Blast from the Past ... Chelsea Pomeroy

[anjulibai]

I think I recall one of the girls getting some normal if very girly clothes from a relative and only wanting to wear them, and Chelsea being irritated the girl preferred those clothes. They were described as play clothes. I could be remembering wrong though.

[Melissa1977]

26 minutes ago, anjulibai said:

I think I recall one of the girls getting some normal if very girly clothes from a relative and only wanting to wear them, and Chelsea being irritated the girl preferred those clothes. They were described as play clothes. I could be remembering wrong though.

They wore normal clothes back in the day. Very girly, ruffled dresses, but could be labelled as normal. Slowly, she started to dress the girls like in 1900, first only for church, later for everyday. Now it's even weirder, because they only dress in blue. She's so crazy. The good thing is that the hairdos are softer now (in the past, they were terribly tight and I'm sure the girls had headaches and hair loss). Another good thing is that the 2 oldest wear different dresses than the 2 youngest. 

[Baxter]

Chelsea does seem like she's on a blue kick. Her interior decor is blue and white and that also is what the kids are dressed in now. I actually think the clothes are getting a bit boring and repetitive. For my own amusement, I would appreciate some other colors. 😆

[Melissa1977]

14 minutes ago, Baxter said:

Chelsea does seem like she's on a blue kick. Her interior decor is blue and white and that also is what the kids are dressed in now. I actually think the clothes are getting a bit boring and repetitive. For my own amusement, I would appreciate some other colors. 😆

She's like Josie Bates with the beige.

[anjulibai]

I thought she used to have more pink. I guess now that she has a boy, the only way all the kids can match and still have defines gender roles is dress all in blue.

[Baxter]

1 hour ago, anjulibai said:

I thought she used to have more pink. I guess now that she has a boy, the only way all the kids can match and still have defines gender roles is dress all in blue.

You're probably right because blue works well for boys although really there are many colors she could use with a boy 🙄.

[Ozlsn]

46 minutes ago, Baxter said:

You're probably right because blue works well for boys although really there are many colors she could use with a boy 🙄.

Honestly, even if you take out all the reds as being too close to pink, what's wrong with greens and yellows? Black? White.. ok, I see the problem here assuming they can run around in those clothes. Purple? 

Yellow is a "baby girl" colour in Saudi Arabia apparently - the nurse who mentioned it to me had her first baby while living there and her second in Australia and was really disappointed to find it was pink here!

[Bluebirdbluebell]

12 hours ago, Melissa1977 said:

It may be different in the US, but at least in Europe, fundie catholic go to acredited schools and encourage children to have careers in fields like medecine or law, and grifting is not an option, never ever. Girls included. It makes them better than baptist independent groups IMO.

Edit to add that I think it is better for the children, because they are prepared for the future and because women can have jobs, too. This said, it is dangerous for the society, because it means fundies in powerful positions in law.

Although I have known a few Catholic grifters in my day. Not everyone grifts and not everyone grifts in the same way. These people mostly grifted from her mother, but there were grifts too. Not everyone knew about it.

[JermajestyDuggar]

4 hours ago, Ozlsn said:

Honestly, even if you take out all the reds as being too close to pink, what's wrong with greens and yellows? Black? White.. ok, I see the problem here assuming they can run around in those clothes. Purple? 

Yellow is a "baby girl" colour in Saudi Arabia apparently - the nurse who mentioned it to me had her first baby while living there and her second in Australia and was really disappointed to find it was pink here!

That’s interesting. Pink is the baby girl color in so many places these days. I wonder if their are other countries with different colors for girls and boys besides pink and blue. 

[AliC]

Not to mention that in the US, long ago, the gender that colors were attached to was reversed and it was pink for boys and blue for girls. Plus from around the mid-16th century until the late 19th or early 20th century both baby boys and baby girls wore dresses since they made for easier diaper changes. The boys would wear dresses till anywhere from age two to eight, presumably at any point when the young boy could figure out how to work the fastenings on breeches or trousers from back then, and thus the process of transitioning them out of dresses was called "breeching". 

There's a more in-depth article on Wikipedia right here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeching_(boys) 

As much as I have to side-eye the transition to wearing just white and blue that I'm sure very much correlates with George's birth, I feel an odd sense of relief knowing that George is dressed to the nines on the daily just like his big sisters. I was afraid that as the only boy, he'd have the privilege of not being in fancy clothes all the time (though considering that Chelsea has actually referred to him as Little Lord Pomeroy, should I really expect him to be exempt?). I'm also happy to see that the girls aren't having to wear their curls so tightly anymore and that the two oldest are being allowed to dress in styles that are more mature but still coordinate with the younger kids.

