January 19, 2015 • 46 mins
The history of women's underwear is probably shorter than you think. Cristen and Caroline unpack the evolution of pantaloons to panties and how what women wear under their clothes reveals a lot about the world outside of them.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to stuff Mom Never told You From how Supports
dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Kristen
and I'm Caroline and Caroline. Today we're going to talk
about one word that grosses a lot of people out. Okay, panties.
(00:25):
I prefer underpants, under pan underpants is my favorite word,
one of my favorite words in general, and definitely my
favorite way to refer to undergarments. I like going old
school with pantaloons. I like that too. I like pantaloons too,
but for every day where Kristen, Yeah, yeah, I don't
wear my pantaloons to the office. Pantaloons us are just
(00:45):
for for weekends lounging around. That just makes me think
that they're like super puffy, like the kind of little
panties that you put on dolls, like baby dolls. Yeah, exactly,
with with extra elastic key waist bands so much, and
really high waist that's right up right right under your boobs,
and possibly with like little strawberries on them. Yes, yes, Well,
(01:08):
before we start reading too detailed about our pantaloons. This
week on the podcast, we're talking about the evolution of
women's underwear, talking specifically about pantaloons, knickers, panties, whatever you
want to call them, not so much on bras and
course it's although of course that plays a role in
(01:30):
all of this. So today on the podcast we're going
to focus on some history of unmentionables, and then next
time we're actually talking to an underpants entrepreneur, the founder
of dear Kate Underwear, and as we'll talk about in
that episode some more, there's some really impressive underwear technology
(01:52):
going on. Um, but we have to back way up, way,
way way, like French Revolution up. Before we can talk
about amazing modern underwear technology, we have to talk about
the origins of women even downing underpants in the first place. Yeah,
I mean, obviously we can. We can talk about loin
(02:13):
Claus for a while. We're gonna hop skip over loin
Claws and head into the eighteenth century when before we
talk about underwear, let's let's slay the foundation of the
fact that personal hygiene a little bit dicey. In those days.
You have to worry about things like fleas, lice, crabs.
People weren't showering regularly, people weren't watching their clothes regularly.
(02:38):
There was no indoor heating or cooling or electricity. And also,
and partially because of all of that lack of technology,
most ladies went commando. That's right. Um, there was also
the idea around hygiene that women definitely should air out
their lady bits because otherwise is they could start to
(03:01):
smell rotten. And in my mind reading that, I'm like, no,
that just means that you should have gone to a doctor. Although,
of course, when we're talking about eighteenth century like what
what are you going to do? Exactly leeches, Like, I mean,
they were doing the best they could. They were doing
the best they could, and in their minds airing things
out down there was proper hygiene, and so that involved
(03:23):
not putting anything over it to restrict air flow. Yeah,
and on top of that, in order to stay warm
and also to be properly dressed, that involved lots of overclothes.
And also since skirts and dresses reached all the way
down to the floor, there was no risk of accidentally
up skirt flashing everyone. But of course what came along
(03:46):
with that not having any type of underpants and just
wearing lots of skirts and petticoats and chamis is Kristen,
is that is that a correct pronouncing chemisemi kemmys is
it really heard? Seat okay? Um? Well? I mean there
was also the fact that there were no period panties
for sure in the eighteenth century, and so also the
(04:08):
kind of upside of wearing all those layers is that
it would absorb all of the things that needed absorbing.
That's right. The euphemism, the period euphemism of being on
the rag comes from the that pre maxi pad in
pre underwear days, when women would literally have to sit
on a pile of rags and let aunt flow do
(04:30):
her thing. That's right. And so by the late seventeen hundreds,
there were a couple advancements in terms of lighter fabrics
coming into fashion, and this prompted additional covering needed to
keep our crotches warm in the wintertime. Yeah, and just
as a side note, a lot of this timeline was
put together from Pauline West and Thomas's fantastic website Fashion
(04:54):
Era as well as History Undressed. So our crotches are
getting a little older as dress fabrics start to lighten up.
But then once we move into the nineteenth century, Empire
fashions did away largely with stays and women's undergarments. Yes,
we start wearing more undergarments, but we borrow from men's pantaloons. Yeah,
(05:20):
we started wearing like short pants basically, but they weren't pants.
They were pantaloons, and they attached at the waist and
also at the knee um. But they definitely were still
open crotched, because God forbid women where or appropriate anything
that could be considered masculine, and pants were definitely considered
to be men's clothing only. Yeah, and a note on knickers,
(05:44):
especially for our British listeners. In eighteen o nine, Washington
Irving wrote the History of New York all about this
breaches wearing character, Dietrich Knickerbocker, and that's where the word
knickers eventually comes from, and knickers and drawers would become interchangeable,
but knickers wouldn't become a widespread term for underwear until
(06:07):
the eighteen eighties. So funnily enough, knickers, the British term
for panties what we would call panties in the US,
actually originated in the US. But we should also say
that where drawers came from, and that's literally the drawing
down of of pants of underpants, and also helpful too,
that you might store them in a drawer, true, which
(06:30):
would also be called a drawer because they're drawing it
towards you. I just like to put ours and things.
And speaking of said drawers, by eighteen thirty, most women
were wearing them, although there were some differences, they weren't
all the same. Women had choice even back in the
day when their undergarments were cumbersome, so the upper class
ladies typically wore shorter drawers, but there were also pantaloons
(06:54):
which were ankle length, and pantalets which had a lot
of decorative lace and embroyer mat Are you going on
with them? Yeah? I mean if you were super poor,
you probably wouldn't be wearing any underwear at all, but
definitely by this point undergarments were happening, but these undis
were cratchless because going to the bathroom would have otherwise
(07:19):
required completely undressing due to the fact that with your
drawers you were also wearing a corset. And for anyone
who has put a corset on or can imagine what
wearing a corset would feel like, you don't have lots
of mobility, and also considering that you have all of
these skirts and petticoats as well, that you have to manage.
(07:41):
It's a lot easier to pull your drawers to the
side and go that way rather than having to drop them.
Drop your drawers right you kind of you kind of
just hike the skirts up and squat. There's no pulling anything,
there's no drawing anything down. And I think too that
you would put on your pantalets or drawers or pantaloons
(08:04):
or whatever you would like to call them first, and
then the course that would go over it to create
a smoother silhouette. Also, if there are any costume historians listening,
I'm really looking forward to hearing from you in case
you have other things to add or corrections to make,
because the history of undergarments is pretty overwhelming, to be honest,
(08:26):
just because there are all these different names in different styles,
but they're all sort of the same thing. Yeah. Well,
and also the fact that there's so much more information
out there about bras, for instance, than underwear underpants. Um,
but writing about this whole crotch less underwear phenomenon in
her book Erotic Modesty Addressing Female Sexuality and Propriety and
Open Closed Drawers from eighteen hundred to nineteen thirty, Jill
(08:50):
Fields rights that this whole crotchless underwear thing was really
part of a larger gender differentiation that was going on.
During this time. Women's clothes were becoming more and more
frilly in feminine. Uh, men's clothes were, you know, pants still. Yeah,
this would have been on the heels of what was
(09:12):
called the Great Masculine Renunciation, when men who were previously
wearing makeup rouge sometimes those puffy, powdered wigs, were starting
to just wear more masculine clothes in the way that
we would think of it today. And so you have
the gender differences in wardrobe really emerged at this time,
(09:34):
all the way down to the crotches in our underwear, right,
because women's clothes were always non divided skirts, there's no division,
they're going up into the dangerous crotch region, whereas men's
clothes were always divided, they had pants that covered their crotch.
