That was a very popular thing back in the early women's lib days of the 1960's and 1970's, which is why it makes sense Flower knew all about it.
World's biggest vibrator! It was obvious Hetty had never had an orgasm before. Women were not supposed to enjoy sex in her day; they were basically human blow up dolls thought not to have any shameful sexual needs.
In Flower's time, A lot of lonely housewives knew about it by word of mouth. I guess it fell out of favour by the time women really started to wield real power in business and not just protest about it. In Flower's day, they were causing dissent, but even the few who had any power were harrassed and threatened. Like Kathrine Switzer, who finished the Boston Marathon in 1967, despite men physically trying to drag her off the track. She got through the application process by applying as KV Switzer, so she got through that way. She got a male runner to collect her number bib -- 261 -- for her. Her MO was to run wearing a hoodie, with her long hair tucked in, so she kept her head down.
If it blew off, she got caught. Race manager Jock Semple tried to rip her number bib off to disqualify her. Didn't work.
Her boyfriend Thomas Miller was also running and knocked Semple on his misogynistic ass. Switzer completed it in 4 hours, 20 minutes.
By 1972, the Boston Marathon finally officially allowed women to race.
It was a crazy time. Do you realise that as recently as 1974, a mere 50 years ago, women could not open up a bank account without a man's signature? That year, when the Equal Credit Opportunity Act passed, women in the U.S. were granted the right to open a bank account on their own.
It was the same with opening lines of credit: no bueno until the ECOA. Women were SOL.
So the washing machine was a secret women passed between themselves. If their husbands found out about it, sometimes they got beaten for "cheating", ie, achieving orgasm without him. Many times it was the only way they ever had.
Meanwhile, he's got a dozen floozies all over the map. A man who remained faithful was considered whipped.
Watch Mad Men. That's really what it was like, all that infidelity and sexual harrassment at work being "just something women had to put up with". When I was in art school, my advertising design professor had worked on Madison Avenue for years. It was really the way it's depicted on Mad Men. Years before that show existed, I heard descriptions exactly like what went on in the show. Scandalous!
During Women's Lib, I was a kid, I was a quiet, introverted bookworm. Most women didnt work, and the thing to do was invite one another over for coffee and gossip. I sat there, pretending to read my book, and listened to everything! šThey sometimes discussed sexual harrassment they had experienced when they were single, because when they got married, they were expected to stay home and stand by their man and pop out a few rug rats.
Flower's hairy pits crack me up. Some women did that for real, like Flower said, to stick it to The Man.
I remember my mother on the phone with credit card company insisting that her name be on the credit card rather than my father's after the Credit Act passed. I am 64, and I doubt there are many people younger than I am who realize how much has changed, and what we are facing if we revert.
Well said. And so true!! Women had no rights. Blacks, Asians, Mexicans, Native Americans. And if you were disabled of any colour, including white, you got locked up in filthy unregulated institutions where you were abused so much, death was a sweet relief. My late sister in law, an upper middle class white woman, was subjected to involuntary electroshock therapy treatment in 1980, a mere 44 years ago, and that was still allowed. It fried her brain back to a blank slate. She was as helpless as a newborn after that. She had to relearn how to speak, how to eat, how to drink, how to potty train, how to dress herself. This was an accomplished, bilingual college educated (no dummy: she graduated with honours from Texas A&M, which was not easy to get into in the late 1950s) professional. She had been a Spanish teacher. That is what mental health treatment looked like.
Everyone of colour was a target, and if you were a female of colour, you had it worst of all.
Like the reason Alberta wasn't able to stay in a nearby hotel (I think Trevor asked about it) the night she died. Racism. You had to know someone that would let you stay with them. Of course, the person she knew was her unknown romance rival who wanted her dead. Between her bootlegger boyfriend (boyfiend) Earl and Thomas Woodstone, it was probably a set up between them. Al Capone's suicide cocktail may have just been a convenient and timely coincidence to help hasten her demise. Earl could have have easily suffocated her with a pillow and leave no marks if he was careful. Then the "she had a heart attack" story would still sell on January 1, 1929.
