“
Trauma impels people both to withdraw from close relationships and to seek them desperately. The profound disruption in basic trust, the common feelings of shame, guilt, and inferiority, and the need to avoid reminders of the trauma that might be found in social life, all foster withdrawal from close relationships. But the terror of the traumatic event intensifies the need for protective attachments. The traumatized person therefore frequently alternates between isolation and anxious clinging to others. […] It results in the formation of intense, unstable relationships that fluctuate between extremes.
— Judith Herman in Trauma and Recovery
Russia’s Little Girls
“The Moscow Girls’ Cadet Boarding School is one of the new elite military academies in Russia. While most kids hate school for boring maths or history, the classes here include stripping down an AK-47 Kalashnikov rifle. And the girls can do it in the time it takes most kids to send an SMS. With a curriculum that includes drill, arms, first aid and federal law, one might expect it to turn into little Amazons. But femininity is also highly valued, so the evenings are reserved for such activities as sewing, ballet and compulsory choir practice. There are no mini-skirts and swear words, no smoking and drinking, and no hanging about unattended. Mobile phones are also banned except for a few minutes a day to talk with parents. A traditional Russian Winter Ball gives the girls a rare chance to meet the opposite sex, in this case from a nearby all-male boarding school boarding school called Moscow Cossacks Cadet Corps - another military-style academy founded during the Putin years.”
same
Interior of designer Richard Spencer’s home, 1950
from Los Angeles. Portrait of a City
Flora, by Ron van Dongen
A photo from 1955 of Princess Yvonne and Prince Alexander of Sayn-Wittgenstein-Sayn in Germany, by Princess Marianne (1955)
Studies of a Fox (1669-71) by Pieter Boel
Oil on canvas
Musée du Louvre, Paris
