From: firstinitiallastname@texas.net   
      
   Kayso Dias wrote:   
      
      
   > I can also imagine that when men actually   
   > had to "work" - as in toil - for long hours each   
   > day in order to eke out a living, their sex drive   
   > may well have been suppressed by fatigue. This would   
   > have especially been true in the days of western   
   > expansion, when women were also laboring daily   
   > without the aid of modern appliances, and wore   
   > homespun fluor sack dresses, went without   
   > bathing or perfuming, etc.   
      
   It's a mistake to characterize people in other situations by modeling on   
   what a modern, industrialized national would imagine themselve to be   
   like in that situation. One can refer to any number of places today   
   where people work long and hard and where there's no sign of failed sex   
   drive, as evidenced by the frequent over and expanding population.   
      
   While it would probably be equally questionable to infer that grinding   
   hard work enhances sex drive, it's quite unlikely that the frontier   
   couple ended the day say, "Well, Hannah, we sure ain't feeling, looking   
   or smelling sexy after working 14 hours, but I guess we ought to try to   
   knock you up, so as to have some kids to keep us when we're old" They   
   made a lot of kids as a side effect of lots of sex.   
      
   And extreme sensistivity to body odors is a product of very recent   
   cultural changes in most places, mostly as a result of it being possible   
   to supress them and of being told that we *should* be offended.   
      
   > Even in eastern USA society, women back then sure   
   > don't look all that alluring in old photos - wearing   
   > dresses that covered everything from head to foot with   
   > an attitude that showing even a little ankle was risque.   
   > And imagine the trouble a man had to go to trying   
   > to get a woman out of those whale bone corsets, hoop   
   > skirts, lace up high-top shoes, etc.   
      
   I think there are several things at work there. Early photographic   
   methods required the subject to maintain a rigid pose, which I think   
   accounts for the often grim expression. Fashion in photo portraits   
   changes, too. The sensitivity of early photographic emulsions was   
   weighted heavily to blue light. (Hence the red safelight in old photo   
   labs. The film couldn't see it.)  Blue sky came out dead white. The only   
   sufficiently effective lighting was natural light, blue skylight. The   
   effect was rather different from the results of the same scene with   
   modern, panchromatic film. Duplicating in a photo what was pleasing in   
   life would require an effort that would have resulted in a peculiar   
   appearance in life.   
      
   As to clothing, compare the titilatory potentials of women in a grocery   
   today with a grocery then. The imagination tries to make the best of it   
   but has little to work on with sweat pants and shorts. Drop a long print   
   dress over it, and the imagination go to it.   
      
   Of course, hard lives had real effects on the women. It shows in many of   
   the photographs. Striving to look like the sex goddesses of the day   
   requires money and leisure. And for it to be worth it, it requires men   
   who have no need (or fear) of feminine toughness and who place striking   
   physical beauty high on the lists of what makes women attractive mates.   
   In the days and in places where there were no safety nets for those who   
   didn't work hard, looking like Lilly Langtrey or Etta Place meant less   
   than being a good worker.   
      
   A man of the old frontier might well look at a photo of a group of women   
   today and comment, "Purty enough. Can they work?"   
      
   --   
                          Gerald Clough   
       "Nothing has any value, unless you know you can give it up."   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)