The past was not that cute
Historical Labor and Gender
- Several comments stress that “stay-at-home” women in the past almost always worked: running large households, feeding many children and farm workers, hauling water, doing heavy laundry, preserving food, and often working fields as well.
- Historical anecdotes and scholarship are cited to show that intense exercise for women was discouraged in elite discourse while poor women routinely did heavy physical labor.
Material Culture, “Authenticity,” and Consumerism
- Some nostalgically praise older materials (solid wood, metal, analog controls) as more “honest” and communal, contrasting them with cheap composites and disposable goods.
- Others counter that high-quality items were historically extremely expensive; most people owned few clothes or furnishings and often wore feed-sack garments or margarine instead of butter.
- Multiple commenters note that imitations and “fake” goods (veneer, plastics, snake oil, scams) are centuries old; survivorship bias makes only the well-made past objects visible today.
- Several defend modern synthetics and manufacturing as extraordinarily effective, comfortable, and affordable, even if durability is often intentionally compromised.
Nostalgia, Memory, and Romanticizing the Past
- Many argue that the sense that the past was “more real” comes from selective memory, survivorship bias, and cultural myths (golden age thinking, pastoral fantasies).
- Others insist some changes are objectively large: commercialization, rapid technological shifts, and digital “fakeness” in daily life.
- There is back-and-forth over whether present life is uniquely alienating or simply another turn in a long history of people complaining about moral and social decline.
Rural, Agrarian, and Hunter‑Gatherer Life
- First-hand family stories of prairie dugouts, field work, and pre-modern farm life underline cold, hunger, endless chores, and child loss, while still conceding some community and meaning.
- Debate over hunter-gatherers vs. peasants: some claim foragers had more leisure and better health; others cite newer anthropology suggesting high hunger, malnutrition, and significant workloads once all tasks are counted.
- A recurring theme: most humans historically were peasants in agrarian systems; idyllic “cottage” images usually reflect a tiny privileged minority.
Health, Mortality, and Progress
- Child mortality and infectious disease are used as the clearest evidence that the past was harsh: large fractions of children died before adulthood, and simple infections or childbirth were often fatal.
- Commenters emphasize the transformative impact of industrialization, vaccines, antibiotics, and the Green Revolution, even while acknowledging environmental and psychological downsides of modernity.
Media, Class Myths, and Cottagecore
- Cottagecore and similar aesthetics are framed as selective, highly produced fantasies, akin to long-standing bucolic art and anime Europe-as-fantasy.
- Several argue that popular media and historical storytelling systematically foreground elites and “kings,” encouraging people to misidentify with past oppressors rather than typical peasants or slaves.