[some guy] : Hey lady . . . Whatcha got going on under all that skirt?
We’ve all been there. And by we, I mean basically everyone who isn’t a man (or doesn’t
look like society’s idea of one). Some foolish guy just does not understand that you do not
want your day interrupted, you have no interest in what’s on offer, and really no reason
to take notice of him at all aside from the fact that he won’t get out of your way.
It’s to the point that you wish you had some kind of armor, something that would keep
these guys at a distance . . . Well, historical fashion is right there with
you.
Hi, I’m V, and I’m a huge historical costume nerd. A few years back when all those articles
about “10 fashion trends men hate” were going around, I stumbled on a Tumblr post
by Gilded Age Garbage Fire, discussing how all of the gigantic skirt supports from the
Victorian era, instead of being instruments of patriarchal torture, would absolutely have
been on a 19th century list of fashion trends men hated. I wasn’t even a fledgling costumer
at this point, but I filed this post away for humor, if nothing else.
In 2020, now a Dickens Fair alumnus and fledgling CosTuber, I was reading that beloved fashion
history treatise “The Cut Of Womens’ Clothes” by Nora Waugh, and came across the following
gem of a quote from 16th century traveler and diarist Fynes Moryson written in 1592
: "And they say, that the sleeves borne up with whale-bones, were first invented, to
avoid mens' familiar touching of their arms. . ."
And suddenly, the memory of that tumblr post came rushing back. There was something there.
There had to be. 2018 could not possibly have been the first time men complained about how
absurd feminine fashion was, nor could 1592 be the last time someone tried to invent clothing
that would keep ill-mannered menfolk at arms length. There had to be more of these fascinating
moments in fashion history, and I wanted to know about them.
Before I get going, a little housekeeping on the topic of gendered terms : There have
always been human beings that didn’t fit neatly into society’s gendered boxes. However,
fashion, as a function of society, was meant to represent and reinforce those binary gender
roles. There’s nothing inherently male or female about a piece of clothing, only what
meaning society assigns to it. So I will be using the terms “menswear”, “womenswear”,
“masculine” or “feminine” styles in reference to what those fashions represented
at their time. Also, while I’ve tried to avoid referring generally to people facing
harassment as “women”, because people of all genders face harassment, I will sometimes
be referring to those doing the harassing as “men”. Many of these historical examples
refer specifically to male aggressors, and while there are certainly exceptions, current
studies show that street harassment is done by men the vast majority of the time, regardless
of the target’s gender. If that bothers you, maybe take a minute to think about why.
While you do that, let’s talk about some clothes.
We’ll start with the whalebone-supported sleeves our Mr. Moryson was talking about.
The quote was published in 1617, but written in 1592, describing the fashion for these
extremely voluminous sleeves, seen here in portraiture. They first came into fashion
during the Elizabethan period and stayed popular in some form through most of the 17th century,
up until the revolution in dressmaking that was the Mantua in the 1680s. The 16th century
saw the hoopskirt, then called a “farthingale” (with all sorts of spellings), become popular
in Europe for the first time, so when large sleeves came into fashion, tailors began to
use the same methods of making them take up space. An account for making one of Queen
Elizabeth gowns lists “for a payer of vardingall sleves of holland cloth bented with whalsbone
and covered with riben, 13 shillings and fourpence” . Holland cloth was a type of linen usually
used for undergarments or household textiles, which makes me think these were meant to be
worn under the gown sleeves to support them. They’re basically the ancestor of 1830s
“sleeve plumpers”. So were they actually invented to keep overly
touchy-feely men from making contact? We don’t know for sure in what spirit Mr. Moryson recorded
this quote, or who he heard it said by. What we do understand from dress historians is
that in England, at least, having a Queen on the throne had some interesting effects
on gender roles in fashion. The broad-shouldered menswear of her father Henry the 8th’s time
all but disappeared, and instead of padding at the shoulders, doublets were padded in
the belly, in a style called the “peascod”. Meanwhile, the womenswear silhouette expanded
through the cone-shaped Spanish farthingale, then the even bigger French cartwheel farthingale,
with sleeves growing to balance proportions. Elizabeth wanted, even needed to dazzle and
intimidate her courtiers to be taken seriously as a reigning, unmarried Queen, so the fashions
she set reflected her power. Women in their dresses took up more and more space, and had
a more commanding presence, while masculine fashion became softer, prioritizing refinement
and prosperity over aggression and brute strength. So, whether they literally kept wandering
hands at bay or not, these whalebone-supported sleeves absolutely did represent an increase
in womens’ social power.
