it’s probably the sleep deprivation but i am Obsessed with the worldbuilding implications of palamedes sextus thinking nurses are sexy. “those little outfits nurses wear” is vague enough that it could mean anything. it was almost certainly a throwaway joke but like.
in the 10,000 years, both fashion and medical PPE should have changed/improved pretty significantly, and the specific 21st century image of a Sexy Nurse would logically be either lost to the denizens of the nine houses completely or not considered sexy anymore, even as (artificially?) stagnated as their culture seems to be.
some possibilities:
- the red cross hat, (un)buttoned white coat, and (optional) giant hypodermic needle have indeed been lost to time, but a new iconic Sexy Nurse image evolved and that’s what palamedes is referencing. the nature of humanity is that every so often someone reinvents the Sexy Nurse.
- pal’s just really into the year-ten-thousand-whatever equivalent to hospital scrubs. there’s a Space Necromancy Gray’s Anatomy holo show and he has seen every single episode.
- somewhere in the depths of the sixth house archive lies an unopened and perfectly preserved “naughty nurse” costume from spirit halloween, which a young palamedes sextus stumbled upon by mistake and was forever changed by while he was researching Ye Olde Cancer Treatments.
- the Sexy Nurse exactly as we know it in the 21st century has in fact survived for 10,000 years because His Divine Eminence Emperor John Gaius has a nurse kink and takes great pains to ensure that it never leaves the social consciousness. it was just never mentioned in canon because it wasn’t relevant to harry’s story.