My favorite thing about this is that Dottie is getting fucking object concealment tips from these genius food-stealing women and she’s probably using that knowledge to hide idek small thermonuclear devices in her bra or something. Probably went back to the Red Room afterward like “omg girls let me teach you what I learned in America. It’s vital we teach our tiny assassins to knit, I met a woman who successfully concealed a whole chicken in her sweater, they’ll need this kind of ingenuity in the field.”
I also really love that this is a large group of women who unabashedly like food and eating. None of them are going “oh no my diet, what if I get fat?”, they’re like “I CAN FIT A CHICKEN IN MY SWEATER AND THEN LATER, I HAVE A WHOLE CHICKEN FOR ME.”
I’ve reblogged this before and seen it at least a dozen times, but every time I see “AND THEN LATER, I HAVE A WHOLE CHICKEN FOR ME.” I start ugly laughing and can’t stop and frighten the dog.
Remember that these women grew up during the depression. A lot of them probably learned food hoarding tactics because they never knew when their next meal was going to be. So yeah, if you have the chance to shove an entire chicken in your sweater so later, when there is suddenly *no food*? You’re gonna take it.
Also, Peggy is British. She’s shocked and a little appalled at these food-stealing women, because Britain had such heavy rationing during the war.
British rationing did not end until 1954 (that’s still 8 years away from the time this scene takes place). Rations applied to all food staples, soap, clothing, fuel, and paper. In some cases, they became worse or more stringent after the war. In 1946, when this story takes place, Britain instituted bread rationing for the first time, food packages weighing more than 5lbs from foreign countries sent to private citizens were subtracted from that citizen’s ration book (so decreasing the amount of food they could buy), and gas was rationed again. While America also rationed during the War, the rations were never as severe as the ones in the UK and were lifted immediately after peace was declared.
Peggy’s reaction is “I would never betray my country by stealing food.”
Reblogging for history lesson. I feel like a lot of people don’t know just how bad things got in the UK for a while. Sugar, eggs and fat were so heavily rationed that there were recipes for cakes made with paraffin - in other words, mineral oil.
Rationing of meat actually continued until 1954, when my father was two years old. So there’s some food for thought, pun not intended.
