There's a rather famous story of man who, during World War II, suggested that looking at the wings of the planes that survived, and armoring the least damaged areas, would increase the likelihood of more planes surviving.
The man's name was Abraham Wald, a statistician with the Columbia University's Statistical Research Group. And he rightfully noticed the military was only taking into account the planes that survived, not the ones who had been tragically lost. He reasoned that because they'd been shot down, accurate assessments couldn't be made- but that the holes on returning aircraft were most likely to represent areas planes were provably capable of sustaining heavy damage. The undamaged areas were those where planes were weakest, then, and should therefore be armored instead.
This is easily one of the most classical examples of a very real problem that affects every aspect of historical record and stewardship: Survivorship Bias- or the penchant of drawing definitive conclusions only from surviving extants, without consideration for those extants which did not survive. And of course, because Survivorship Bias only looks at what survived (and never at what didn't) it can lead to an incredibly narrow and frequently incorrect idea about what was, and wasn't, true for any particular era or group of people.
As far as "biases and logical errors which ruin our perception of history" are concerned, survivorship bias isn't alone. There are a lot of things we have to take into account when examining the past- and False nostalgia and romanticism are two additional ones that cause problems in this instance.
⚶ What's the Problem Here ⚶
If survivorship bias focuses on what survives in a way that creates a false perception of how things were- then false nostalgia creates a sort of melancholic yearning for what we believe was. Both allow us to romanticize things all too easily- turning it into a hyper idealized version of itself that never existed; instead of being honest about the realities of the past, they blatantly ignore and erase the negatives and all the associated complexities- and they do so in favor of uplifting a false, hyper simplistic, and overly positive image.
They're related problems that tend to compound one another, contributing significantly to inaccuracies surrounding perceptions of the bygone as we to look back on it- whether that was just 5 years ago, or 50, or even 200 or more. And with plenty of psychological distance between them and ourselves, it becomes even easier to warp or rewrite the narrative, allowing us to continue perpetuating these inaccuracies fairly easily, and with virtual impunity. The result is often a portrayal of something as far better than it actually was, to the point where what we imagine things were like ends up about as different from the reality as a frog from an albatross.
This is seen fairly evidently (as most historical things surprisingly are) in regards to fashion- such as when we see more 50's evening dresses for sale 70 years later than we do house dresses... But it's not that everyone walked around in evening wear every day. It's that items of the working class and below are far less likely to survive than those of the middle class and gentry, and evening wear far more likely than day wear- and day wear more likely than labor garments. And unfortunately that makes it very easy to look at the surviving garments and think everyone walked around looking like that daily. That these garments represent the total sum, when in reality they represent nothing but the barest snapshot of a singular class of people at their best.
But what does any of this have to do with Homemaking? Seems a bit out of place, doesn't it? I promise you it's not, however; over the course of this blog, you'll notice me calling old Homemaking manuals things like "Exempla" or "Exemplum", and talking about something called the "Exemplar" a lot... And there's a reason for that. That reason is, as you can probably guess by now, closely related to the concepts of romanticism, false nostalgia, and survivorship bias.
We need to have a conversation about this as more people call themselves "vintage homemakers", or seek to incorporate some imagined vintage elements into their "traditional" femininity and homemaking... Especially with the rise of the "50's Housewife Challenge" participated in by the likes of everyone from Jen But Never Jen, to The DIY Pinup, Life at Blueberry Barn, Emily Regan Writes, and vintage favorites like Sweet Emelyne; honestly, plug anything like "A Day in the life of a 1950s Housewife" or "1950 Housewife challenge" into a search engine at this point, and the list of returns is utterly exhausting.
There's a major problem in this trend, though- especially when people keep idealizing the monstrosity that is "The Good Wife's Guide"- worse when they participate in challenges such as these using it as a source despite its discrediting, or treating it as fact (or at least "factually accurate")... And it's largely that no one understands what these books are, what they mean, and how to properly use them- let alone what they represent. Because they don't understand these surviving books themselves, likewise, don't depict everyday life with accuracy, insomuch as they outline the Exemplar.
⚶ What are Exempla ⚶
Exempla come in a variety of related forms. But in this particular usage, Exemplum a class of literature that falls into the category of moral tale. And like all moral tales, they deal with values, and ethics, and, you guessed it, morals; their entire purpose is typically to illustrate various points of social ideology or doctrine of the culture who created them, at the time they were created.
Exempla typically focuses on or uses an Exemplar- or a person, object, or other thing which serves itself to represent the epitomical embodiment of a particular social idea or expectation; a person who acts as the predominant example of a given concept or ideology, or the most ideal image or outcome, if all social expectations within the tale were possibly adhered to.
Such Exempla are most commonly what we're familiar with calling fairy or folk fables. The Frau Holle tales are, in my opinion, some of the very best examples of these tales- having representations both of the Exemplar and her opposite. What most people don't realize, however, is that the various propaganda and literature surrounding homemaking, beauty, etiquette, and similar topics are also (or at least can be) a form of Exempla in their own rights- the most famous of which may be Le Ménagier de Paris, or The Parisian Household Book.
More importantly, Exempla are susceptible to the same kind of survivorship bias as anything else in the historical record. In fact, I'd argue that in regards to daily life and homemaking, the survivorship bias is even worse because it gets further compounded by false nostalgia and romanticism; at least with fashion we can conceptually understand the purpose of evening wear versus day wear, and no one is actually harmed if we mistakenly draw conclusions about most elements of fashion... But it seems we're unable to recognize the difference between fantasy and reality in terms of media, especially when psychological distance comes into play.
⚶ The Point ⚶
How many of you knew, before this very moment, that Emily Post, one of perhaps the most famous Etiquette authors in modern history, was still producing updated volumes of their etiquette manuals for the modern day? Now, how many have actually picked up and read the most recent edition of an Emily Post Etiquette Manual? More importantly, how many people do you know who practice it word for word without any deviation? I did... I have... And I know I definitely don't; I'm sure there might be one or two people on the planet, but they're outliers. They're not the norm, they're far from it.
Much the same way- and like the 1950's evening gown- the images upheld in these books aren't a true or accurate representation of the everyday ordinary. They're not, say, an accurate representation of your typical 1950's Housewife who everyone seems to be obsessed with. They're the epitomical representations of something else entirely: The perfect middle class white achievement if everything was done perfectly.
There are always threads of truth. Little bits of similarities. Social expectations are, after all, social expectations. But they're nothing more than an ideal to strive for- rarely, if ever, the reality itself; as I've sad before, and countless times in my life, hardly anyone actually lived like that day in and day out. It was hardly sustainable, though outliers sometimes managed to do so.
In many cases, though, we can't- or worse, outright refuse- to remove the rose colored glasses and see the reality of these things, whenever we view them through a modern lens. Which in turn, warps and twists our perception of them... But while Exempla do still provide incredibly valuable historical information about the eras that they were written in? We can't pretend they're anything other than they are; we can't give in to the romanticism and survivorship bias of another form, and gallivant around pretending that these show a reality they certainly never did.
For an audio transcript of this post, you can now listen on Youtube!