FLY GIRLS! Amazing Aerial Stunts in 1930s Movie

I suppose I have to get back to this blog some time, especially since, to my surprise, I'm still getting comments on some of my past stuff. Lately it's been far too personal, but I assume nobody reads them anyway. I've always been against getting too personal online, but there's a temptation when you've been through an ordeal, and I've never faced anything even remotely like this before. One more of  those, and I'm finished for sure.

It's slow. I'm used to 45 minutes of brisk walking  a day, and am now lucky to get in 15 or 20 at a much slower pace. I lost 8 pounds from the ordeal, and am making a concerted effort to gain as much of it back as I can. My obsessive counting of calories for my entire life has been completely reversed. Now I have to eat all the things I couldn't have before, but ironically, I no longer want them. Food is like medicine now. I suddenly feel like an invalid. I'm getting my life back bit by bit, including my channel, but it has been and will be a long haul, with many backsteps. I know recovery isn't a straight line - God knows I've had to face it over and over again in my life - but this seems more like a vortex or a whirlpool determined to suck me down forever.

The video, well, I had to go into a long explanation about the women's dresses "blowing off" (yet another of many illusions in this brilliant scene), and how they wore bodysuits underneath. Why did I have to do this? YOUTUBE, that's why. I almost certainly would have gotten a "decency strike" (again) if I had allowed this flagrant display of "nudity". So who thought they were actually nude? You can plainly see one of the women pull up her strap, which I am  sure was left in to appease the censors. The bit where the woman "falls" also had to be carefully explained. She didn't really fall, folks! It was all "pretend"!

Yet other channels post the most appalling stuff, with no penalties. 

I finally had to go with YouTube Premium, which basically means no ads (or is supposed to - when will they break their own rules?). Nothing is free any more, but YouTube now is not even remotely like it used to be when I signed up. That was another lifetime ago, of course. I am actually purposely not looking at views, and trying to focus on the many comments I get every day on my much older stuff, including things I posted five years ago and forgot about. The mad chase for views and $$ and all that stuff was wearing me out, and when I returned to my channel after a four-month hiatus, I promised myself I wouldn't do that any more. It means I can't even look  at them now for fear my eye  wanders down to the view count. If I could find a way to  disable it - and maybe there is, but I just don't  see it.

Harold and Ginger and boudoir dolls

During my long Harold trek, which I don't think is over yet, I found some pretty sweet photos. The candid shots generally came with no explanation. But this one doesn't need one: it's Harold Lloyd hugging his dear friend Ginger Rogers, in the kind of gorgeous mink coat you never see any more (because someone will throw paint on you if you do). At first it isn't obvious, but you can plainly see his injured right hand with its missing thumb and forefinger. I've found a number of photos like this, where the hand is obvious in public, and it flies in the face of the "information" I found that said he always hid the hand in his pocket.

But he didn't. He was cool about it, so probably few people even noticed. He was relaxed about it with his friends. I think his attitude was: hide in plain sight. I like that, I like it a lot, and it took some courage in an age when "deformities" were kept carefully out of sight.

But this one is even more interesting. It's surprising what you miss when you don't look too closely. I never even noticed, until I posted this on my Harold Lloyd Facebook page (yes! I have a Harold Lloyd Facebook page, though hardly anyone knows about it: https://www.facebook.com/theglasscharacter/). 

I knew about the craze for boudoir dolls, a Russian-inspired fad that raged through the '20s and '30s. I even collected some photos of them several years ago, yet still I missed this one! I wonder now if this was a gift from Harold to Ginger. With Harold's great generosity, it might have been.

http://www.jazzageclub.com/fads/the-boudoir-doll-craze/

This link will take you to an extremely detailed and informative post about boudoir dolls and their cultural significance.

And here is a slideshow I made just for you, dear readers, so you'll know what they looked like. Obviously, there was no one style, but at the same time, they have a certain sophistication in common. Their bodies and limbs were very long and skinny, as if they were mere frames for the clothes. Doll mannequins. I wonder how costly they were? If movie stars were carrying them around, they must have been, though no doubt there were knockoffs then, as there is now.

As I was working on this slide show, I realized I was seeing something with a startling resemblence to the eerily beautiful Enchanted Dolls of Marina Bychkova. I've been obsessed with those dolls for years, and have posted about them many times (and my hope of even seeing one of them in person is very slim - they command tens of thousands of dollars, and only appear at the most prestigious doll exhibits in the world). 

At one point I had the two sets of doll pictures mixed together, and - oh shit! - was it hard to separate them, because of all the similarities. Bychkova's dolls tend towards the waiflike, though some of them are downright fierce. They echo ancient story and reflect the true darkness of the fairy tale. Boudoir dolls have a flapperish quality (some are depicted smoking, or reclining in a seductive way with their legs apart). But the sexuality, the gorgeous costumes, the weirdness and slight creepiness that all dolls exhibit - I see them in both types.

Another slideshow I made of Enchanted Dolls. I think you can see the similarities, as well as the differences. And now I wonder if Bychkova, born in Russia, was influenced at all by these exotic European-made dolls. How could she not be?


BLOGSERVATION. I just noticed another thing. Ginger's doll has a certain resemblance to Marie Antoinette: the elaborate gown, the very high hairdo. 

And behold, this - 

I don't want to start researching the life of Ginger Rogers and trying to find out if she collected boudoir dolls, if this was in fact from Harold, or if they were carrying on together (as he did with so many women). Let it rest for now. But it's a fascinating subject. Though I return to dolls again and again as a topic, I'm not much of a collector.

But I do have a few.

Heaven. . . I'm in heaven

Skate! Skate! Skate!