Moving into the early 18th century, let’s talk about a garment that was such a big—and
I mean big— deal, that someone wrote an entire short academic paper trying to figure
out why the men of the early 1700s just Could Not Handle It: the hoopskirt. 18th century
hoopskirts were initially round but quickly became oval-shaped, flatter in the front and
back and holding the skirt out as far as possible at the sides. I’ve read many of the pissed-off
letters that various men of the time wrote to newspapers and magazines, in the hopes
of making sense of the variety of things they’re mad about, and I’m still not sure I can.
The academic paper in question is written by Kimberly Chrisman, and I found it extremely
useful when combing through 18th-century publications for info. Complaints about the hoop petticoat
included : It was a perversion of the figure to men who thought women were nature’s masterpiece;
it was “mechanical” or a “machine” and therefore against gender roles that considered
technology to be inherently masculine, it made all women look pregnant, encouraged adultery
or extramarital affairs, showed frivolity and slavery to constantly-changing fashion,
confused class distinctions as servants wore their employer’s cast-offs, oppressed men
who had to buy them for their wives and daughters . . .
{hand to chest, out of breath}
And as if all this wasn’t enough, the thing that men were most resoundingly upset about
was how women might use the hoop petticoat to deflect or initiate flirting, at their
own choice. There’s much discussion of the idea that because a hoopskirt could conceivably
be upset by wind, the wearer’s steps, or any number of other things, the wearer could
deliberately use it to flash her legs, and have a defense of plausible deniability against
slut-shaming. A poem from The Gentleman’s Magazine in 1745 reads “How their steps
they reveal, and oblige the lewd eye/ With the leg's pretty turn, and delicate thigh,/
While the modern free hoops, so ample and wide,/ Up-lift the fair smock, with an impudent
pride,/ And betray the sweet graces they chastely shou’d hide!”. And in 1753, a French poetic
recipe for the latest fashions says “Make your petticoats short, that a hoop, eight
yards wide/ May decently show how your garters are tied!”. Garters were usually tied just
below or above the knee, and intensely sexualized. But, the hoop petticoat could also keep unwelcome
advances at a distance— if the wearer chose. In 1711, Joseph Addison writes in the Spectator
“ I find several Speculative Persons are of Opinion that our Sex has of late Years
been very sawcy, and that the Hoop Petticoat is made use of to keep us at a Distance. It
is most certain that a Woman's Honour cannot be better entrenched than after this manner,
in Circle within Circle, amidst such a Variety of Out-works and Lines of Circumvallation. A Female
who is thus invested in Whale-Bone is sufficiently secured against the Approaches of an ill-bred
Fellow.” In Samuel Richardson’s novel Clarissa, written in 1747, a character says
“I desire my hoop may have its full circumference. All they're good for, that I know, is to clean
dirty shoes and to keep ill-mannered fellows at a distance”.
All I can really conclude, is that these men couldn’t handle the idea of a woman having
space that she alone could control. I’ll finish with the end of one Mr. Stonecastle’s
rant on January 31st of 1741 to the London Magazine : “I know no other argument should
sooner prevail with [women], than to acquaint them it is a Mode very disagreeable to the
Men in general.” Oh, how little has changed.
The next thing I came across is almost certainly a purposeful satire, but it’s so funny I
couldn’t not talk about it. It’s one of those moments when someone tries to mock a
thing for being completely ridiculous, and instead only succeeds in making themself look
ridiculous for caring. Part of me wonders if this illustrator was self-aware enough
to be doing this on purpose? But given this related work, I’m not so sure . . .
This cartoon published by Aaron Martinet depicts what are called “poke bonnets”. This style
of hat dates from the late 1810s through the 1830s, a period of fashion history known for
exuberant and excessive decoration as the minimalist Directoire styles of the Regency
period were replaced. These bonnets were so big and so in-the-way one might assume it
was tricky to have a conversation with the wearer, and that’s what the cartoon seems
to be saying . . . until we look a little closer at just how those, uh, conversations,
seem to be going. The frontmost pair of figures have what looks like entirely normal body
language and posing, except for the fact that the gentleman’s head has fully disappeared
within the brim of the lady’s bonnet for purposes we can all guess at. Her body language
seems pretty neutral, and given the title of the piece translates to “the invisible
face-to-face”, if it were just these two figures it would probably be a cute, silly
little piece about clumsily-concealed smooching. But let’s look at the second, uhm, conversation.