And so women donning things items of clothing under their
(09:57):
non divided clothes. The fact that there was some division
going on now was very sort of socially. It was
it was a new thing socially to have something divided
under women's clothes, and so by virtue of the fact
that this these underwear, these new items of underwear did
not have a crotch. They were open and they really
just fastened at the waist and at the name. That
(10:19):
that sort of reduced some of the controversy, and so
fields rights about this quote. The apparently functional aspects of
open drawers underscore these meanings by referencing women's biological difference,
thus constructing women's bodies as different on a daily basis.
And I also wonder too if there was, in addition
(10:39):
to the concern over women wearing this divided garment, also
a concern with covering the crotch, because that would have
been fabric so close to the volva, you know, I mean,
considering the time, and how terrified we were of anything,
you know, coming in contact with that that wasn't a
husband who wanted to make a baby. I can only imagine.
(11:04):
I can't only imagine, um, okay, And so for that
reason too, you know, a lot of us have probably
seen those famous photos of Queen Victoria's large crotch less
drawers that she would wear, right, but they were not
the sexy they weren't. They did not have the same
connotation that we think of today when we think of
(11:25):
crotchles panties. But we'll get into that later. So by
the time we hit eighteen seventies six, the crotch of
our drawers closed and was replaced by buttons at the hip.
That does not mean that crotchless underwear disappeared by any means.
It definitely still continued for decades. But at this time
(11:45):
you had knickers made of silk, a flannel of alpacable
I can't imagine. And then they as the century progressed,
they become wider and frillier. They would help fill out
the wider petticoats of the time that ended up becoming fashionable,
and you might even wear your fancy woolen I'll pack
a wool knickers over these things called combinations, which was
(12:09):
basically what like it was. It was almost a romper, right, yeah, yeah,
it was like a camusle bodice attached to knickers, eliminating
the need for a comiss um. And remember though these
kinds of fabrics, that a lot of this stuff was
being made up, particularly for wealthier women at the time,
things like I'll pack a wool, which we could I
(12:31):
would not imagine wearing I mean, we have woolen underwear
like the Long John's today, but thinking of paying a
pack of woolen hand ties steams very unhygienic. But the sweat,
so much sweat trapping, so much heat. But we didn't
have the kind of lightweight cotton fabric at an affordable
(12:54):
existing period, but also cotton at an affordable rate at
the time anyway, So there's technological aspect to this as well.
But there were also a number of more liberal women
who were rather tired of the fact that they were
wearing so many garments. And we've talked about these women
(13:15):
before a number of times on the podcast the Dress
Reformers of the nineteenth century. Yeah, these are women who
were like, hey, we actually want to leave the house
and be able to take deep breaths and not faint
on our fainting couches all the time and just move around.
Maybe ride a bicycle. Maybe ride a bicycle. Um. But
so this is coming from Reforming Women's Fashion eighteen fifty ninety, Politics,
(13:38):
Health and Art by Patricia A. Cunningham, and she writes
about how the dress reformers garments were designed on four
basic principles no ligature, uniform temperature, lightness of weight, and
suspension from the shoulders, basically freeing women from the constrictions
of the corset, but also from all of those bulky
(13:58):
heavy layers. Yeah, and so we have women like Amelia Bloomer,
whom we've mentioned a number of times. She debuted her
eponymous Bloomer suit in eighteen fifty one, which it was
sort of like an ankle calf or ankle length puffy
trousers and over which you would wear a dress or
(14:20):
a skirt that would only come down mid calf and
even though you're still covered from head to toe, it
lends more mobility, sure, but it was also still considered
quite scandalous. So scandalous people were so afraid of what
this meant for the social order of the day. Women
wearing pants, I mean, they were all we've talked on
(14:40):
the podcast before about what suffrage the suffrage movement did
for like cartooning, for instance, that everyone drew these cartoons
of these sad men abandoned at home by their suffragists wives.
And it was kind of the same thing because of
bloomers and and pants and women wanting to wear regular
clothes that allowed them to move freely and actually leave
the house and ride a bicycle. People were so afraid
(15:03):
that suddenly, like men would have to start wearing dresses,
because surely if women wear pants, then men can't wear
pants too. Well, the echoes back to to what you
were saying earlier, Caroline, of how women wore skirts, bifurcated
clothes i e. Pants, breeches where for men, Yeah, men
wore the pants. So for the liberal women who were
(15:24):
interested in dress reform but weren't entirely comfortable with the
notion of a bloomers suit or wearing trousers, underwear reform
was seen as a more subtle and acceptable kind of
fashion revolution. So you have things like the Emancipation Union
under flannel, which was patented in eighteen sixty eight. And
(15:47):
this really looks a lot like just a union suit
that you might even see still today, sort of like um,
like a long sleeve shirt and pants all in sort
of a onesie, like a giant one's like as I
have wednesie. I like the term underflannel. Oh, it's just
my underflannel if those are your winter under underpants, my
(16:08):
underflannels punching up and one person who I think that
we should devote entire podcast to at some point because
she's fascinating, who adopted the dress reform undersuit was Dr
Mary Walker, who was a doctor during the Civil War
and actually the first woman to receive a Medal of Honor.
(16:30):
And she was very liberal and address reformer to the
degree that she was arrested a number of times because
she would wear men's suits in public because she was like, listen,
I'm not wearing all of this corsetry and skirts and
petticoats and all this stuff. This is ridiculous. Nobody got
time for that. But yeah, she'd she'd wear the frock
(16:51):
coat and the trousers, and she was convinced that the
dress reform undersuit that she helped design would prevent rape
and seduction. Yeah. That was another interesting thing about these
union these union suits, these emancipation suits, was how intentionally
unsexy they were. Right under flannel, there's nothing sexy about
(17:13):
under flannel. Oh, but so warm, so perfect for snuggling,
that's right, just like a snuggy Okay. And then in
eighteen seventy five, just for another example of how there
was a lot of interest in this kind of underwear reform.
Susan Taylor Converse of Woburn, Massachusetts, debuted her Emancipation suit,
(17:34):
which was a corset and corset cover all in one,
but you could separate it into two pieces by buttons
at the hips. So there was sort of a spectrum
of this kind of dress reform where you see things
like this, where it's like, well, we don't want to
abandon female undergarments entirely, maybe we can just transition it
(17:55):
into something a little more manageable. Yeah, it's it's funny
to think of all the effort that that was going
into underwear at the time when we just go to
the department store or Target or something and pick up
panties of our own today. Yeah, it's funny to think
of under flannels being patented. Yeah, exactly, so much underwear effort. Um.
But so we're gonna take a quick break and when
(18:16):
we come back, we're going to move into the twentieth
century underwear gets a little bit more modern. And now
back to the show. So in the first half of
the podcast, we briefly mentioned Queen Victoria and her massive
crotchless undergarments, and it really is in large part thanks
(18:41):
to Queen Victoria's massive fashion influence that by the time
we get into the nineteen hundreds, obviously we've moved out
of Victorian era through the Edwardian we're now into the
progressive era that all but the poorest women because a
lot of our history so far has really only been
focused on women who could a four undergarments. But all
but the poorest women were wearing some sort of undergarment.
