• Architeuthis@awful.systems
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    5 months ago

    There’s an actual explanation in the original article about some of the wardrobe choices. It’s even dumber, and it involves effective altruism.

    It is a very cold home. It’s early March, and within 20 minutes of being here the tips of some of my fingers have turned white. This, they explain, is part of living their values: as effective altruists, they give everything they can spare to charity (their charities). “Any pointless indulgence, like heating the house in the winter, we try to avoid if we can find other solutions,” says Malcolm. This explains Simone’s clothing: her normal winterwear is cheap, high-quality snowsuits she buys online from Russia, but she can’t fit into them now, so she’s currently dressing in the clothes pregnant women wore in a time before central heating: a drawstring-necked chemise on top of warm underlayers, a thick black apron, and a modified corset she found on Etsy. She assures me she is not a tradwife. “I’m not dressing trad now because we’re into trad, because before I was dressing like a Russian Bond villain. We do what’s practical.”

    • deborah@awful.systems
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      5 months ago

      Yes and that’s obviously lies, as anyone who has grown up with limited income in a cold area can tell them. Cheap, warm clothing is not bought online (in the US) from Russia, and never from Etsy. In the US it’s bought — if you’re buying new at all! — from Target or Kohl’s or some other big chain. You get layers, you get things used when you can, and the cheapest way to dress warmly is the most normie, uninteresting clothes that are mass produced and sold in low end department stores.

      Nothing they describe is practical or cheap. It’s cosplay Kinder, Küche, Kirche, and the journalist repeated it verbatim because she’s a chump.

      • Valmond@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        But a tie is so cheap and keeps you warm!1!!.

        They reek evil impersonators who’ll try to rip people off. Rip vulnerable off.

        And I don’t even know who they are.

      • -dsr-@awful.systems
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        5 months ago

        Grew up in fairly rural upstate New York, where you can expect lots of snow and you can unironically envy neighbors who have working Franklin stoves when the power goes out.

        I can confirm all of the above, plus: if you are lucky enough to have an Army-Navy surplus store around, one of your handmedowns is likely to be an N3B parka. Definitely not Russian or German or stylish. But it will keep everything above your thighs warm, except your hands. The pockets are uninsulated.

        • deborah@awful.systems
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          5 months ago

          Oh man, I once bought the most glorious winter coat at an army-navy store. Lightweight, cheap, and so warm.

          Once I had money I discovered the glory of high-quality thermals, but if you don’t have money and live in a cold house, you try to keep at least one room warm with a lot of closed doors, plastic on the windows and draft stopper door snakes if the house is drafty, warm socks, layers. Nobody without money is buying pregnancy corsets from Etsy to stay warm, what the shit is that.

    • MBM@lemmings.world
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      5 months ago

      Warm clothes instead of heating is great, but they manage to subvert it in a very EA way. The way they talk about it sounds almost Calvinist. I wonder if they have some equivalent of the secret TV in the attic.

      • deborah@awful.systems
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        5 months ago

        There’s no reason to believe they live this way in reality. None of these profiles do any actual journalism. None of them investigate whether their claims about their childhood are true. This one doesn’t even talk to the neighbors who theoretically live next door for free (and do the unpaid childcare). This is stenography of neo-fash influencers self-described life and there’s no reason to believe any of it.