BETTY PAGE E TEMPEST STORM

TRANSFORMATION D'UNE BOURGEOISE - 3

CHAPTER 1
My husband left me!! I simply can not believe it! It finally happened
and it happened just like that. Yesterday he announced to me that he had
an affair with a nurse (how banal, Mon Dieu!) working in his clinic and
they were moving out of the country to start new parallel careers in an
exclusive private clinic in Milan, Italy! I simply cannot believe it,
my husband decided to leave his beloved Paris for an Italian city, even
if that is Milan? Later I understood that this was planned well ahead and
it was me in my notorious innocence and naivety that didn't pick anything.
He packed a suitcase of clothes and personal things in a haste and left
yesterday evening directly for the airport, they had a late flight to
catch. He said that He didn't need anything else from the house which
belonged to me anyway, through family inheritence. But in a goodwill
gesture, as he said, he left everything that we bought together for the
house the five years we stayed together.
We parted as friends without unnecessary scenes, we both were low key
people and we didn't like screams and abuses. He even managed to convince
me that he wasn't good enough for me, he wasn't the type of man I needed
etc. Probably he had a point. I really don't know. Of course after he
was gone a terribe emptiness overtook me and I started crying bitterly
on my own. It took me some time to calm down and only after I took a
sleeping tablet I was able to go into a deep dreamless sleep.
I opened my eyes quite late the next day, it was past ten in the morning
and I could hear the familiar noise of the vacuum cleaner from the floor
below. God I forgot! It was Monique our Portuguese cleaning lady. I felt
uneasy I had to explain to her what happened. She was coming to the house
3 times a week and we were quite happy with her. All of sudden the feeling
of emptiness came back to me. I was still thinking in terms of WE, but
I was alone now! Tears started coming up tp my eyes and I desperately
tried to control myself.
Soon I was in the dining room where usually breakfast was served when
Monique was around. She saw me and I must have looked quite a sight
because she stopped what she was doing and came towards me, a concerned
look in her face. She looked very neat in her light blue overall dress
and her matching bib apron and head scarf. I was a firm believer that
a domestic in the house should look the part, nothing fancy, just a
practical maid's uniform.
(3-a suivre)

TRANSFORMATION D'UNE BOURGEOISE - 2

So the term Portuguese maid/housekeeper or 'femme de menage Portugaise'
was synonymous to a poor backwards peasant girl or woman often illiterate,
coming form the rural areas of Portugal to work in the sophisticated
Paris. The rich bourgeois Parisians had the tendency of course to look
down on them.

At the time they were lots of specialized shops in those rich Parisian
suberbs, selling 'domestic workwear' for those in live in service. Those
shops were called 'blouses et tabliers boutiques' (overalls and aprons
shops).

In today's Paris, as elsewhere in the western world live in maids are a
rarity. Portuguese women are rich and elegant an go to Paris for their
shopping and the 'blouses et tabliers boutiques' are nearly gone.
(2-a suivre)

TRANSFORMATION D'UNE BOURGEOISE - 1

© 2005, Drawing by Eneg, colors by Monika Rubbermaid

TRANSFORMATION D'UNE BOURGEOISE
by Conchita

translated from French and adapted by Monica

Translators Note

The story is happening in Paris of the early 1970s and could be based
on real facts. At the time Portugal was still a very poor country and
not a member of the European Union. Lots of poor girls and married
women were coming from there to work in France as factory workers,
cleaners and maids. Many of those girls were working as live in maids
in many Parisian bourgeois houses or apartments. If they were working in
apartments they had there own separate rooms at the top of the building,
usually in the 6th floor, at what was called 'la chambre de bonne' (maid's
room). Of course there was no elevator in those buildings of the late
19th century and the maids were going down from the back service stairs
to the kitchen door of the apartment they were working. They were not
allowed to use the font entrance of the building even when they were out
of uniform and not on duty. For them there was the back or side service
entrace to come and go, the same way that the garbage was coming down as
well. All those apartment buildings had there own live in concierge who
had a little place to stay either by the entrance or in the basement. The
concierge was usually the 'terror' of all live in maids because she was
checking on them all the time, reporting back to their employers.

(1-a suivre)

Thorsten 3

© Thorsten, German Artist

Thorsten 2

© Thorsten, German Artist

Thorsten 1

© Thorsten, German Artist

contadina

Farm Girls

Il calendario delle Farm Girls tedesche edizione 2008 vuole essere un omaggio a tutte le giovani ragazze che sono occupate nell' agricoltura in Germania e Austria (Foto di Christof Stache/Ap)

guanti di gomma

il rumore, l'odore il colore dei guanti di gomma

Chiara

Chiara è un'artista che si reinventa ogni volta sotto una forma merceologica "simil-barbie", con tanto di foto, costumi, blister, accessori e merchandising vario. Eccola in versione "casalinga- domestica".

Frank Clarke, 1905

"Four maids laughing", Frank Clarke, 1905
da "Victorian Working Women: Portraits from Life", Michael Hiley, Gordon Fraser, 1979

donne di fatica vittoriane 1

"Pit Brown Woman, 1886"
da "Victorian Working Women: Portraits from Life", Michael Hiley, Gordon Fraser, 1979.

Lavandare

LAVANDARE
(Giovanni Pascoli)

Nel campo mezzo grigio e mezzo nero
resta un aratro senza buoi che pare
dimenticato, tra il vapor leggero.

E cadenzato dalla gora viene
lo sciabordare delle lavandare
con tonfi spessi e lunghe cantilene:

Il vento soffia e nevica la frasca,
e tu non torni ancora al tuo paese!
quando partisti, come son rimasta!
come l’aratro in mezzo alla maggese

Magdalene Laundries: il libro

La copertina del libro che ha ispirato il film "Magdalene Laundries": women at domestic hard labor in apron.

hard working woman

you can smell her sweat scent

desperate housewife

instant karma!

Instant Karma is gonna get you...

macellaia

la macellaia con la collana e i braccialetti, il grembiule di gomma e il fazzoletto in testa

le sorelle Papin

le "dangerous maids" che ispirarono a Jean Genet "Le serve".

scuola di domestiche

Monika

mi piacciono molto i grembiuli di gomma bianca, quelli pesanti che quando ti muovi creano una sinfonia crepitante di suoni al caucciù. Mi piace il loro odore:li indosso sempre per lavorare, preferibilmente su una divisa di cotone azzurro, o su una vecchia camicia dello stesso colore.
Monika

il blog di monika

questo è un blog per tutte le donne che lavorano, per le domestiche, per gli artisti che ritraggono le domestiche, per le domestiche che si sentono artiste, per quelle che lo sono, per le donne che hanno delle domestiche, per le artiste che hanno delle domestiche, per le domestiche artiste.
Monika