So the Museum of Science and Industry, yes. Very nice, good exhibits, the Lego artist had an exhibition, very groovy. There's the stuff you would expect, maritime, land, air transportation exhibits (including an old electric Ford from the early 20th century. All very well. Until...
https://www.msichicago.org/explore/whats-here/exhibits/colleen-moores-fairy-castle/
What is a fairy castle doing here?
Walked in, and there's all these fascinated, I mean totally rapt, women (2) and children (3, female from a cisgender phenotypical view; I did not speak with them, and even so, there would have been no way to ask, obviously. Not just because it is a random and invasive curiosity that I never had until I started writing these words here. Also, because this is the question—and the issue—of identification: I cannot ask, and no one else can, and no one else can tell, and neither will I).
And there was a total antifeminist JOKE of a voiceover. I caught, "in the attic while she waits for the Prince."
That was enough for me. I don't use foul language around my child, but I said, loudly, to the people there, "Ok, my child, so this is the place where you can see all the bullshit you don't need to have when you're a grown woman."
It's such a ridiculously obvious trope to pick up: in the Museum of Science and Industry, there is a fairy castle donated by an actor. Sure, there is the advertising blurb, it is a marvel of designing big things at small scale, but please. It looks way too much like a place—so 1940s—telling women their place in a place that is all about phallocentric science and its use for applications that move human potential forward, AND make lots of Profit. Women, buy the stuff science and industry has made, while you wait for the prince in the attic. FFS.
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