s0ph1sticated:

mattsvintage:

dailyreenactor:

s0ph1sticated:

dailyreenactor:

I’m working on a somewhat sarcastic post that’s titled “Things That Are More Authentic Than A Girl In Uniform”.

I have a long list myself, but if you’re a woman who has ever been told that you being in uniform is…

(This is rambly, so there’s a “tl;dr” at the end. Because I wouldn’t read this if it came up in my feed.)

I’m not totally opposed to this idea, actually. I’ve never done reenactments for eras more recent than the end of the 19th century, and my belief on women reenacting as American Revolutionary or Civil War soldiers, for example, is basically, Yes, women existed in these wars and posed as men, and that’s an important thing to portray. That being said, I never considered reenacting as a CW soldier because I didn’t want to cut my hair (among other reasons), and if I were going to portray a woman who is posing as a man well enough that her own brothers in arms didn’t notice, I’d have short hair. So for myself, at least, I kept it to the lines of “If there is documentation of a woman in that role, and it is believable, it’s ok”. If you can look out across a battlefield and see an hourglass-figured soldier with flowing locks, I’m a little more skeptical about the authenticity.

I guess my greater point would be that it depends on the unit you’re with. Yes, it’s true that living history isn’t all about “self-indulgent” fun, but that’s definitely part of it. Living history, reenacting, etc., isn’t an obligation we have to the public to educate them; it’s a hobby, something we do for fun. If it’s not fun for a woman to be a civilian, and she wants to portray a soldier, AND there is a unit that will allow her to (which is up to the unit and the event — if an event is closed to the public, how much does it matter?), she should have the right to portray who she wants to. I believe that there’s a line between “being as close to accurate as possible all the time” and “being an inclusive and fun hobby”. Different people and different groups fall in different places along that spectrum/line, and I think that’s kind of necessary.

tl;dr, I wouldn’t reenact as a female soldier in an era when it didn’t happen, even if I COULD pass as a man (which I totally can’t). But that’s my personal choice, and if there are regiments and events which want to allow it, I think they should be able to. The spectators know they aren’t watching the real thing, so it’s up to the organizers to decide how accurate they aim to be. imho.

Thank you for the input.

It might perhaps help with this debate to determine what is ‘Living History’, what is ‘Re-enactment’ and what is ‘Hobby’. The three seem to be very separate and all have different purposes. Living History, were I to define it, would be a duty to educate the public through demonstrating history in action, to the same academic standard as experimental archaeology, which it essentially shares a spot with.

‘Re-enactment’ would perhaps include events closed to the public. I’d still be a little iffy with it, however, not out of a desire to deny women a position - all support roles are critical and perhaps more important than those of the combat troops. There is still some form of duty to at least educate each other and to get it right - I, at least, find it hard to rationalise the idea that it can’t be seen that when we put on the uniforms of the past we do not also take on the roles, ideas and the information we have about the time that these people lived in. If we don’t strive for historical accuracy in all aspects of it the risk of both laziness and ‘dressing up’ comes into it.

Which is where I’ll meet the idea of ‘hobby’. I don’t especially like to think of re-enacting as my hobby - for me it’s more of a job, a job that I very much enjoy. It entails hard work, hours of research in as many books as one can find and button counting to the nth degree. The society I belong to was founded by a veteran - he stressed as often as possible that it is not a hobby where we simply have self-indulgent fun. Having fun is important, but that comes from enjoying the work. We are there to inform and educate and that is our duty to the past and to the memories of those men and women who did it for real. Simply dressing up as soldiers for a bit of fun for a weekend is pretentious and disrespectful - I’m afraid my views on that won’t change.

And within this remit, it is perhaps most important to start by portraying the generality of the time, to give a good idea. It cannot be denied that, despite documentation which I will not refute, women in combat roles were not the norm. This doesn’t prevent them from being discussed, explained and so on. If one assumes that some of the public attending are not completely keyed up on every aspect of the role portrayed, a general history should be presented first, then the niches.

To use an example, I have not modified my webbing or uniform to make it more comfortable or practical outside of British WW2 regulations, because I feel that it needs to be highly accurate to display the general living standards of the British soldier in 1943/44, including tents, sleeping gear, shaving equipment and eating utensils. I would feel that it would be wrong to do otherwise, even at private events. Men died in this sort of gear, fought and died, and it would be a disservice, both to them and current serving soldiers, to get a single aspect wrong.

This doesn’t mean I don’t have fun - I attend the dances, I have a drink down at the pub when off-duty and so on. It’s difficult to put all my thoughts on this down accurately, but I’d like to think I’m not being offensive - we re-enact through committment to memory of the veterans who we meet at events, not out of self-indulgence. Those promenaders who do… they don’t meet a warm reception, either from us or more importantly, from the veterans.