The Extinction of the Feminine Arts

Our society is suffering from decline and decay that the vast majority are oblivious to. In the twentieth century as in the centuries that preceded them, western civilization was defined by intelligence, ingenuity, and hard work. Today, I look at my generation of men and women and compare them to my elders, and figures I can only read about in books or see on telly in costume dramas, and realize the level of skill and ambition that has been lost. Women regardless of education level or class in previous centuries had a wide array of knowledge in sewing, cookery, knitting, embroidery, herbalism, gardening, child rearing, and other feminine arts. Not because they thought it was cool to do, but because these skills and knowledge sets are essential survival skills. Sewing your own clothes was compulsory for working class families that couldn't afford a dressmaker, and knowing how to embroider insured that if you had enough time and skill even if you didn't have money, you could still look as posh as someone with twice your income. Knitting is not just a skill that allows us to make our own Doctor Who scarf but has kept everyone from farmers and miners and sailors warm and dry, and goes back millennia as one of the oldest crafts humanity ever created. The ability to feed yourself, and identify herbs and weeds and mushrooms as edible or even acceptable for use in medicines gave housewives the ability to mix treatments to hopefully keep family members alive especially for families that couldn't afford a doctor. The knowledge the average woman kept locked inside her head, is staggering when we compare to the modern mother, who is barely able to cook more than egg and chips and do laundry because it's all far too much effort.

We should be ashamed at the amount of knowledge and skill we have abandoned and allowed to let waste away. Is this compulsive laziness and ignorance the price we pay for our modern comfortable existence? The skills we have let atrophy are really far more than simple survival skills. The patterns of our feminine arts are not only beautiful but tell the story of our history as a nation and as  our journey as women. In the UK sailors wives would knit thick warm sweaters for their men, and every stitch was designed to remind them what to do if disaster struck. Keeping the men warm and wrapping them in the love of their wives with every woman having a slightly different pattern. Lace making, both industrial and handmade is on the breaking point right now with the art about to be lost in all of Europe. Lace was not only a prize for the very wealthy for the highest quality but for centuries across Europe was used as a sign of political affiliation, more like a modern day button or ribbon we would affix to ourselves to promote some disease. In the  Jacobite Rebellion, both the Jacobite s and Royalists developed their own lace patterns as a way to quietly show off who you supported. Patterns like this are a vital piece of our social and political history and to lose them is to lose our own past. Time and again I tally the cost of losing these skills and the price is far too high. We must stop sacrificing our heritage that is thousands of years in the making for the sake of ease and cost efficiency.

If we are to survive the great issues of our day than we must begin to realize that we are living in a fog of deceit.  We are allowing ourselves to believe that our current easy lifestyle is sustainable, and that global trade will always be cheap and easy as it is now. It is now an imperative to start reteaching the skills that humanity needs to survive so that we may be ready for the advanced stage of climate change. So please, I beg my fellow young women to ask your grandmothers before they go to teach you the skills they themselves took for granted as young girls before our modern society took over and made effort superfluous.