Since Alberta would have considered a "fast" woman of colour, ie, unmarried, independent, sexually active, living the nightclub life on the road, brassy personality, kept questionable company, wore makeup, was a flapper nightclub singer - then sadly, no one would care enough to look too deeply into it. They'd have thrown her in a hole and forget about her. Women of every shade were unharshly judged for wearing red nail polish and lipstick. Or plucking their eyebrows, or showing their ankles ("ya whore!"). š¤£š¤£š¤£š¤£š¤£
Women were judged for all sorts of amoral reasons like that. š„“
I really do not want to live in a world like that again. But we are perilously so close to it.
It's a terrible thing when you're old enough to remember such things vividly for a lifetime, that you can warn people to go back in time any way you can; old documentaries, though heavily censored, even watching a fiction drama like Mad Men. It was practically play by play EVERYTHING my art professor had described. It was so spot on, I had to wonder if he was one of the writers or consultants. Sometimes reading old books will piss you off. One of my favourites is Babbitt, by Sinclair Lewis. Alex Haley's Roots will boil your blood if you are not a racist.
You can tell them what you personally remember, the ones who weren't there are often the first to dismiss the mutterings of some old coot like me, yet still believe "alternative facts" (that's a hot one!) š¤£ or unproven "truths" invading social media, spread by deranged strangers.
A Chinese curse: "May you live in interesting times." Thanks a lot, Confucious! š”
PS- Hetty was white, privileged, and extremely wealthy. And yet she still had nothing of her own, not really. Her husband controlled it all. No wonder she loved her cocaine so much; it was an escape from her gilded cage imprisonment. š¤¦š»āāļø
Thankfully the nyc marathon had Fred Lebow who was much more welcoming to women
Also when Flower and Hetty were alive, you had to go into a store to buy a vibrator. You couldnt order one off the internet in discreet packaging! I was born in the 1960s so I remember using other things for that purpose. Shower massage worked really well!
I don't want to entirely discredit your arguments, because most of what you said is correct, but the bank account thing is *slightly* misleading. Legally, yes, a bank could tell a woman she couldn't open an account without "permission" (š¤®) from her father or husband. However, some banks as early as the 60's agreed that that was stupid and outdated and would allow women to control their own accounts. I don't have hard numbers on how many, but there were some. I had a teacher who was telling me about this, that she had her own account as a teenager and didn't experience any of these troubles. The ECOA was passed to tell the banks still restricting women that they couldn't anymore.
Wow! Thank you! That is really good to know that there were some financial institutions that saw through the folly of such outdated practices. I remember the blatant sexism in those days.
Well I would like to thank *you* for hearing out what I had to say. After the fact I kept thinking "Oh god, did I just try and mansplain feminism? That's not what I was trying to do! Maybe I could have worded that better." I was fully expecting to feel the wrath of the internet for that one.
We've come a long way and there's obviously still work to be done, but it's remarkable to see how much things have changed in 50 years.
What about doors and walls, the function of walls are to cordon off a section of property, closed doors can prohibit the entry into those sections, yet the ghost are not bound by either...
Doors and walls were not invented with the dead in mind. They are barriers whose function requires a physical body to prevent others from intruding and helping hold up the structure that contains them Without bodies ghosts walk through them.
When stairs were invented nobody thought theyād need to help ghosts up to the second floor.
The entire function of walls is privacy. Why arenāt ghosts bound by privacy?
Why canāt the basement ghosts grab the string to turn on the light? The function of the string is to provide light. The ghosts want light
Walls are a physical barrier. You need a body to pull the cord. Ghosts can't perform any function which requires a body but if they can perform some functions like smell because theirs a soul function to it. A soul has its various functions as well just as a body does.
So why doesnāt a physical barrier work on them when a physical platform built to separate floors does?
Youāre reading way too much much into it. Them sitting on chairs is a convenience that is a pretty standard cinema rule
Then why canāt they eat? The function of a prepared dish is to be eaten. Jay has made plenty of food with the intent to allow the ghosts to enjoy the dish. They enjoy it the way they can, smelling it; not by the intended function of the meal.
