Soap/Forge of Empire

The image for Forge of Empires popped up on Pandora.  It reminded me of several things: a hilarious analysis of drawings featuring women who's underpants fell off and the most important invention in the world.  I know I need to explain this.

In reverse order, one of my profs maintained that the single most important thing mankind devised was soap.  I know little kids don't appreciate it, but soap allowed people to remove dirt and contamination from their body and implements.  With (or without) your permission I'll skip over a review of saponification except to say that the expression "wash your mouth out with soap" stemed from horrible experience: early soaps still contained un-neutralized lye which can do horrible things to tender membranes.

Wealthier people could afford scented soaps which also had the lye neutralizing.  Still, the popular depiction of historical characters usually show them at our modern level of cleanliness.  (Some reviewers of a show about John Adams made a point of commented that Paul Giamatti, playing John Adams, was made up to have dirty finger nails.)

Which brings me to the image.  How likely is is it that someone the age of the woman depicted would not be grimy from the woodsmoke and dust?  (I would quote from Farley Mowat's description of smelling Inuits before seeing them, but much of his writing has been documented as fanciful in detail.)  Grime does not come off without soap.  You can trust me on this.

On another matter, how likely is it that the left halter cup would stay in position without support?  I'll let woman and clothing designers debate that.


But the unlikelihood of her top staying the way it is depicted  reminded me of James Lilek's humorous analysis of Art Frahm's illustrations: An Artistic Study of the Effects of Celery on Loose Elastic http://www.lileks.com/institute/frahm/). Frahm's illustrations featured shapely women experiencing catastrophic elastic failure in a public space resulting in underwear bunching at their feet. (The reference to celery is that most of the pictures had celery poking out of the woman's shopping bag.)

If you need a gentle laugh, James Lilek's blog, http://www.lileks.com.