I wonder what happened to the concept of women fainting. Not fainting as in they have some sort of medical problem that derives them of blood-sugar or something, but rather fainting as a response to a particularly vile social situation. Like being the victim of an old flasher in a raincoat.
According to my knowledge of history, which comes from 18th century woodcuts, black and white movies and old copies of 'Mad Magazine', there was a period somewhat prior to the sexual revolutions where women were delicate flowers and subjection to any extreme stimuli would cause them to faint away. In fact for a while I thought the sole reason a flasher would run around in raincoats and flash women was to GET them to faint. If a flasher caused a woman to faint, well, then he won that round. It was not until later in life that I realized most flashers expose themselves for sexual gratification and not simply entertaining shock value. However, I am talking about fainting, not flashers.
So, a woman would be strolling along in her petticoats, and a flasher would step out off an alley and show off his goods. The woman would peer down, her eyes would widen, and she might utter something like 'Oh dear, I do believe I have a case of the vapors' and then would delicately crumple into a heap. I am pretty sure most people are aware of the concept of this scenario.
Now what raises questions in my mind is weather the fainting was an actual physical response or if it was a conditioned reaction that was considered culturally acceptable. If a proper young woman sees a wiener, they are supposed to faint. That is what cultural etiquette tells you. She might not have actually fainted, but she gracefully closed her eyes and crumpled to a heap like you are supposed to. However, if it was an actual physical response brought on by cultural etiquette then, well, that is interesting. That is akin to those bush-Africans who actually believe that the voodoo priest put a curse on him and they just lie down and die.
Anyways
Women don't faint at the sight of wieners anymore. At least I am pretty sure. I supposed there could be some mousy librarian women or something out there that would still faint at the sight of a wiener. However in an age where 'dancing' consists of strange men positioning themselves behind women and spasmodically rubbing the fabric of their crotch against a woman's posterior to the beat of electronically generated music, I doubt there is much room left in this world for delicate fainting.
Firing up the time machine for January 16, 2007, when Ed was doing deeply questionable research on fainting and flashers.
Ah, 2007. The year a man could publicly wonder whether women once fainted at the sight of a flasher and illustrate the thought with two random links to suspicious JPEGs. The internet was a place where you clicked anything, and Ed treated the question like a demented anthropology paper: woodcuts, old movies, Mad Magazine, and the deeply questionable evidence of dogsinthenews.com. In 2026, nobody clicks a mystery image URL, and the raincoat gentleman would be filmed on a doorbell camera and uploaded before he finished his little reveal. Fainting as etiquette has evaporated, too; we don't have the vapors, we have 'I need to set a boundary' and a therapy bill. And the dance floor he sneers at has mostly migrated into phones, where people swipe instead of grinding, and if anyone flashes anything, it's usually a subscription request. The mystery isn't whether women faint anymore—it's how any of us survived an era when a man could casually cite a flasher photo as academic evidence.
“2007 Ed, why did you include two separate links to pictures of flashers in a musing about fainting? Were the visual aids essential to your anthropology of the vapors, or were you just seeing how much weird JPEG the early internet would tolerate?” — Beelzebubba the Third
2007 Ed: Well, Beelzebubba, you got me there. I reckon the honest answer is: both. I had this whole grand notion that a proper anthropology of the vapors needed visual aids, like I was some kinda professor of delicate wiener-fainting, and I figured one link proved it was a real thing and two links proved I was serious. But yeah, mostly I was just tickled that the internet had actual flasher pictures sitting around free to grab, and I wanted to see if I could sneak two of them into a post about ladies fainting. It felt very daring, like I was a rebel with a DSL connection. Also, I have no clue what a normal person would use for a visual aid there, so I just grabbed the first weird JPEGs that fit. The early internet tolerates anything if you type fast enough and squint. Take that, foul flashers.