(19:06):
And it might be crotchless, it might not be croutchless, yeah,
but it is regardless. It is interesting to watch as
fashion has evolved since the nineteenth century, since even the
eighteenth century. It's interesting to watch as fashion evolved and
the silhouettes evolve, the underwear silhouettes and bulk and size
(19:28):
and crotches all evolve with it. Yeah. So in the
nineteen tens and twenties, there was an undergarment revolution of
foot because this is the time, of course, when corsets
in full floor length skirts were going away in favor
of the slimmer silhouettes. You have people like Caress Crosby
(19:50):
inventing these revolutionary things called bras, and women being like,
you know what, I'm a new woman. I don't think
I have to wear this corset anymore. Yeah, I mean,
think of, for instance, something that I'm obsessed with, which
is down Navvy. Think of the period costumes that they
wear on that show, and that they have very slim
silhouettes and they're not going to be wearing bulky under
(20:13):
flannel under those lovely silk dresses. Yeah. And World War
One plays a big role in this as well, because,
as we talked about a lot when it comes to
World War Two, during World War One, there were lots
of women who ended up working in the factories to
take over the jobs that the men left behind. And
(20:34):
one thing that sort of helped society get used to
this notion of women doing men's work. In quotes, some
would wear what were termed woman alls, which were essentially
kind of like a mesh between overalls and coveralls. Um,
but a little bit cuter to be honest, or maybe
it was just the hairstyles. Well they were poofi are. Yeah,
(20:56):
they were a little puffy. They look they remind me
because bloomers also were very puffy because they still had
to sort of resemble skirts so that if people wouldn't
freak out, but they did anyway, And so these women
alls definitely were like a puffy or softer, more feminine version,
and that was definitely on on purpose. I mean, there
was a lot of anxiety around women wearing pants, to
(21:17):
the point where they obviously had to rename them woman
alls instead of overalls or coveralls, because again, I mean,
it's just another interesting illustration of the anxiety around women
adopting or appropriating anything that had been considered masculine or
just for men. Well, and probably the only reason that
(21:38):
this happened, and women wouldn't be wearing pants and mass
immediately after World War One. It would still take time,
but the only reason that the tide started to change
was because wearing skirts in a factory setting was a liability,
it was an actual safety hazard, so they had to
(22:00):
wear woman alls or trousers. But once you start wearing
these closer fitting, bifurcated garments, guess what your underwear has
to change as well. And this is what leads to
our underwear crotches closing up for good. And so now
we're moving into the flapper era, and your silhouettes are slimmer,
(22:21):
your dress heamlines are definitely shorter, and so a lot
of new underwear technology basically had to be developed to
accompany the fashion of the day. Yeah, there were things
called tango knickers. There were kemmy knickers, which was a
combination between underskirts and camisas, and there were also flappers,
(22:42):
cammy knickers, and cammy bockers. Now, the differences between these
individual kinds of undergarments are not huge. They're all sort
of either combinations of uh bodices and knickers or are
just different different kinds of shorts. I mean, because we aren't.
(23:03):
We aren't to the point where they're high cut, our
full thighs are not exposed. We're still wearing, if anything,
shorts because the hemlines have risen with the Flapper era. Um,
but there are definitely more options and sexier options too,
because it's also during the Flapper era that women's sexuality
in conjunction too with the development of the movie industry
(23:26):
and pop culture. In that sense, women's sexuality starts to
come a little bit more to the forefront. And so
you know, ineligible Dame is going to have some sexy
flappers cammy knickers. And so even before women get cammy knickers,
a bunch of retailers and manufacturers are starting to get
in on this changing underwear technology game, and they're actually
(23:49):
starting to both advertised and mass produced underpants. For instance,
in nineteen eleven, the Saturday Evening Post publishes the first
print ad underwear. Granted it was for men, but it
was called the Kenosha Closed Crotch. And I assure you
it's all spelled with k's all caves, the closed Crotch.
(24:09):
I don't know why. I don't know why other than
maybe it looked good in the print ad. Well. I
also like that their tagline was the classiest garment made. Hey,
gentlemen want to be classic, that's right. And right around
this time too, you start having print advertisements for women's underwear.
But it's understandable that the men's underwear is going to
get the first ad too, because that's well scandalous seeing
(24:32):
a lady in her undergarments. Um. But once we're in
the early twenties, we have all these different kinds of
nickers for sale, the length of them again is going
to fluctuate in accordance with hemlines. And this is also
when we have the emergence of that loathed by many
(24:52):
word panty panty. It is a very diminutive word. Um.
But in sears and Roebuck cells, possibly the first period panties,
and they were solely for nighttime use. Yeah, probably because
they were higher cut and would be deemed inappropriate for
(25:12):
every day where. But Caroline, you mentioned just a second
ago that that panti is a very diminutive sounding word,
which is probably where a lot of the creep factor
comes from a grown woman wearing panties. It just doesn't
really mesh well and etymologically it is pretty diminutive because
before the turn of the century, children were making so
(25:32):
called panties for their dollies, which panties was just as
shortened formed of pantal leet and panty though might have
originated as a derogatory term for men's underwear because you know,
they were the original pantaloon wearers. And then if you
moved to nineteen ten, before we have the emergence of
panties for women, panty waste became an insult for weak
(25:57):
or cowardly manned the opposite of only man who wears
the pants, which was an expression that came out in
one I Love. I don't encourage the use of words
to diminish people in general. However, I did, like I
(26:18):
giggled out loud when I read panty waist, because that
is such like an old school, antiquated insult. I just
picture like the man you know in the striped leotard,
like with his barbells and his handlebar mustache, being like, hey,
your penny waste putting up his dukes, up his dukes. Well,
by the time those men start wearing the pants, so
(26:40):
to speak, in the early nineteen thirties, women start to
wear for the very first time, the kinds of close
fitting underwear similar to highwaist lady briefs that we see today.
And funnily enough, they looked a lot like those period
panties soul By Sears and Roebuck. Yeah, and it's around
(27:03):
this time that we're developing those close fitting panties like
what we think of today, because up until now, the
crotches were lower, possibly like you mentioned earlier, to avoid
that dangerous contact with the dangerous lady crotch. Yeah, I
think that that had a lot to do with it,
because if you do look at underwear up until this time,
(27:26):
it's all kind of drop waste in a way, while
leaving a lot of room. But I wonder too if
it has to do with fabric technology, because there was
still always through all of this the concern of the
vaginal canal getting enough air to it and enough circulation
so that you don't get the rotten crotch. I said it, Caroline,
(27:51):
but let's be honest, that's that's what they were trying
to avoid. Well, we all know that our vagina's breathe.
They have their own respiratory system and pendant from our
own lung, so it's good to keep air flowing. But
I mean, yeah, it's it's not like under garments of
the time. We're stretchy. It's not like you could just
pull them up and snap them, snap them into place.
(28:12):
So I I get it, but it's there are some
there are some interesting issues to examine there about why
people didn't want fabric up close to their libya. Well,
even this closer fitting underwear in the nineteen thirties wasn't
necessarily the kind that we would see, you know, in
a store today, like a pack of Haynes cotton underwear
that's super easy to take care of. Because we didn't
(28:35):
have things like washers and dryers in the home, and
because of fabric technology. At the time, women's underwear still
required a lot of maintenance, a lot of hand washing, ironing.
They still had lots of buttons. Yeah, you shook your hand,
we said ironing. Women had to iron their underwear, launder,
not even iron my shirt. I surely would not iron
(28:57):
my underwear. But then around World War two, women is
underwear definitely becomes a little more simplified, and this is
attributed partly to Else's kept Really, she is credited with
putting in elastic waste bands into underwear, and this is great, right,
except the whole reason that she did it is because
of famine related to World War Two and shrinking waistlines,
(29:21):
because with buttons and things, your underwear might just fall
right off of you if you started losing a lot
of weight. Yeah. And she also made them out of
drip dry materials so they were easier to care for
as well. And she was motivated to uh not only
to facilitate better fit, but also to allow women to
ride yet again bicycles around. So much of these spurts
(29:46):
of development that we see in women's underwear is largely
motivated by mobility. And we have these times when it's
it's World War One, when we finally close up the
crotches because oh, women are working in all it's World
War two and women are working again and needing to
move around and get from place to place. Same thing.