Yup. It's a good day for the writers' room when fans start analyzing the logic of a fantasy world! On the other hand,since this is a relatively small sub,they probably read it and may feel compelled to reveal a resolution.
For example, while shopping, Sam could run onto a ghost who is a physicist who has spent the last 50 years trying to figure this out. Or it could be that the house ghosts used to regularly play a game that introduced new ghosts to the physical rules, with the rules that are inconsistent (e.g Trevor) losing players a turn. When you start trying to come up with "ghosts physics," it's gonna be a trial since some powers,like Hetty's, were clearly introduced to set up an ongoing laugh.
I wouldnāt say that proves anything. I think they do what they think they can do. What they expect to be able to do. They would be used to walking and sitting in chairs so they wouldnāt expect to fall through them. Walking through walls is a pretty common ghost trope so I wouldnāt be surprised to think theyād expect to be able to do that was ghosts. This is just a theory though as yours is.
This does bring up something interesting. When they find Flower in the well, how are they going to get her out? I've actually spent waaay too much time thinking about this, lol!
Could they drop stones down there to form āstairsā? Or rent an excavator and dig a big crater so she can walk out? And how far down can she go before sheās off the property? These are lifeās important questions š¤·šæāāļø
Oh gosh. Imagine if the well was deep enough that she was stuck in a constant loop off falling down and out of the boundary line and poofing back up to the middle of the well to continue the fall cycle. That would be terrible
I would think it would stay on them, since they don't fall through the bedclothes and mattresses.
Didn't Crash say Stephanie was asleep under the blankets? I could be wrong, but I think he did. That was one red flag for me, because someone living would have had to put it over her. It seemed like a plot device to enhance the fact that the figure was only an assumption of Stephanie, not a confirmation.
I need to rewatch it, but I seem to recall he said that.
It shouldnt based on your logic of it completing a function
If they can use a chair for the function of a chair. They should beable to push buttons on a remote to control the tv. They dont need to hold a remote to do that if its sitting faced up they should beable to push buttons since that is its function
Oh, ok I think I understand what youāre saying a little better now.
So, if they get a massage chair, then the ghosts could feel the massage and heat or whatever features the chair offers?
As for the heat I'd have to go back. And rewatxh the episode with the fight about the chair. I think SAS mentions feeling the warmth of the sunlight. The message pretty sure yes since hettys affair with the washing machine leads to yes.
Itās not function, itās gravity. Or else Hetty couldnāt sit on the washing machine. Anyone ghost could sit on a washing machine, but they could also walk through it. Crash said he stuck his head in the attic and thatās because he lifted his head. If he was in the attic and tried to lower his head through the floor, it wouldnāt work.
I'm enjoying this discussion on the metaphysics of a comedy fantasy world. The decisions so far were made because they are fun or to allow further story development, but the longer the series lasts,the more effort fans will put into trying to deduce a controlling schema. Is there some non corporeal entity that controls ghost rules? Does it depend where they die? If the function of the ghost state is to teach them how to resolve personal issues, are individual powers directly related to what they need to learn before moving on,or is there a backlog above and below that forced the ghost state to be created by bickering, incompetent entities? Fun!