[KnittingOwl]

16 hours ago, Pecansforeveryone said:

Ted Cruz is a Princeton graduate. Not all fundies shun secular higher education. They may be the most dangerous as a result. 

Agreed. I always think of Stephen Hammer. I think he has political aspirations, and marrying Meredith was part of that plan. 

[Melissa1977]

I wonder if *Lord* (WTF????) George Pomeroy will be the last kid or Chelsea will keep having children. 2 girls are still young, but at some point she will be short of live-dolls to dress. Maybe she hopes to marry her eldest at 18 in order to have a bunch of grandchildren to dress up. I predict George will be dressed normal (groomed, but posh-average) at 4 or 5 years old. They clearly want a manly boy (at 1 year old, his only toys are cars, cars and cars) and past the toddlerhood, a boy with ruffled clothes looks femenine, which I'm sure will make Pomeroys too nervous.

[anachronistic]

The more you look the more you wonder.

- what’s with those weird, thick headband/half bonnet things? Does anyone else think they look like pads decorated with lace? They are the exact shape. 
- how does everything get monogrammed? And if everything is monogrammed does that mean the kids can’t do hand me downs?

- I still love the smocking. Love love love it. But it’s just so infantile. On a five year old it looks young. On a ten year old it looks really, really weird.

- knee socks? knee socks with bows on the side? Ive never seen those on any kid. Maybe it’s a southern thing? Little girls wear tights, leggings or ankle socks with dresses, but I’ve only ever seen knee socks with school uniforms, and honestly, never on boys.

It’s really clear that the eldest, Mary Grace, is the Most Perfect Child, who is always smiling and posing perfectly in literally every picture - it’s a little eerie. She worries a lot about seemingly everything. Abigail seems to vocally dislike the clothing she’s forced into and until a year or two definitely complained about it, but I guess now that she’s older she’s learned to toe the line. Not much to say about Jane Claire, she kind of gets lost in the middle. Poor Charlotte was a chubby baby and Chelsea posted about it *constantly*, how she’d need to be put on a diet, how big she was compared to the others, etc. She also seems to have a fire in her that her oldest sister lacks. It will be a total miracle if any of those girls get to 18 without some sort of body dysmorphia or eating disorder.

And George is perfect. Except when he’s mistaken for a girl, which is a tragedy. Because Chelsea seems to have missed the part where little kids these days do *not wear bonnets*, unless they are Amish or something. Seriously wtf is with the bonnets. The kids wear them till 3-4. I guess that’s when their hair is long enough to style?

I’m trying to think of any kid I know being forced into wearing something that they hate. Life jackets, yes. Casts and body jackets (for back problems, like a removable cast thing), foot orthotics, helmets for medical necessity. Onesies so they don’t access their own diapers. That’s literally it. I’ve seen kids bribed into wearing something nice for very special occasions- Easter, weddings - but that’s it. Kids clothing today can be both very comfortable and very nice looking. When I was a kid in the 80’s /early 90s I remember being forced to wear some very hideous taffeta monstrosities with lace collars, Laura Ashley, etc. Thankfully styles changed. Did Chelsea never realize it’s 2021, not 1901?
 

For the sake of my eyes I hope she goes private again because I still can’t stop looking, darn it!

[Melissa1977]

38 minutes ago, anachronistic said:

knee socks? knee socks with bows on the side? Ive never seen those on any kid. Maybe it’s a southern thing? Little girls wear tights, leggings or ankle socks with dresses, but I’ve only ever seen knee socks with school uniforms, and honestly, never on boys

Knee socks were very popular in 1960's-70's with short skirts. Nowadays can be seen in classical outfits for children ("average" classical, like the Windsor children style.... Wekl, not sure if Windsords wear those socks, but I have seen them in children who dress like them).

Edited August 15, 2021 by Melissa1977
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[AliC]

2 hours ago, anachronistic said:

knee socks with bows on the side?

Huh, now there's a detail I missed. I've only ever seen knee socks with bows in fashion genres like classic or sweet lolita where the emphasis is on mega frilly and feminine (and usually ever only worn by teens or adults). On regular children's dress-up brands in the US, like Strasburg Children, the girls are usually depicted wearing just tights or sometimes those ankle socks with lace around the cuff. If it's a modesty issue like I suspect, why not just put them in tights?

Speaking of Strasburg Children, one reason that they were so popular as a brand for children's formal wear was because all of their stuff is sewn with French seams, which is done by sewing the wrong sides of the fabric together (normally you would sew the right sides together), clipping the seam to be very narrow and then folding it inside the garment and sewing over it to encase it. It makes the garment much more comfortable to wear since just about all scratchiness from the seams are eliminated and it's a technique I hope to master when I get around to making formal wear. Someone needs to alert Chelsea to possibly search for clothing with French seams if she plans to keep treating every day like picture day!