(30:07):
Going back to the thirties with address reformers. Um, it's
really interesting to see those kinds of parallels. So after
World War Two, we're wearing underwear similar to what we're
wearing today. We're wearing bras and panties or knickers. But
in the fifties and sixties, particularly with the return to domesticity,
(30:29):
you have, it's kind of the leave it to Beaver era,
the Madmen era. Women are also wearing lots of foundation garments. Yeah,
so we've got the pointy, nuclear shaped bras, the petticoats, girdles,
garter belts become a thing, and stockings. Yeah, because it's
all about creating the ideal lady shape, the small waste
(30:52):
of pointy boobs and then the poofy skirt. Well, I mean,
but that's that's not a new thing. I mean, women
were wearing bustles, women wearing corsets. This is just it's
like another courset, except it's a pointy brawl and you
can actually take a deep breath in it. But isn't
it interesting though, that when we have that return to domesticity,
we put more undergarments back on Caroline. But yeah, starting
(31:14):
around the nineties, seventies and all the way through today
are underwear starts to get smaller and smaller and less
and less. Yeah. By the time we reach the mid nineties,
that's when we have, for instance, the arrival and mass
of the thong. Yeah, and then the g string, which
I think and we did a whole episode on uh,
(31:37):
the thong and the invention of the thong and all
of that. So go to stuff I've never told you
dot com and starts thong and you can listen to it. Um.
But I would say, and we talked about this in
that episode, I think thongs are out for the most part.
They're functional, but I don't think they're fashionable anymore now, man,
I have said it before in the podcast person and
I will say it again. Just laser cut boy short
(31:59):
through the way to go, no panty lines and also
no wedgeees. But what about under flannels? Under flannels that
might be good for sleeping, Yeah, rainy Sunday afternoons, the
under flannels, yes, listening to podcast all day long. But
we've mentioned along the way how technology has facilitated this
development of underwear. We just want to briefly focus a
(32:21):
little bit more on that. And this is coming from
a paper in The Journal of Popular Culture by Janet
and Peter Philip called History from Below Women's Underwear and
the Rise of Women's Sport, which is really fascinating it
It obviously focuses a lot on sport, and we're not
going to talk about sports so much, um, but it
talked about how these fabric innovations and also the arrival
(32:45):
of elastic really did so much for us. It meant
that we could wear the underwear that we are wearing
or not wearing today. And then alongside elastic, which in
the early twentieth century was slowly began to replace things
like draw strings and buttons in under pants, we get
(33:05):
the affordability of breathable cotton fabric finally breathable cotton. And
so this was coming about thanks to spreading prosperity and
shrinking poverty, which kind of gave rise to the use
of cotton dresses in addition to cotton underwear, especially as
our environments that we were living and existing in were
(33:26):
better heated. Yeah, and all of us is contributing to
better hygiene at home. I mean, we also have better
understanding of hygiene UM and things like running water and
electricity which would eventually facilitate washers and dryers, all of
which contributes to the kind of underwear that we were
able to wear. Um. But then during the World wars eras,
(33:49):
you also have the development of synthetic fibers, which were
both a blessing and a curse for women's crotches because
in the twenties and thirties, for instance, on was all
the rage, and then in World War Two, nylon was
a big deal, and polyester as well, and so it
allowed these for these new and lighter kinds of underwear
(34:13):
for women in those different kinds of shapes that we
had talked about, but it took a while for them
to figure out, especially after we got to the sixties
with lycra and spandex, that while that's all fine well
and good, but you probably need to have cotton in
the crotch for that breathe ability factor because of the
vagina's respiratory system, it's gotta breathe. You gotta let that
(34:37):
lady breathe. Really, you just don't want sweat too much
down there, no uh no more under flannel um and
so yeah, and that's when in the nineteen seventies you
get those cotton gussets that help improve underwear hygiene. And
Caroline for a possibly t M I side note on
something my mom did tell me. I remember when I
(34:59):
was hitting puberty and she was talking to me more
about my sweet lady bud. She emphasized the importance of
the cotton crotch and underwear. You know. She was like, Kristen,
don't you need to do that? You need to let
her breathe. So I'm really just like parenting my mother
because she was emphatic about it for the prevention of
(35:22):
things like yeast infections and all of those other things
that can happen. And it has stuck in my brain,
Caroline ever since. So thanks mom. Yeah, I don't I don't.
I feel like my mother and I had an underwear conversation,
but I can't remember it, and that's probably like mentally
on purpose. Well, it's probably a big deal for my
(35:44):
mom and women of our mom's ages because it was
in the nineteen seventies that those cotton gussets the crotches
were brought along, like became more standard in underwear to
improve underwear hygiene, because there was I think it was
and maybe the late nineteen sixties or early seventies where
(36:04):
there was sort of an outbreak of infections that women
were getting from panties made with certain synthetic fibers that
were not good for your vaginal ecosystem. Right, Well, your
body is natural, and your underwear should be natural, that's right,
(36:25):
just all made of gluten free uh no, partially hydrogenated oil,
sugar free underwear. But one thing that we haven't really
talked about in this timeline we've been going through is
the increased sexualization of underwear because it really did start
out as this utilitarian kind of thing. I mean, if
(36:47):
you look back in in art, for in like the
eighteenth century, of course there are eroticized images of women
just in their corsets and petticoats, but it's so different
from today where you have Victoria's Secret and it's it's
very it's all about sexiness or cute. You need to
(37:08):
be sexy cute. Yeah, Well, the impression that I got
reading Jill fields paper erotic modesty, which I mean she
goes she goes in depth on underwear and clothing and
just sort of the political implications of all of these things.
And some of the things she talks about are the
fact that you know, underwear is a functional thing and
(37:31):
and women do need it for various reasons, have needed
it for various reasons, and have needed it to perform
various functions. But going all the way back to people
being scared of women wearing bifurcated garments, up to today,
there's been that fear of women being too masculine, and
so in the Night she talks about how in the
nineteen twenties and and really any time that underwear veers
(37:53):
too close to being too masculine or too functional, that
there's always the a push that accompanies this to make
it very pretty. Also, so as soon as women start
wearing semi bifurcated underwear, uh, let's make them panti lets
and attach lace on the bottom of the knee. Or
as soon as women are wearing more panty style underwear,
(38:17):
oh well, let's make them sexy and have a garter
belt and have more of a wink wink, nudge nudge
sexuality to it, because while it's bad and dangerous and
scary to think of a woman's crotch of her sexuality,
of course people associated underwear with eroticism and being sexy. Yeah,
(38:37):
she actually talks about the relationship between those things. In
going back to the open crotched era, she said, wearing
these drawers marked a female body is conforming to the
dictates of respectable femininity, including the unspoken provision of sexual
accessibility via that open crotch. But then as a cross
(39:00):
closes up and women attain things like the right to vote,
and then more of us atret going to work. She says,
in the twentieth century, open crush garments were signified as
primarily erotic, and that the transition from open to close
doors reveals not only the power of clothing as a
medium of signification, but how women struggles for autonomy interact
(39:23):
with resistant social forces to reconfigure gender distinctions. Because this
is one thing that popped out in a few sources,
how in the nineteen eighties you have the woman in
the power suit. She's going to work, and she's got
the big shoulder pads and she's trying to make her
way and outwardly, she's wearing clothes that really mimic men's clothes.
