the realism or lack thereof. It’s the discrepancy between sexes and their portrayal. If it were equally unrealistic, it would be less jarring.
The portrayal of men is just as unrealistic. Maybe not in the same genre/show (target audiences etc etc) but the muscle definition u see all over the movies for men u think that’s realistic?
The funny thing is that it’s also mostly ‘heterosexual’ men that are into the steroid strong hero aesthetic.
A lot of the unrealistic male body images u see aren’t steroid builds. They simply have unhealthy level of muscle definition. For instance every Chris Hemsworth scene with his shirt off he has dehydrated himself for a day and sat in an ice bath. And if u have ever watched a movie that includes that with a woman or a gay man u would understand that its not just for the het men.
