[Sca-cooks] OT Authenticity Police: since we're castigating extremists anyway...

[jenne at fiedlerfamily.net]

> I guess my question is, how much of the "authenticity police" issue is just
> about plain bad manners.

All of it.

Another example: a friend was looking at pictures from a wedding we had
been at. Anxious to disassociate herself with the people who helped her
make her garb for that day, she went off about how unperiod all the
clothing was. Unfortunately, as I pointed out to her later, the garb I was
wearing in that picture was more period in appearance than the stuff I
owned at the time she started bitching.

> I think the problem is not in the information (assuming it's right, which
> frequently it isn't...) so much as in the attitude.

Bingo.

Had the person with the 'Laurel So and So says' comment followed it up
with anything even remotely constructive like "I fit my bodices this way"
or even, under the circumstances, "Have you considered thus and such a
fashion which I think would be very flattering on you?"

It's all in the way you say it. I should know better than anyone,

For instance: there was some discussion in my shire of buying some sturdy
folding tables for use at demos and events.... i.e. plastic tables.  A
cute but bumbling authenticist responded that instead of buying plastic
tables and covering them with cloths, why don't the furniture makers in
the shire make some out of something like mahogany which is about as cheap
as plastic [he said] and then they won't need tablecloths. (yes, I know
that mahogany is a bit more expensive than plastic.) I responded to him
that I could find no period depictions of uncovered tables so they would
still need tablecloths, and that mahogany I didn't have evidence for
mahogany used in tables in period. Guess who got flamed as a period Nazi,
and at the same time 'someone who doesn't even try to be authentic'? That
would be me. Yup.

-- Jadwiga Zajaczkowa
jenne at fiedlerfamily.net OR jenne at tulgey.browser.net OR jahb at lehigh.edu
"Are you finished? If you're finished, you'll have to put down the spoon."