(39:43):
You know, you have the ladies suits, women wearing the
floppy bow ties. But underneath this is the era of
the sexy teddy's, right. Yeah. I think of Sigourney Weaver
and Working Girl, which is one of my all time
favorite movies. But Sigourney Weaver being like the tough, ball
busting boss. But when she breaks her leg and she's
at home, or I think even when she's in the
hospital too, with her leg like up in a cast,
(40:05):
she's wearing a sexy, silky neglige because you can't have
a woman just being too masculine or too powerful. Yeah,
and and now it seems like a lot of our
concern has shifted interestingly, uh to the age that someone
is wearing sexy underwear. We get concerned about a nice
(40:27):
When I say we, I mean like culturally, the conversations
that crop up when say, you know there are too
sexy of underwear in the girls section at Target. Well, yeah,
I mean, but there have been There have been eight
things around underwear and age forever. Because Fields writes about
I think it's in the nineteenth century. If I'm not
mistaken early nineteenth century, when you know, boys and girls
(40:49):
would basically be dressed the same up until they're about five,
but that girls, young girls would wear panties or pantaloons
or you know what. The basically the underwear that you
and I were joking out at the top of the podcast,
the puffy panda lands that would allow girls active play.
It would allow them to be rough and tumble, allow
them to get a lot of activity. It wasn't until
(41:10):
they hit puberty or hit like sexual maturity or marrying
age that it was like, Okay, well, now you put
on the course that restricts your movement. Now you put
on the all of the petticoats and undergarments and other
things that restrict your movement, because now you're a sexually
mature adult woman who was just expected to sit there. Well,
and that ties into one thing we didn't have a
chance to talk about, which was the development of the trousseau,
(41:34):
of the tradition of uh woman of a marrying age
being sort of storing up her her sexy petticoats that
she would wear for her husband. And that's where the
wink wink, nudge nudge thing comes in because underwear is
not supposed to be sexy. It's just functional, but it's
supposed to be seck that it's supposed to be sexy. Yeah.
But one final note though, Caroline, before we sign off,
(41:56):
is that when it comes to women's underwear, movie away
from the age thing, but just women's underwear. I feel
like today we don't even talk about underwear so much
because we have so many styles to choose from. People
have kind of gotten over the whole thong horror and
now we're just focused on talking about what's underneath our
boy shorts, thongs, laser cut briefs, whatever it might be.
(42:19):
Now we're just like it's all pupe talk, which says
a lot about how we culturally have evolved in terms
of women's sexuality, but still have lots of hang ups
in terms of our bodies. So with this really curious
to hear from people about your thoughts on underwear. I
want to know if other people are grossed out by
(42:41):
the word panty and why If we have costume historians listening,
I'm sure you have lots to contribute to this conversation
as well. And wondering from men whether we need to
do a podcast on Boxers versus Briefs or the closed
crotch with the k no Sha Cloths crotch. You can
(43:01):
email us mom Stuff at how stuffworks dot com is
our email address. You can also tweet us at mom
Stuff podcast or messages on Facebook. And we've got a
couple of messages to share with you when we come
right back from a quick break and now back to
the show. So I've got a couple of letters here
(43:22):
from our episode about Taylor Swift, and this one is
from Madison, subject line Teeth Swifty and her feminism. She
writes as one of the many people who just now
started recognizing Taylor Swift after that ridiculously catchy song of hers,
shake It Off, came out, and becoming more impressed of
the feminist impact she's having on young girls. Coming from
(43:44):
a small, mostly country town, I grew up under the
notion that feminism was a bunch of angry lesbians yelping
about how much they hate men. It never made sense
to me until I started listening to your podcast and
it clicked. These girls that are listening to Taylor's music
and seeing her self confidence need a fulfillment at this
time where they happen to be insecure while trying to
discover who they are. They see her as this woman
(44:06):
who knows what she wants and deserves, who isn't afraid
to stand up for something she should have rights to.
She has that girl next door essence it's easy to
relate to. Therefore, she can easily be that good influence
for girls while showing them how to be feminist powerhouses
all through songs. It really goes to show the music
is a powerful thing. This was such a well worded podcast,
another wonderful outstanding job. Well done, ladies, So thank you
(44:30):
Madison Well. I have a letter here from Aaron. She says,
I just finished listening to your Taylor Swift episode and
absolutely loved it. It's impossible not to respect her after
that light you shed. I'm obsessed, just as my boyfriend
who's forced a jam to in the car with me.
I haven't always been a swift ee though, like many others,
I used to think she was just a pretty face
manipulated by the biz and a little bit of auto tune.
(44:52):
One summer, my friend had an extra ticket for her
Speak Now concert and I reluctantly went. I was blown
away by her stage presence and the fact that she
play guitar, piano, ukulele, and banjo. There was no denying
she had talent. It wasn't until I learned more about
her completely boss ownership of her brand, her embracing feminism,
and her switch to a genre that was more at
my alley, that I absolutely adored her. But that isn't
(45:14):
why I'm writing. The number one reason why I put
Taylor Swift on a golden pedestal is that she's a
role model for young girls to pick up music. For
two years, I worked at a mom and pop music
store that catered to introducing kids to music, providing them
with their first instruments, and offering a great lessons program.
Seeing students glow when they played their first few notes
was my favorite part of my job. Unfortunately, only one
(45:36):
out of four students were girls. The endless supply of
dudes holding guitars and the media has made instruments a
boy thing. Yes, that is what a young customer told
his little sister. T Swift challenges this extremely ridiculous notion.
I have seen first hand how she inspires young girls
to learn music When we show them all the easy
sheet music from red in nineteen nine that they can
(45:59):
play there, immediately begging their parents to buy them a guitar.
We put on an optional semi monthly concert, but it's
usually only the boys signing up. That is, until we
had an exclusively Taylor Swift concert. It was our greatest
attendance ever. No other musician inspire such a love of music,
and I can't possibly put into words how important that is.
(46:20):
So thank you so much, Aaron. I love that story,
and thanks to everybody who's written into us Mom stuff
at how stuff works dot com is our email address
and to find links all of our social media as
well as all of our videos, blogs and podcasts with
our sources. So you can follow along with us, head
on over to stuff Mom Never Told You dot com
Welcome to stuff Mom Never told You From how Supports
dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Kristen
and I'm Caroline and Caroline. Today we're going to talk
about one word that grosses a lot of people out. Okay, panties.
(00:25):
I prefer underpants, under pan underpants is my favorite word,
one of my favorite words in general, and definitely my
favorite way to refer to undergarments. I like going old
school with pantaloons. I like that too. I like pantaloons too,
but for every day where Kristen, Yeah, yeah, I don't
wear my pantaloons to the office. Pantaloons us are just
(00:45):
for for weekends lounging around. That just makes me think
that they're like super puffy, like the kind of little
panties that you put on dolls, like baby dolls. Yeah, exactly,
with with extra elastic key waist bands so much, and
really high waist that's right up right right under your boobs,
and possibly with like little strawberries on them. Yes, yes, Well,
(01:08):
before we start reading too detailed about our pantaloons. This
week on the podcast, we're talking about the evolution of
women's underwear, talking specifically about pantaloons, knickers, panties, whatever you
want to call them, not so much on bras and
course it's although of course that plays a role in
(01:30):
all of this. So today on the podcast we're going
to focus on some history of unmentionables, and then next
time we're actually talking to an underpants entrepreneur, the founder
of dear Kate Underwear, and as we'll talk about in
that episode some more, there's some really impressive underwear technology
(01:52):
going on. Um, but we have to back way up, way,
way way, like French Revolution up. Before we can talk
about amazing modern underwear technology, we have to talk about
the origins of women even downing underpants in the first place. Yeah,
I mean, obviously we can. We can talk about loin
(02:13):
Claus for a while. We're gonna hop skip over loin
Claws and head into the eighteenth century when before we
talk about underwear, let's let's slay the foundation of the
fact that personal hygiene a little bit dicey. In those days.
You have to worry about things like fleas, lice, crabs.
