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Genealogy/memories

Findmypast's adverts

(8 Posts)
Oxon70 Wed 13-Jul-11 20:05:24

They are mostly very funny.
But one really annoys me, the one where the woman says 'I burned my bra in the 1960s' !!!
The bra myth is still here and they haven't even got the dates right.
And the suffragette, from what I've heard of them, would probably have laughed.

Ancestry's ads are good. I especially like 'The happiest day of our lives.'
If this isn't genealogy, sorry, but the ones on this topic are likely to have seen them...

JessM Wed 13-Jul-11 20:35:14

We feel the same way about our "concrete cows" in MK. Fed up with hearing about... And I never heard anyone say "look you" in Wales. I think this comes from George Borrow.
G Greer did write about going without them (bras, not cows or welsh people) didn't she in Female Eunuch. Needs to be compulsory reading in the waiting rooms of those places women go to have every single body hair removed!

Oxon70 Sat 16-Jul-11 15:39:11

Oh, I did go without mine. Wish I still felt I could. We talked about them being a 'false front'.....it's true! Didn't burn them though.

I think there is something a little more serious about this advert, though; it is actually a distortion of history which a lot of people will believe, in the same way that things printed in black and white in newspapers get believed.

Comments please?

JessM Sat 16-Jul-11 20:24:17

Yes well I still do at least in yoga and round the house, despite the lopsided post partial mastectomy effect. But most of the time i am too vain.
Yes it sounds very irritating. It always was a kind of put down (a lot like those concrete cows). Oh you women who burn your bras. Take the mick out of something for long enough and you drive it back into the margins. It's a kind o bullying.
"Slut walks" seems to me to be inviting the same kind of misrepresentation. What do you make of it?

Oxon70 Wed 27-Jul-11 21:05:28

Jess, this is going in three different directions!
Can we talk about lopsidedness in the health section? I have this too..
Start a thread about slut walks somewhere? I could comment!

I think inaccuracy is more than irritating, it's manipulation, it's anything from sheer carelessness to various kinds of propaganda.....maybe this doesn't belong in genealogy either!
I am trying so hard to get the story of my ggrandfather right, to say when I don't know or I am not sure - and I found my grandmother a few weeks ago in someone else's tree on Ancestry!
I messaged the owner, but I'm sure she wasn't at all pleased - I hope I would be at least reconsidering, but it is still there. This of course is a more private matter, but there are all kinds of inaccuracies out there. A lot om historical films, and some very obvious, like a baby in a babygrow type suit in a Catherine Cookson film.
How about the American film about the Enigma machine, where it's the Americans who manage to get it instead of the British????
This one reminds me of the job in '1984' which was to alter history according to the current government policy, and scrap the truth!

springtime Wed 27-Jul-11 21:44:45

Sometimes the styles of the 50s, 60s and 70s shown on some TV programmes seem to blur into one and you notice someone wearing something from each era or maybe a hairstyle that you know wouldn't have been worn in the time they are trying to portray. It's very distracting because I then start doubting my own memory instead of concentrating on what I'm watching.

By the way - I too have seen inaccurate info about my family on other people's public trees on Ancestry but as I choose not to publish my tree I view it as extra security and privacy if they have got it wrong.

JessM Sun 31-Jul-11 11:13:06

I am bemused at the notion that people are disagreeing about grandparents...
Hollywood distorts the past without shame. The thing I notice these days is that they depict women without hats in things set pre WW2. And they have done since the start of the movies. Also using words like "stressed" in the 19th century...
yes let us start a post mastectomy thread. But right now I have my NZ son arriving for a week (an he's invited all kinds of mates to stay/visit) and lots of admin to sort out. See you anon...

Elegran Mon 01-Aug-11 11:18:15

Springtime I remember hearing about a fake old painting which was accepted as the real thing for a long time - until someone noticed that the hairstyle and makeup of the subject was out of sync with the time it was supposed to be have been painted. I believe it was proved to have been painted in the 20's. On closer inspection she looked like a 20s flapper, but in the 20s and 30s no-one noticed, because it was a familiar look. It was only when that style went way out of date that it became obvious.