[postscript]

3 hours ago, anachronistic said:

 

It’s really clear that the eldest, Mary Grace, is the Most Perfect Child, who is always smiling and posing perfectly in literally every picture - it’s a little eerie. She worries a lot about seemingly everything. 

Back when the sister’s Instagram was public, I thought that about her oldest (Olivia Kate?). She always wore a worried expression, and it looked like there was a lot of pressure put on her as the oldest. 

Knee socks were very popular when I was a kid, back in the late 60s-early 70s. The Brady Bunch girls wore them a lot, and so did I. No bows, though. My mother told stories about hating it when her mother made her wear knee socks when she was a kid in the 40s, and I’m sure she must have suffered when I expressed my disdain for ankle socks. 

[Caroline]

5 hours ago, anachronistic said:

Thankfully styles changed. Did Chelsea never realize it’s 2021, not 1901?

I caught the end of that movie about the family in Saint Louis at the turn of the century (Judy Garland and Margaret O'Brien are in it - can't remember its name) and there was a scene where all of the women and girls were dressed like Chelsea's kids - except it was a movie and the COSTUMES were appropriate to that time period.

Until my daughter was five or six I always bought her a special dress for Christmas and Easter (usually with smocking because it's adorable on little girls).  When she started school she got to choose, within reason, what she wanted to wear to dress up or just every day.  She did go to school with a little girl whose mother was a little over the top with her daughter's clothing styles.  The poor kid wore only dresses and  out-sized bows until about the fifth grade, when she finally put her foot down and refused to wear them.  They weren't Fundies, but the mom was and is a serious show-off.

It seems like so many Fundies are so controlling about the stupidest and most personal things.  Chelsea's children look ridiculous, and I agree that there are likely to be some big flare-ups down the road - especially from Little Lord Fauntleroy.  

[Ozlsn]

9 hours ago, Melissa1977 said:

They clearly want a manly boy (at 1 year old, his only toys are cars, cars and cars)

That is so sad. Trying to remember what my child had at that age, and it was musical stuff, cars, dolls, things that flashed/made a noise. Just cars sounds so sad, even if some make a noise and light up when you hit them.

And I've started to wonder if all the hullabaloo fundies make over "they're teaching our kids to be gay!!" comes directly from the amount of effort they put into to try and keep them in the narrowest gender roles possible.

[anachronistic]

Did anyone else notice that baby George’s initials appear to be GOP? I wonder what the O is for?

GOP. That’s got to be deliberate, right? 
(MY baby is a better Republican than YOUR baby na na na na boo boo)

[0 kids n not countin]

Whenever I see Alyssa Webster's posts of her and her daughters all dressed alike, Chelsea's Instagram is the first thing that comes to my mind!!🤦‍♀️🤷‍♀️😅

[usmcmom]

2 hours ago, anachronistic said:

Did anyone else notice that baby George’s initials appear to be GOP? I wonder what the O is for?

GOP. That’s got to be deliberate, right? 
(MY baby is a better Republican than YOUR baby na na na na boo boo)

I think the O is for Oliver.  I remember the birth announcement and I THINK he has another middle name too. 

Edit - Yes. I just checked. His name is George Oliver Theodore. Also, I think those girls have worn blue since the day he was born. 

Edited August 16, 2021 by usmcmom
Added thought

[Letgo]

Wow, that mom sure does like blue! Is this family independently wealthy? Those matching outfits have to cost a fortune. They're so over the top! I can't imagine the time that woman spends ironing all those dresses, jackets, bows, etc., plus the time it takes to do their hair. How can it possibly be worth it? What is going to happen when one or more of those girls decides to have her own opinion about her clothing and hair?

[Ali]

33 minutes ago, Letgo said:

Wow, that mom sure does like blue! Is this family independently wealthy? Those matching outfits have to cost a fortune. They're so over the top! I can't imagine the time that woman spends ironing all those dresses, jackets, bows, etc., plus the time it takes to do their hair. How can it possibly be worth it? What is going to happen when one or more of those girls decides to have her own opinion about her clothing and hair?

The obsession with blue started when Little Lord Pomeroy was born.

[KnittingOwl]

Looks like she deleted that account. I’m getting a “user not found error” which isn’t what I get if I don’t have permission to see. Unless she blocked me?

 

ETA: I think she just blocked me. I probably liked something as I was browsing through. I bump things all the time on accident. 

Edited August 16, 2021 by KnittingOwl
Added correct information

[danvillebelle]

Practically every third post is about how long it takes them to get out the door.  Gee, I wonder why that is? 🙄

She dressed them in mostly white, monogrammed, themed outfits to go pick strawberries.  In the sun and the dirt.  In Arkansas.  

Edited August 16, 2021 by danvillebelle