Gracifabulous

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I've been trying to motivate myself to resume work on my masters thesis for some time now. While I was browsing the Library of Congress' online image catalog, the photo above, which is part of this series gave me the push I needed, I think. OK, don't gag on the pretense. Hate the game, baby. My thesis is on the poetics of American maternity -- how perceptions of the childbearing body have changed throughout U.S. history and the like. I use poetry to map a trajectory of change reflecting interplay between social, literary and physical bodies. It's all very boring, but I also incorporate visual history, which is why I was browsing the catalog to begin with. There now, we've come full circle.

Of course, I'm a very big idiot with a very little attention span, so I jus had to narrate or otherwise provide commentary on some of the blander photos. You know how it is.

1. Well, I sure don't want "the trouble." That sounds bad. But I'd be more worried about "the myrackfeelslikesoccerballs."
   
   


2. This here is a wonder drug. I know when cholera and teething get me down ... I'm no cholerologist, but are cholera and teething really in the same disease category? Technically, teeth aren't even a diease ... except for maybe in the UK.
   
   


3. "Hello Eloise. How was your day? Doesn't matter. Put little Dwight David in his cage and go make me a highball."
   
   


4. "Hey, watch where you're pick-axing. Some of us are trying to lactate and weave ... thing ... in high heels up in hee-ah."
   
   


5. Apparently wherever there's a windfall of manual labor a-happenin', there's a 19th Century French chick a-nursin'. Is this some sort of pre-Marxist commentary on the value of social reproduction as wage labor? I mean, the mid to late 19th century is, after all, when a boom of industrialization fueled a rift between the public and domestic sectors. Plus it's France. Methinks somebody's being cheeeeeeeeee-keeeeeeeee. I tried, but you mostly have to imagine the lilt there.
   
   

OK kids. I hope we've all learned something. Beware "the trouble."