On Sep 13, 2007, at 11:46 AM, Zuzana Kraemerova wrote:
I recently looked through a (not yet published) costume book of one
of my friends which tells about clothing in the western Europe
around the 13th and 14th centuries. It is divided into chapters,
each for one specific garment (like gardecorp, tunic, surcotte...).
It is supposed to talk about nobility.
Well, in a chapter about women's underwear, I found a picture of a
woman wearing something like male braies, and another picture
depicting a woman with a garment that looked like today's pants or
knickers. It was redrawn, but if I could only remember the source...
The author said nothing and it looked like he was thinking it was a
general practice for women to wear such underclothes. Well, if I
remember right, all history of underwear books tell you what a
scandal it was when (was it catherine de medici?) in the 16th
century started to wear drawers, inspired by the eastern countries.
Then, it was actually the 19th century when drawers became common
and were no sign of scandal or anything else.
It helps to make a clear division between pre-16th century and 16th-
and-later century when looking at the question of women and
underpants in Europe, because there's some rather strong evidence
that Things Changed 'round about then.
Speaking of the pre-16th century era, there is a rather pervasive
genre of images depicting women wearing -- or very typically, in the
act of putting on -- a pair of male-style underpants as an act of
gender-reversal. Typically in these depictions, there is an
accompanying man using "female" tools, such as a distaff or wool-
winder. Alternately, the woman may be beating the man with a
distaff. Sometimes the image is more subtle and the underpants are
simply displayed prominently between them while other elements of
gender-reversal are played out. In at least one wood-carving, the
struggle is made overt and the couple are playing tug-of-war over the
pants.
I strongly suspect that the picture in your friend's book is taken
from one of these "battle of the sexes" depictions. The problem with
using these images as evidence for what women were actually wearing
is that the context presents underpants as not merely a garment worn
by men, but as a _definingly_ male garment -- i.e., their use as a
symbol of gender reversal only works if the viewer understands that
the act of wearing underpants is, by definition, masculine.
In addition to the battle-for-the-pants genre, there are other images
commonly circulated in the historic costuming community as evidence
for medieval women wearing underpants that -- when examined more
closely -- are using the underpants as a symbol or representation of
women cross-dressing as men. A typical example is an illustration
from an edition of Boccaccio's "Concerning Famous Women" (De Claris
Mulieribus) for the tale of Queen Semiramis who -- among other things
-- was notorious for having ruled disguised as a man.
I have yet to research an example of pre-16th century medieval
European art depicting a woman wearing underpants that did not turn
out to be using the underpants as a symbol of the appropriation of
masculine identity or masculine power. But all three of those
qualifiers -- "pre-16th century", "medieval", and "European" -- are
important in limiting my observations here. (I'd say that "pre-16th
century" is unnecessary when specifying "medieval", but the latter
can get some very fuzzy interpretations, so it's included more to
define an early limit.)
When this topic gets discussed on costuming lists, you often see a
lot of "argument from personal comfort level". As students of
historic costume, I think we need to be very skeptical of the idea
that logical argument and "what feels comfortable/appropriate to me"
can lead us to an accurate understanding of what people in other
cultures and other time periods wore.
Heather
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