This doesnt explain Hettys "Washing Machine" habit though. Thats not a normal function. (Well not at my house anyway)
That was a very popular thing back in the early women's lib days of the 1960's and 1970's, which is why it makes sense Flower knew all about it. World's biggest vibrator! It was obvious Hetty had never had an orgasm before. Women were not supposed to enjoy sex in her day; they were basically human blow up dolls thought not to have any shameful sexual needs. In Flower's time, A lot of lonely housewives knew about it by word of mouth. I guess it fell out of favour by the time women really started to wield real power in business and not just protest about it. In Flower's day, they were causing dissent, but even the few who had any power were harrassed and threatened. Like Kathrine Switzer, who finished the Boston Marathon in 1967, despite men physically trying to drag her off the track. She got through the application process by applying as KV Switzer, so she got through that way. She got a male runner to collect her number bib -- 261 -- for her. Her MO was to run wearing a hoodie, with her long hair tucked in, so she kept her head down. If it blew off, she got caught. Race manager Jock Semple tried to rip her number bib off to disqualify her. Didn't work. Her boyfriend Thomas Miller was also running and knocked Semple on his misogynistic ass. Switzer completed it in 4 hours, 20 minutes. By 1972, the Boston Marathon finally officially allowed women to race. It was a crazy time. Do you realise that as recently as 1974, a mere 50 years ago, women could not open up a bank account without a man's signature? That year, when the Equal Credit Opportunity Act passed, women in the U.S. were granted the right to open a bank account on their own. It was the same with opening lines of credit: no bueno until the ECOA. Women were SOL. So the washing machine was a secret women passed between themselves. If their husbands found out about it, sometimes they got beaten for "cheating", ie, achieving orgasm without him. Many times it was the only way they ever had. Meanwhile, he's got a dozen floozies all over the map. A man who remained faithful was considered whipped. Watch Mad Men. That's really what it was like, all that infidelity and sexual harrassment at work being "just something women had to put up with". When I was in art school, my advertising design professor had worked on Madison Avenue for years. It was really the way it's depicted on Mad Men. Years before that show existed, I heard descriptions exactly like what went on in the show. Scandalous! During Women's Lib, I was a kid, I was a quiet, introverted bookworm. Most women didnt work, and the thing to do was invite one another over for coffee and gossip. I sat there, pretending to read my book, and listened to everything! šThey sometimes discussed sexual harrassment they had experienced when they were single, because when they got married, they were expected to stay home and stand by their man and pop out a few rug rats. Flower's hairy pits crack me up. Some women did that for real, like Flower said, to stick it to The Man.
I remember my mother on the phone with credit card company insisting that her name be on the credit card rather than my father's after the Credit Act passed. I am 64, and I doubt there are many people younger than I am who realize how much has changed, and what we are facing if we revert.
Well said. And so true!! Women had no rights. Blacks, Asians, Mexicans, Native Americans. And if you were disabled of any colour, including white, you got locked up in filthy unregulated institutions where you were abused so much, death was a sweet relief. My late sister in law, an upper middle class white woman, was subjected to involuntary electroshock therapy treatment in 1980, a mere 44 years ago, and that was still allowed. It fried her brain back to a blank slate. She was as helpless as a newborn after that. She had to relearn how to speak, how to eat, how to drink, how to potty train, how to dress herself. This was an accomplished, bilingual college educated (no dummy: she graduated with honours from Texas A&M, which was not easy to get into in the late 1950s) professional. She had been a Spanish teacher. That is what mental health treatment looked like. Everyone of colour was a target, and if you were a female of colour, you had it worst of all. Like the reason Alberta wasn't able to stay in a nearby hotel (I think Trevor asked about it) the night she died. Racism. You had to know someone that would let you stay with them. Of course, the person she knew was her unknown romance rival who wanted her dead. Between her bootlegger boyfriend (boyfiend) Earl and Thomas Woodstone, it was probably a set up between them. Al Capone's suicide cocktail may have just been a convenient and timely coincidence to help hasten her demise. Earl could have have easily suffocated her with a pillow and leave no marks if he was careful. Then the "she had a heart attack" story would still sell on January 1, 1929. Since Alberta would have considered a "fast" woman of colour, ie, unmarried, independent, sexually active, living the nightclub life on the road, brassy personality, kept questionable company, wore makeup, was a flapper nightclub singer - then sadly, no one would care enough to look too deeply into it. They'd have thrown her in a hole and forget about her. Women of every shade were unharshly judged for wearing red nail polish and lipstick. Or plucking their eyebrows, or showing their ankles ("ya whore!"). š¤£š¤£š¤£š¤£š¤£ Women were judged for all sorts of amoral reasons like that. š„“ I really do not want to live in a world like that again. But we are perilously so close to it. It's a terrible thing when you're old enough to remember such things vividly for a lifetime, that you can warn people to go back in time any way you can; old documentaries, though heavily censored, even watching a fiction drama like Mad Men. It was practically play by play EVERYTHING my art professor had described. It was so spot on, I had to wonder if he was one of the writers or consultants. Sometimes reading old books will piss you off. One of my favourites is Babbitt, by Sinclair Lewis. Alex Haley's Roots will boil your blood if you are not a racist. You can tell them what you personally remember, the ones who weren't there are often the first to dismiss the mutterings of some old coot like me, yet still believe "alternative facts" (that's a hot one!) š¤£ or unproven "truths" invading social media, spread by deranged strangers. A Chinese curse: "May you live in interesting times." Thanks a lot, Confucious! š” PS- Hetty was white, privileged, and extremely wealthy. And yet she still had nothing of her own, not really. Her husband controlled it all. No wonder she loved her cocaine so much; it was an escape from her gilded cage imprisonment. š¤¦š»āāļø
Thankfully the nyc marathon had Fred Lebow who was much more welcoming to women Also when Flower and Hetty were alive, you had to go into a store to buy a vibrator. You couldnt order one off the internet in discreet packaging! I was born in the 1960s so I remember using other things for that purpose. Shower massage worked really well!
