{"id":53903,"date":"2013-02-14T12:00:02","date_gmt":"2013-02-14T17:00:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=53903"},"modified":"2013-10-31T04:33:15","modified_gmt":"2013-10-31T09:33:15","slug":"a-vinegar-tradition-happy-valentines-day-i-hate-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2013\/02\/14\/a-vinegar-tradition-happy-valentines-day-i-hate-you\/","title":{"rendered":"A Vinegar Tradition: Happy Valentine’s Day, I Hate You"},"content":{"rendered":"

For 100 years Valentine’s Day was not only associated with sweet sentiments, but was an occasion to send a cruel and biting message to someone you didn’t like. \u00a0These cards — called “vinegar valentines” — were popular from 1840 to 1940 in both America and the U.K.<\/p>\n

\"1\"<\/a>Annebella Pollen<\/a>, an art and design historian who talks about the valentine’s at Collector’s Weekly<\/a>, explains that there was a valentine for many types of people and occasions:<\/p>\n

\u00a0You could send them to your neighbors, friends, or enemies. You could send them to your schoolteacher, your boss, or people whose advances you wanted to dismiss. You could send them to people you thought were too ugly or fat, who drank too much, or people acting above their station. There was a card for pretty much every social ailment.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"2\"<\/a>\"3\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Pollen insists that people did send them to one another, albeit anonymously, and they were not meant to be jokes. Instead, they were meant to say:\u00a0\u201cYour behavior is unacceptable.\u201d \u00a0For much of the 1800s there was no such thing as a pre-paid stamp, so the person who got the mail paid for it, so often they were forced to buy their own insults, a twist of the knife from the sender.<\/p>\n

\"4\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Many, many more vinegar valentine’s at Collector’s Weekly<\/a>, where I also stole this great title. \u00a0Via BoingBoing<\/a>.<\/p>\nLisa Wade, PhD<\/a> is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of <\/em>American Hookup<\/a>, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender<\/a>; and a forthcoming introductory text: <\/em>Terrible Magnificent Sociology<\/a>.\u00a0You can follow her on Twitter<\/a> and Instagram<\/a>.<\/em><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For 100 years Valentine’s Day was not only associated with sweet sentiments, but was an occasion to send a cruel and biting message to someone you didn’t like. \u00a0These cards — called “vinegar valentines” — were popular from 1840 to 1940 in both America and the U.K. Annebella Pollen, an art and design historian who […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[15,387,329,253,254,272,1811,3920,23705,76],"class_list":["post-53903","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-culture","tag-dating","tag-emotion","tag-history","tag-holidays","tag-marriagefamily","tag-nation-britainthe-u-k","tag-nation-united-states","tag-vintage-stuff","tag-work"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53903","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53903"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53903\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53910,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53903\/revisions\/53910"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53903"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53903"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53903"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}