People weren't showering regularly, people weren't watching their clothes regularly.
(02:38):
There was no indoor heating or cooling or electricity. And also,
and partially because of all of that lack of technology,
most ladies went commando. That's right. Um, there was also
the idea around hygiene that women definitely should air out
their lady bits because otherwise is they could start to
(03:01):
smell rotten. And in my mind reading that, I'm like, no,
that just means that you should have gone to a doctor. Although,
of course, when we're talking about eighteenth century like what
what are you going to do? Exactly leeches, Like, I mean,
they were doing the best they could. They were doing
the best they could, and in their minds airing things
out down there was proper hygiene, and so that involved
(03:23):
not putting anything over it to restrict air flow. Yeah,
and on top of that, in order to stay warm
and also to be properly dressed, that involved lots of overclothes.
And also since skirts and dresses reached all the way
down to the floor, there was no risk of accidentally
up skirt flashing everyone. But of course what came along
(03:46):
with that not having any type of underpants and just
wearing lots of skirts and petticoats and chamis is Kristen,
is that is that a correct pronouncing chemisemi kemmys is
it really heard? Seat okay? Um? Well? I mean there
was also the fact that there were no period panties
for sure in the eighteenth century, and so also the
(04:08):
kind of upside of wearing all those layers is that
it would absorb all of the things that needed absorbing.
That's right. The euphemism, the period euphemism of being on
the rag comes from the that pre maxi pad in
pre underwear days, when women would literally have to sit
on a pile of rags and let aunt flow do
(04:30):
her thing. That's right. And so by the late seventeen hundreds,
there were a couple advancements in terms of lighter fabrics
coming into fashion, and this prompted additional covering needed to
keep our crotches warm in the wintertime. Yeah, and just
as a side note, a lot of this timeline was
put together from Pauline West and Thomas's fantastic website Fashion
(04:54):
Era as well as History Undressed. So our crotches are
getting a little older as dress fabrics start to lighten up.
But then once we move into the nineteenth century, Empire
fashions did away largely with stays and women's undergarments. Yes,
we start wearing more undergarments, but we borrow from men's pantaloons. Yeah,
(05:20):
we started wearing like short pants basically, but they weren't pants.
They were pantaloons, and they attached at the waist and
also at the knee um. But they definitely were still
open crotched, because God forbid women where or appropriate anything
that could be considered masculine, and pants were definitely considered
to be men's clothing only. Yeah, and a note on knickers,
(05:44):
especially for our British listeners. In eighteen o nine, Washington
Irving wrote the History of New York all about this
breaches wearing character, Dietrich Knickerbocker, and that's where the word
knickers eventually comes from, and knickers and drawers would become interchangeable,
but knickers wouldn't become a widespread term for underwear until
(06:07):
the eighteen eighties. So funnily enough, knickers, the British term
for panties what we would call panties in the US,
actually originated in the US. But we should also say
that where drawers came from, and that's literally the drawing
down of of pants of underpants, and also helpful too,
that you might store them in a drawer, true, which
(06:30):
would also be called a drawer because they're drawing it
towards you. I just like to put ours and things.
And speaking of said drawers, by eighteen thirty, most women
were wearing them, although there were some differences, they weren't
all the same. Women had choice even back in the
day when their undergarments were cumbersome, so the upper class
ladies typically wore shorter drawers, but there were also pantaloons
(06:54):
which were ankle length, and pantalets which had a lot
of decorative lace and embroyer mat Are you going on
with them? Yeah? I mean if you were super poor,
you probably wouldn't be wearing any underwear at all, but
definitely by this point undergarments were happening, but these undis
were cratchless because going to the bathroom would have otherwise
(07:19):
required completely undressing due to the fact that with your
drawers you were also wearing a corset. And for anyone
who has put a corset on or can imagine what
wearing a corset would feel like, you don't have lots
of mobility, and also considering that you have all of
these skirts and petticoats as well, that you have to manage.
(07:41):
It's a lot easier to pull your drawers to the
side and go that way rather than having to drop them.
Drop your drawers right you kind of you kind of
just hike the skirts up and squat. There's no pulling anything,
there's no drawing anything down. And I think too that
you would put on your pantalets or drawers or pantaloons
(08:04):
or whatever you would like to call them first, and
then the course that would go over it to create
a smoother silhouette. Also, if there are any costume historians listening,
I'm really looking forward to hearing from you in case
you have other things to add or corrections to make,
because the history of undergarments is pretty overwhelming, to be honest,
(08:26):
just because there are all these different names in different styles,
but they're all sort of the same thing. Yeah. Well,
and also the fact that there's so much more information
out there about bras, for instance, than underwear underpants. Um,
but writing about this whole crotch less underwear phenomenon in
her book Erotic Modesty Addressing Female Sexuality and Propriety and
Open Closed Drawers from eighteen hundred to nineteen thirty, Jill
(08:50):
Fields rights that this whole crotchless underwear thing was really
part of a larger gender differentiation that was going on.
During this time. Women's clothes were becoming more and more
frilly in feminine. Uh, men's clothes were, you know, pants still. Yeah,
this would have been on the heels of what was
(09:12):
called the Great Masculine Renunciation, when men who were previously
wearing makeup rouge sometimes those puffy, powdered wigs, were starting
to just wear more masculine clothes in the way that
we would think of it today. And so you have
the gender differences in wardrobe really emerged at this time,
(09:34):
all the way down to the crotches in our underwear, right,
because women's clothes were always non divided skirts, there's no division,
they're going up into the dangerous crotch region, whereas men's
clothes were always divided, they had pants that covered their crotch.
And so women donning things items of clothing under their
(09:57):
non divided clothes. The fact that there was some division
going on now was very sort of socially. It was
it was a new thing socially to have something divided
under women's clothes, and so by virtue of the fact
that this these underwear, these new items of underwear did
not have a crotch. They were open and they really
just fastened at the waist and at the name. That
(10:19):
that sort of reduced some of the controversy, and so
fields rights about this quote. The apparently functional aspects of
open drawers underscore these meanings by referencing women's biological difference,
thus constructing women's bodies as different on a daily basis.
And I also wonder too if there was, in addition
(10:39):
to the concern over women wearing this divided garment, also
a concern with covering the crotch, because that would have
been fabric so close to the volva, you know, I mean,
considering the time, and how terrified we were of anything,
you know, coming in contact with that that wasn't a
husband who wanted to make a baby. I can only imagine.
(11:04):
I can't only imagine, um, okay, And so for that
reason too, you know, a lot of us have probably
seen those famous photos of Queen Victoria's large crotch less
drawers that she would wear, right, but they were not
the sexy they weren't. They did not have the same
connotation that we think of today when we think of
(11:25):
crotchles panties. But we'll get into that later. So by
the time we hit eighteen seventies six, the crotch of
our drawers closed and was replaced by buttons at the hip.
That does not mean that crotchless underwear disappeared by any means.
It definitely still continued for decades. But at this time
(11:45):
you had knickers made of silk, a flannel of alpacable
I can't imagine. And then they as the century progressed,
they become wider and frillier. They would help fill out
the wider petticoats of the time that ended up becoming fashionable,
and you might even wear your fancy woolen I'll pack
a wool knickers over these things called combinations, which was
(12:09):
basically what like it was. It was almost a romper, right, yeah, yeah,
it was like a camusle bodice attached to knickers, eliminating
the need for a comiss um. And remember though these
kinds of fabrics, that a lot of this stuff was
being made up, particularly for wealthier women at the time,
things like I'll pack a wool, which we could I
(12:31):
would not imagine wearing I mean, we have woolen underwear
like the Long John's today, but thinking of paying a
pack of woolen hand ties steams very unhygienic. But the sweat,
so much sweat trapping, so much heat. But we didn't
have the kind of lightweight cotton fabric at an affordable
(12:54):
existing period, but also cotton at an affordable rate at
the time anyway, So there's technological aspect to this as well.