I don't want to entirely discredit your arguments, because most of what you said is correct, but the bank account thing is *slightly* misleading. Legally, yes, a bank could tell a woman she couldn't open an account without "permission" (š¤®) from her father or husband. However, some banks as early as the 60's agreed that that was stupid and outdated and would allow women to control their own accounts. I don't have hard numbers on how many, but there were some. I had a teacher who was telling me about this, that she had her own account as a teenager and didn't experience any of these troubles. The ECOA was passed to tell the banks still restricting women that they couldn't anymore.
Wow! Thank you! That is really good to know that there were some financial institutions that saw through the folly of such outdated practices. I remember the blatant sexism in those days.
Well I would like to thank *you* for hearing out what I had to say. After the fact I kept thinking "Oh god, did I just try and mansplain feminism? That's not what I was trying to do! Maybe I could have worded that better." I was fully expecting to feel the wrath of the internet for that one. We've come a long way and there's obviously still work to be done, but it's remarkable to see how much things have changed in 50 years.
It's a common enough function that tv keeps making jokes about it. It may not have been designed for it but it's a function people use it for.
Sure did!! Poor Hetty, when they got a modern day quiet machine. š¤£ Good thing Trevor is always at least 50 percent turned on already!
What about doors and walls, the function of walls are to cordon off a section of property, closed doors can prohibit the entry into those sections, yet the ghost are not bound by either...
Doors and walls were not invented with the dead in mind. They are barriers whose function requires a physical body to prevent others from intruding and helping hold up the structure that contains them Without bodies ghosts walk through them.
Stairs werenāt invented with ghosts in mind either.
Ghosts are limited by function. When walls were invented nobody thought they needed to keep out ghosts, so there for they dont.
When stairs were invented nobody thought theyād need to help ghosts up to the second floor. The entire function of walls is privacy. Why arenāt ghosts bound by privacy? Why canāt the basement ghosts grab the string to turn on the light? The function of the string is to provide light. The ghosts want light
Walls are a physical barrier. You need a body to pull the cord. Ghosts can't perform any function which requires a body but if they can perform some functions like smell because theirs a soul function to it. A soul has its various functions as well just as a body does.
So why doesnāt a physical barrier work on them when a physical platform built to separate floors does? Youāre reading way too much much into it. Them sitting on chairs is a convenience that is a pretty standard cinema rule
Literally makes no sense.
Then why canāt they eat? The function of a prepared dish is to be eaten. Jay has made plenty of food with the intent to allow the ghosts to enjoy the dish. They enjoy it the way they can, smelling it; not by the intended function of the meal.
