As regular Confabulous readers know, we’re big fans of posting interesting, weird, funny historical images of women–stuff that highlights the social construction of femininity (or, in one of my favourites, of motherhood). But I got a note recently from John Ptak, the guy behind the fascinating Ptak Science Books blog. We landed on John’s radar because of an image from his site that we used a while back. He knows our readers are smart, savvy women and men, and he’s got a question for you about the image up above, there:
“By virtue of having an antiquarian map store I’ve seen many hundreds of thousands of images–probably millions, I don’t know–and the one in this post has given me considerable pause. It is relatively recent (1920’s) and shows a woman pointing a gun while committing robbery (of cigarettes), and I just can’t think of ever having seen an image of a woman pointing a gun while committing a crime. I’d be *very* curious if any of your readers knew otherwise. I pay attention to the images of women as advertising vehicles, and this one seems pretty striking to me.”
So, readers? Any idea about this slightly obscure but fascinating bit of visual culture? Here’s a larger version of the image we’re talking about:
Confabulous badges!