But there were also a number of more liberal women
who were rather tired of the fact that they were
wearing so many garments. And we've talked about these women
(13:15):
before a number of times on the podcast the Dress
Reformers of the nineteenth century. Yeah, these are women who
were like, hey, we actually want to leave the house
and be able to take deep breaths and not faint
on our fainting couches all the time and just move around.
Maybe ride a bicycle. Maybe ride a bicycle. Um. But
so this is coming from Reforming Women's Fashion eighteen fifty ninety, Politics,
(13:38):
Health and Art by Patricia A. Cunningham, and she writes
about how the dress reformers garments were designed on four
basic principles no ligature, uniform temperature, lightness of weight, and
suspension from the shoulders, basically freeing women from the constrictions
of the corset, but also from all of those bulky
(13:58):
heavy layers. Yeah, and so we have women like Amelia Bloomer,
whom we've mentioned a number of times. She debuted her
eponymous Bloomer suit in eighteen fifty one, which it was
sort of like an ankle calf or ankle length puffy
trousers and over which you would wear a dress or
(14:20):
a skirt that would only come down mid calf and
even though you're still covered from head to toe, it
lends more mobility, sure, but it was also still considered
quite scandalous. So scandalous people were so afraid of what
this meant for the social order of the day. Women
wearing pants, I mean, they were all we've talked on
(14:40):
the podcast before about what suffrage the suffrage movement did
for like cartooning, for instance, that everyone drew these cartoons
of these sad men abandoned at home by their suffragists wives.
And it was kind of the same thing because of
bloomers and and pants and women wanting to wear regular
clothes that allowed them to move freely and actually leave
the house and ride a bicycle. People were so afraid
(15:03):
that suddenly, like men would have to start wearing dresses,
because surely if women wear pants, then men can't wear
pants too. Well, the echoes back to to what you
were saying earlier, Caroline, of how women wore skirts, bifurcated
clothes i e. Pants, breeches where for men, Yeah, men
wore the pants. So for the liberal women who were
(15:24):
interested in dress reform but weren't entirely comfortable with the
notion of a bloomers suit or wearing trousers, underwear reform
was seen as a more subtle and acceptable kind of
fashion revolution. So you have things like the Emancipation Union
under flannel, which was patented in eighteen sixty eight. And
(15:47):
this really looks a lot like just a union suit
that you might even see still today, sort of like um,
like a long sleeve shirt and pants all in sort
of a onesie, like a giant one's like as I
have wednesie. I like the term underflannel. Oh, it's just
my underflannel if those are your winter under underpants, my
(16:08):
underflannels punching up and one person who I think that
we should devote entire podcast to at some point because
she's fascinating, who adopted the dress reform undersuit was Dr
Mary Walker, who was a doctor during the Civil War
and actually the first woman to receive a Medal of Honor.
(16:30):
And she was very liberal and address reformer to the
degree that she was arrested a number of times because
she would wear men's suits in public because she was like, listen,
I'm not wearing all of this corsetry and skirts and
petticoats and all this stuff. This is ridiculous. Nobody got
time for that. But yeah, she'd she'd wear the frock
(16:51):
coat and the trousers, and she was convinced that the
dress reform undersuit that she helped design would prevent rape
and seduction. Yeah. That was another interesting thing about these
union these union suits, these emancipation suits, was how intentionally
unsexy they were. Right under flannel, there's nothing sexy about
(17:13):
under flannel. Oh, but so warm, so perfect for snuggling,
that's right, just like a snuggy Okay. And then in
eighteen seventy five, just for another example of how there
was a lot of interest in this kind of underwear reform.
Susan Taylor Converse of Woburn, Massachusetts, debuted her Emancipation suit,
(17:34):
which was a corset and corset cover all in one,
but you could separate it into two pieces by buttons
at the hips. So there was sort of a spectrum
of this kind of dress reform where you see things
like this, where it's like, well, we don't want to
abandon female undergarments entirely, maybe we can just transition it
(17:55):
into something a little more manageable. Yeah, it's it's funny
to think of all the effort that that was going
into underwear at the time when we just go to
the department store or Target or something and pick up
panties of our own today. Yeah, it's funny to think
of under flannels being patented. Yeah, exactly, so much underwear effort. Um.
But so we're gonna take a quick break and when
(18:16):
we come back, we're going to move into the twentieth
century underwear gets a little bit more modern. And now
back to the show. So in the first half of
the podcast, we briefly mentioned Queen Victoria and her massive
crotchless undergarments, and it really is in large part thanks
(18:41):
to Queen Victoria's massive fashion influence that by the time
we get into the nineteen hundreds, obviously we've moved out
of Victorian era through the Edwardian we're now into the
progressive era that all but the poorest women because a
lot of our history so far has really only been
focused on women who could a four undergarments. But all
but the poorest women were wearing some sort of undergarment.
(19:06):
And it might be crotchless, it might not be croutchless, yeah,
but it is regardless. It is interesting to watch as
fashion has evolved since the nineteenth century, since even the
eighteenth century. It's interesting to watch as fashion evolved and
the silhouettes evolve, the underwear silhouettes and bulk and size
(19:28):
and crotches all evolve with it. Yeah. So in the
nineteen tens and twenties, there was an undergarment revolution of
foot because this is the time, of course, when corsets
in full floor length skirts were going away in favor
of the slimmer silhouettes. You have people like Caress Crosby
(19:50):
inventing these revolutionary things called bras, and women being like,
you know what, I'm a new woman. I don't think
I have to wear this corset anymore. Yeah, I mean,
think of, for instance, something that I'm obsessed with, which
is down Navvy. Think of the period costumes that they
wear on that show, and that they have very slim
silhouettes and they're not going to be wearing bulky under
(20:13):
flannel under those lovely silk dresses. Yeah. And World War
One plays a big role in this as well, because,
as we talked about a lot when it comes to
World War Two, during World War One, there were lots
of women who ended up working in the factories to
take over the jobs that the men left behind. And
(20:34):
one thing that sort of helped society get used to
this notion of women doing men's work. In quotes, some
would wear what were termed woman alls, which were essentially
kind of like a mesh between overalls and coveralls. Um,
but a little bit cuter to be honest, or maybe
it was just the hairstyles. Well they were poofi are. Yeah,
(20:56):
they were a little puffy. They look they remind me
because bloomers also were very puffy because they still had
to sort of resemble skirts so that if people wouldn't
freak out, but they did anyway, And so these women
alls definitely were like a puffy or softer, more feminine version,
and that was definitely on on purpose. I mean, there
was a lot of anxiety around women wearing pants, to
(21:17):
the point where they obviously had to rename them woman
alls instead of overalls or coveralls, because again, I mean,
it's just another interesting illustration of the anxiety around women
adopting or appropriating anything that had been considered masculine or
just for men. Well, and probably the only reason that
(21:38):
this happened, and women wouldn't be wearing pants and mass
immediately after World War One. It would still take time,
but the only reason that the tide started to change
was because wearing skirts in a factory setting was a liability,
it was an actual safety hazard, so they had to
(22:00):
wear woman alls or trousers. But once you start wearing
these closer fitting, bifurcated garments, guess what your underwear has
to change as well. And this is what leads to
our underwear crotches closing up for good. And so now
we're moving into the flapper era, and your silhouettes are slimmer,
(22:21):
your dress heamlines are definitely shorter, and so a lot
of new underwear technology basically had to be developed to
accompany the fashion of the day. Yeah, there were things
called tango knickers. There were kemmy knickers, which was a
combination between underskirts and camisas, and there were also flappers,
(22:42):
cammy knickers, and cammy bockers. Now, the differences between these
individual kinds of undergarments are not huge. They're all sort
of either combinations of uh bodices and knickers or are
just different different kinds of shorts. I mean, because we aren't.
