You will see many references to authentic and phoney. What does that mean?

By "authentic" we mean plausible at the root, if not specifically factual. As we say about RUFFIELS & RIBBONS GIRLS' HOME it took things that were real and true and "put them on steroids [and here is the asterisk to prove it '*]'". However, there is still the core of reality. The only reason we can have a calculator is because those were part of science fiction and in that timeframe, Fairies were treated less like ghosts and goblins and more like a kind of Amazon people with a very advance civiliation that appeared to be magical in the manner of Jack Vance's The Dying Earth and as expressed in Clarke's Law: "Sufficiently advanced technology would appear to be magic". When he was a Professor, as part of the Ph.D. process, Dr. Petr Beckmann would assign to the candidate the task of proving to an educated Roman official that he was from the future

By "phoney", we mean, no way that is believable in the context that it is put. Thus a 1950's baby using some kind of pampers as the diaper of choice is phony. Playing with a Barbie doll is phony unless she is a stand-in for a similar item from the time period, in which case she would not be a"Barbie". Chiristine as a 1960's or 70's little girl, no matter how hard she tried, would be phony. Steampunk, first known in the middle 1970's as "Victorian Science Fiction", though fascinating and fun. we are not. Disposable diapers, because they are so flimsy and thin, give us the creeps and might only pass as "Drypers" but would need to be modified with special panties to go with them. However, this being a home, we do not have time for things that are as limited and fussy as Drypers and even though they came out in 1951 or before, they would just be too wasteful. The same would go for "Softex" panty/pad by Kleinerts' dating from before 1942. Also, the chores attending diapers would be assigned to some of the older girls as part of her training

We dislike phoney because it takes away from the living of the part. For one thing, if you are trying to do something that is out of place or time, part of you knows that you are fudging it; trying to make it fit, and just how you are fudging it, which means part of you is elsewhere and not engaged and because it is involved in that fudging, it is self-consious

Another aspect of that was articulated by one of the GirlTalk girls. "Find an age and stay with it". It is distracting to try to be a 4 year old one day then a 10 year old or even an 8 year olod the next. The 3 to 12 year old is too spread out. The characterisitics and psychologies of the two are way too different as are the doable activities for each

These are just a few of the things that go into this, there are many more, some quite apparent and some very subtle. Everything from things and activities to look and feel

Therefore, we stress the authentic