Pirate Fest
Greg Harder
We have to start in the early 16th century, when certain bold swordsmen carried a small, light, round shield called a buckler. They hardly deserve to be called shields; they were maybe ten to fifteen inches in diameter, held in the fist rather than hung on your arm — completely useless against arrows or in any sort of mass combat. Bucklers weren’t meant to catch a heavy swordblow, but to turn one aside.
A heavy swordblow, by the way, was called a swash. The men who fought with these small shields were known as swashbucklers, and that term became synonymous for a certain bold, cocky, highly improvisational, kiss-my-ass style of fighting. Bucklers, it should be noted, were particularly popular among pirates.
And that brings me to this photograph. Our modern culture has, for a long time, been telling certain women they aren’t to be considered attractive, they aren’t to be considered sexy, they aren’t even to be considered feminine. The women in this photograph have the sort of piratical, swashbuckling, kiss-my-ass attitude that proves modern culture wrong. These women aren’t taking any swash from modern culture; they’re just turning that crap aside.
Blog photograph copyrighted to the photographer and used with permission by utata.org. All photographs used on utata.org are stored on flickr.com and are obtained via the flickr API. Text is copyrighted to the author, greg fallis and is used with permission by utata.org. Please see Show and Share Your Work
