On Jan 10, 2006, at 11:40 AM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
And why was it more common for men to wear underwear and not women? I betcha I'm going to be quite embarassed by the obvious reasons. :-)
There's a lot of evidence that medieval Europeans considered underpants to represent "masculinity" in a symbolic way. That is, men wore underpants and women didn't because underpants were intrinsically a masculine garment. This may seem like a circular argument, but social attitudes towards gendered clothing always seem to end up that way. For a 21st century comparison, substitute "dresses and women" for "underpants and men". There's no logical reason why women wear dresses and men don't other than because society says that dresses are an inherently feminine garment and therefore it's inappropriate for men to wear them. All the logic and reason in the world can't fight it.
Heather -- Heather Rose Jones [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.heatherrosejones.com LJ:hrj _______________________________________________ h-costume mailing list [email protected] http://mail.indra.com/mailman/listinfo/h-costume