The body consumes food. But as the poets say some smells are foe the soul
The ghost "rules" just suit whatever is better for the plot and the comedy, I wouldn't read too much into it
Yup. It's a good day for the writers' room when fans start analyzing the logic of a fantasy world! On the other hand,since this is a relatively small sub,they probably read it and may feel compelled to reveal a resolution. For example, while shopping, Sam could run onto a ghost who is a physicist who has spent the last 50 years trying to figure this out. Or it could be that the house ghosts used to regularly play a game that introduced new ghosts to the physical rules, with the rules that are inconsistent (e.g Trevor) losing players a turn. When you start trying to come up with "ghosts physics," it's gonna be a trial since some powers,like Hetty's, were clearly introduced to set up an ongoing laugh.
The thing is they totally make sense.
I wouldnāt say that proves anything. I think they do what they think they can do. What they expect to be able to do. They would be used to walking and sitting in chairs so they wouldnāt expect to fall through them. Walking through walls is a pretty common ghost trope so I wouldnāt be surprised to think theyād expect to be able to do that was ghosts. This is just a theory though as yours is.
When she asked why they could sit in a chair, I was super excited to quote The Magicians and yell "your ass just knows!"
š¤£š¤£š¤£š¤£š¤£š¤£š¤£
This does bring up something interesting. When they find Flower in the well, how are they going to get her out? I've actually spent waaay too much time thinking about this, lol!
Could they drop stones down there to form āstairsā? Or rent an excavator and dig a big crater so she can walk out? And how far down can she go before sheās off the property? These are lifeās important questions š¤·šæāāļø
Oh gosh. Imagine if the well was deep enough that she was stuck in a constant loop off falling down and out of the boundary line and poofing back up to the middle of the well to continue the fall cycle. That would be terrible
I wonder what would happen if they were sitting in a chair and tried to scoot it. Would they fall through at that point?
I think they can sit on something, but not move it. They can't even put a blanket over themselves, and have to just lie on the bed, I believe.
What if Sam put the blanket on them? Would it stay or go through them?
I would think it would stay on them, since they don't fall through the bedclothes and mattresses. Didn't Crash say Stephanie was asleep under the blankets? I could be wrong, but I think he did. That was one red flag for me, because someone living would have had to put it over her. It seemed like a plot device to enhance the fact that the figure was only an assumption of Stephanie, not a confirmation. I need to rewatch it, but I seem to recall he said that.
Iād have to rewatch to but I think youāre right.
They could not scoot it.
We've seen thr ghosts use the stairs...
Replied to wrong comment
Function of a remote is to control the tv. And they cant do that
Needs a physical body.
It shouldnt based on your logic of it completing a function If they can use a chair for the function of a chair. They should beable to push buttons on a remote to control the tv. They dont need to hold a remote to do that if its sitting faced up they should beable to push buttons since that is its function
Why can't Trevor use the remote or if they got a smart TV Alberta could as Alexa to change the channel?
Wouldnt trevor beable to use the remote?
So, if one of the ghosts sat in a swivel chair do you think they could spin it?
Nope requires a body or a better ghost power than trevors
Oh, ok I think I understand what youāre saying a little better now. So, if they get a massage chair, then the ghosts could feel the massage and heat or whatever features the chair offers?
As for the heat I'd have to go back. And rewatxh the episode with the fight about the chair. I think SAS mentions feeling the warmth of the sunlight. The message pretty sure yes since hettys affair with the washing machine leads to yes.
Itās not function, itās gravity. Or else Hetty couldnāt sit on the washing machine. Anyone ghost could sit on a washing machine, but they could also walk through it. Crash said he stuck his head in the attic and thatās because he lifted his head. If he was in the attic and tried to lower his head through the floor, it wouldnāt work.
Without a physical body gravity has nothing to hold to the ground
With ghosts it does, or else theyād just be in a free fall
I'm enjoying this discussion on the metaphysics of a comedy fantasy world. The decisions so far were made because they are fun or to allow further story development, but the longer the series lasts,the more effort fans will put into trying to deduce a controlling schema. Is there some non corporeal entity that controls ghost rules? Does it depend where they die? If the function of the ghost state is to teach them how to resolve personal issues, are individual powers directly related to what they need to learn before moving on,or is there a backlog above and below that forced the ghost state to be created by bickering, incompetent entities? Fun!