This gentleman has not succeeded in shoving his entire head in the lady’s bonnet, only
his face, because she is not having it. Look at her body language. From her head to her
toes, she wants him out of her face— literally! She’s bracing with her legs, her entire
body is leaning back to put more space between them. She’s pushing him away with both arms.
Her head is pulling back so far her neck is disproportionately extended in the drawing.
This isn’t cutesy smooching under cover of bonnet, this is assault.
In the background, we see two more ladies, both wearing the same exaggerated style of
poke bonnets, cheerfully conversing with eachother from what might even be a Covid-19 safe distance,
with no apparent problems. Imagine setting out to mock hats for making
it hard to talk to women, and instead illustrating for everyone that the hats are definitely
not why you find it hard to talk to women.
And now we reach the topic of Gilded Age Garbage Fire’s truly wonderful Tumblr post, the
gloriously voluminous skirt shapes of the Victorian era. At the start of the era, the
fashionable skirt shape was a large bell, requiring layers upon layers of starched,
corded, or horsehair-stiffened petticoats to create. These were heavy, expensive, and
hard to move in— and before someone goes “then why did people wear it?”, let me
explain that that was the point, kind of. If you were wearing all those layers of petticoats,
then you were someone who could afford not to work. In a society with much more rigid
ideas about social class than our modern Western world, you wanted to dress as well as you
possibly could, because poverty was seen as immoral (for the poor people, mind, not for
the society that didn’t help them). Around 1856, some clever individual had the
idea of using thin rings of flexible spring steel, held up by ribbons or fabric tapes
into a cage-like structure, to support the bell-shaped skirts instead. These were much
lighter, less expensive, and required less labor to keep in good condition than all the
petticoats, so they took off immediately among the middle and lower classes who, of course,
also wanted to walk down the street feeling like they looked amazing. And, just like in
the 18th century, men lost their shit. Gilded Age Garbage Fire has provided a choice selection
of satirical cartoons from the 1850s and 60s when hoopskirts were in fashion, all of them
making fun of the size of the hoopskirts, how impractical they were, how much women
cared. Satirical cartoons in the magazine Punch especially ridiculed maids and working-class
women who wore crinolines, as did George Routledge’s etiquette manual from 1875. And, you can imagine
how well racist white women took it as increasing numbers of Black women had the freedom and
economic power to dress as fashionably as they pleased. While it is true that hoopskirts
were a major risk when it came to working with machinery or fire, a lot of this outrage
had nothing to do with safety, and was simply because these women were breaking down class
barriers by “daring to dress above their station”.
Fashions changed in the late 1860s, with the hoopskirt first becoming bigger at the back,
then evolving into the bustles of the 1870s and 80s. These are often called “fake butts”
by modern people, but no one in the Victorian era actually thought that. Padding and skirt
support garments had long since been part of fashion, and most people knew that human
bodies were not actually shaped like whatever the fashionable silhouette was. That didn’t
stop the satirists from having a field day with all the things the fashionable silhouette
was shaped like, including centaurs, beetles, and snails. And there’s the great double-standard
of sexism : Throughout history, things that women are excited about have been promptly
demeaned and dismissed, whether it’s fluffy skirts, Starbucks and Uggs and pop music,
or working in jobs like computer science. Yes, working with computers used to be low-paid
secretarial work until men realized it was a big deal. Look it up if you don’t believe
me.
And finally. My favorite out of all these trends, because it’s the only one that involved
steep consequences for men who couldn’t keep it to themselves : the Hatpin Peril.
As we have seen earlier, in the late-Victorian period through the 1910s, large fashionable
hats and hairstyles needed to be attached to eachother with “hatpins”. These long,
slender metal pins have a sharp point for piercing through the hat, and need to be at
least as long as the hat’s crown is wide. This one is an original Edwardian one and
measures a fairly modest 9 inches, but they could be at least a foot long.
In May 1903, Miss Leoti Blaker had recently come to New York City from Kansas. She got
on the 5th Avenue coach and sat down in the corner next to a well-dressed older man. He
seemed harmless enough, but soon took advantage of the crowdedness of public transit to invade
her personal space more and more. When he put his arm “back of her” (and we can
very well guess what she meant by that), she said “I became so enraged I didn’t know
what to do. At last I reached up and took a hatpin from my hat. I slid it around so
that I could give him a good dig, and ran that hatpin into him with all the force I
possessed.” Miss Blaker then goes on to say this wasn’t
the first time she’d defended herself with a hatpin: In Kansas, a man tried to steal
her pocketbook while she was fidgeting with her hat, so she jabbed him in the face and
he ran off. She concludes her conversation with the reporter by saying “I will get
rid of all the mashers that come near me”. “Masher” was the period term for a “catcaller”
or “creep”, a man who hung around harassing women in public.
Miss Blaker wasn’t the first woman to use a hatpin as an improvised weapon— the San
Francisco Call in 1898 contains a letter describing how a woman with a hatpin stopped a train
robbery there, then admonishes “Let the men who have been punctured by it examine
their own consciences”. However, Miss Blaker’s bravery did get a great deal of press, and
while public opinion initially agreed that a hatpin was a suitable last-resort in defense
of feminine virtue, it turned as soon as men began associating it with suffragists and
other proponents of womens’ rights. Newspaper articles began to talk about the danger of
hatpins, while in the wearer’s hat, injuring men in crowds— men specifically, not “people”
so I do wonder if that had more to do with the men than the hatpins. Magazines published
letters complaining that any man who tried to say anything to a woman he met might find
himself stabbed. Sound familiar, in the age of Me Too and men complaining they’re afraid
to speak to women at all in case whatever they say could be considered harassment? Some
very insecure person even drew this cartoon, as if women don’t feel like this when someone’s
staring aggressively at them . . . Chicago banned hatpins longer than 9 inches
in March of 1910. Various other places including Massachusetts, New Orleans, and Melbourne
Australia, put similar laws in place, either restricting the length of hatpins or requiring
them to have protective caps on the ends at all times to avoid accidental injuries. This
was an extremely effective reframing tactic, in a few short years taking the discussion
from lauding the brave women who defended themselves to blaming them for public endangerment
of innocent men . . . all while taking attention away from the men whose awful ideas about
consent led to them getting stuck with the pointy end. It was neither the demise of street-harassment
nor anti-hatpin laws that ended the Hatpin Peril, but fashions moving ever onwards towards
the shorter hairstyles and smaller hats of the 1920s.
So, I think the biggest lesson to be taken here, is this : Street harassment was a problem
when people were wearing floor-length dresses and sleeves you couldn’t touch their arms
through. It was a problem when they wore hats you couldn’t see their faces around, or
hoopskirts so big you couldn’t stand next to them. It was a problem when you could literally
expect to be stabbed for it with a hatpin— and despite all that, it’s still a problem
today. Why? Because it has nothing to do with what you’re wearing. Street harassment has
existed from now back to 1592 and probably to the dawn of human history because of one
simple constant : Men who won’t leave us the fuck alone. It’s not because of what
we’re wearing, it’s because of people who feel entitled to degrade others on the
street, demand their attention, and violate their privacy and personal space. So if you’re
watching this, and thinking about a time someone catcalled you and you wondered if you shouldn’t
have worn that dress, or those shoes, or been out by yourself . . . No. It’s not your
fault. It’s never your fault. It never has been and it never will be. And if you’re
. . . somehow, still, watching this, wondering what is an acceptable reason to loudly hit
on someone in the street if not their clothing . . . there isn’t one. It’s just never
going to work out well for you. Please, go, work on being an interesting human being with
character and hobbies and relationship skills . . . or if that sounds too hard, and you’d
rather keep up the catcalling . . .
Thank you for watching this veritable diatribe on feminism and fashion history. If you’ve
had fun, leave a like, tell me your thoughts in the comments, and subscribe to watch me
make some of the exciting bits of costume we’ve talked about! Very heartfelt thanks
to my friends Anna, for doing camera operation, and Christopher, for being the only one of
my male friends who was willing to shout rude pickup lines at me on film.
Also some very heartfelt, if somewhat frustrated thanks to all the rest of my male friends,
who could not have catcalled even convincingly enough for that scene. Building the world
we want to live in right here.
Christopher : Whatcha got going on under . . . pthbbt . . . skert.
V : [laughing] Christopher : I’m not a film actor!
V : Oh my god that’s excellent.