(23:03):
We aren't to the point where they're high cut, our
full thighs are not exposed. We're still wearing, if anything,
shorts because the hemlines have risen with the Flapper era. Um,
but there are definitely more options and sexier options too,
because it's also during the Flapper era that women's sexuality
in conjunction too with the development of the movie industry
(23:26):
and pop culture. In that sense, women's sexuality starts to
come a little bit more to the forefront. And so
you know, ineligible Dame is going to have some sexy
flappers cammy knickers. And so even before women get cammy knickers,
a bunch of retailers and manufacturers are starting to get
in on this changing underwear technology game, and they're actually
(23:49):
starting to both advertised and mass produced underpants. For instance,
in nineteen eleven, the Saturday Evening Post publishes the first
print ad underwear. Granted it was for men, but it
was called the Kenosha Closed Crotch. And I assure you
it's all spelled with k's all caves, the closed Crotch.
(24:09):
I don't know why. I don't know why other than
maybe it looked good in the print ad. Well. I
also like that their tagline was the classiest garment made. Hey,
gentlemen want to be classic, that's right. And right around
this time too, you start having print advertisements for women's underwear.
But it's understandable that the men's underwear is going to
get the first ad too, because that's well scandalous seeing
(24:32):
a lady in her undergarments. Um. But once we're in
the early twenties, we have all these different kinds of
nickers for sale, the length of them again is going
to fluctuate in accordance with hemlines. And this is also
when we have the emergence of that loathed by many
(24:52):
word panty panty. It is a very diminutive word. Um.
But in sears and Roebuck cells, possibly the first period panties,
and they were solely for nighttime use. Yeah, probably because
they were higher cut and would be deemed inappropriate for
(25:12):
every day where. But Caroline, you mentioned just a second
ago that that panti is a very diminutive sounding word,
which is probably where a lot of the creep factor
comes from a grown woman wearing panties. It just doesn't
really mesh well and etymologically it is pretty diminutive because
before the turn of the century, children were making so
(25:32):
called panties for their dollies, which panties was just as
shortened formed of pantal leet and panty though might have
originated as a derogatory term for men's underwear because you know,
they were the original pantaloon wearers. And then if you
moved to nineteen ten, before we have the emergence of
panties for women, panty waste became an insult for weak
(25:57):
or cowardly manned the opposite of only man who wears
the pants, which was an expression that came out in
one I Love. I don't encourage the use of words
to diminish people in general. However, I did, like I
(26:18):
giggled out loud when I read panty waist, because that
is such like an old school, antiquated insult. I just
picture like the man you know in the striped leotard,
like with his barbells and his handlebar mustache, being like, hey,
your penny waste putting up his dukes, up his dukes. Well,
by the time those men start wearing the pants, so
(26:40):
to speak, in the early nineteen thirties, women start to
wear for the very first time, the kinds of close
fitting underwear similar to highwaist lady briefs that we see today.
And funnily enough, they looked a lot like those period
panties soul By Sears and Roebuck. Yeah, and it's around
(27:03):
this time that we're developing those close fitting panties like
what we think of today, because up until now, the
crotches were lower, possibly like you mentioned earlier, to avoid
that dangerous contact with the dangerous lady crotch. Yeah, I
think that that had a lot to do with it,
because if you do look at underwear up until this time,
(27:26):
it's all kind of drop waste in a way, while
leaving a lot of room. But I wonder too if
it has to do with fabric technology, because there was
still always through all of this the concern of the
vaginal canal getting enough air to it and enough circulation
so that you don't get the rotten crotch. I said it, Caroline,
(27:51):
but let's be honest, that's that's what they were trying
to avoid. Well, we all know that our vagina's breathe.
They have their own respiratory system and pendant from our
own lung, so it's good to keep air flowing. But
I mean, yeah, it's it's not like under garments of
the time. We're stretchy. It's not like you could just
pull them up and snap them, snap them into place.
(28:12):
So I I get it, but it's there are some
there are some interesting issues to examine there about why
people didn't want fabric up close to their libya. Well,
even this closer fitting underwear in the nineteen thirties wasn't
necessarily the kind that we would see, you know, in
a store today, like a pack of Haynes cotton underwear
that's super easy to take care of. Because we didn't
(28:35):
have things like washers and dryers in the home, and
because of fabric technology. At the time, women's underwear still
required a lot of maintenance, a lot of hand washing, ironing.
They still had lots of buttons. Yeah, you shook your hand,
we said ironing. Women had to iron their underwear, launder,
not even iron my shirt. I surely would not iron
(28:57):
my underwear. But then around World War two, women is
underwear definitely becomes a little more simplified, and this is
attributed partly to Else's kept Really, she is credited with
putting in elastic waste bands into underwear, and this is great, right,
except the whole reason that she did it is because
of famine related to World War Two and shrinking waistlines,
(29:21):
because with buttons and things, your underwear might just fall
right off of you if you started losing a lot
of weight. Yeah. And she also made them out of
drip dry materials so they were easier to care for
as well. And she was motivated to uh not only
to facilitate better fit, but also to allow women to
ride yet again bicycles around. So much of these spurts
(29:46):
of development that we see in women's underwear is largely
motivated by mobility. And we have these times when it's
it's World War One, when we finally close up the
crotches because oh, women are working in all it's World
War two and women are working again and needing to
move around and get from place to place. Same thing.
(30:07):
Going back to the thirties with address reformers. Um, it's
really interesting to see those kinds of parallels. So after
World War Two, we're wearing underwear similar to what we're
wearing today. We're wearing bras and panties or knickers. But
in the fifties and sixties, particularly with the return to domesticity,
(30:29):
you have, it's kind of the leave it to Beaver era,
the Madmen era. Women are also wearing lots of foundation garments. Yeah,
so we've got the pointy, nuclear shaped bras, the petticoats, girdles,
garter belts become a thing, and stockings. Yeah, because it's
all about creating the ideal lady shape, the small waste
(30:52):
of pointy boobs and then the poofy skirt. Well, I mean,
but that's that's not a new thing. I mean, women
were wearing bustles, women wearing corsets. This is just it's
like another courset, except it's a pointy brawl and you
can actually take a deep breath in it. But isn't
it interesting though, that when we have that return to domesticity,
we put more undergarments back on Caroline. But yeah, starting
(31:14):
around the nineties, seventies and all the way through today
are underwear starts to get smaller and smaller and less
and less. Yeah. By the time we reach the mid nineties,
that's when we have, for instance, the arrival and mass
of the thong. Yeah, and then the g string, which
I think and we did a whole episode on uh,
(31:37):
the thong and the invention of the thong and all
of that. So go to stuff I've never told you
dot com and starts thong and you can listen to it. Um.
But I would say, and we talked about this in
that episode, I think thongs are out for the most part.
They're functional, but I don't think they're fashionable anymore now, man,
I have said it before in the podcast person and
I will say it again. Just laser cut boy short
(31:59):
through the way to go, no panty lines and also
no wedgeees. But what about under flannels? Under flannels that
might be good for sleeping, Yeah, rainy Sunday afternoons, the
under flannels, yes, listening to podcast all day long. But
we've mentioned along the way how technology has facilitated this
development of underwear. We just want to briefly focus a
(32:21):
little bit more on that. And this is coming from
a paper in The Journal of Popular Culture by Janet
and Peter Philip called History from Below Women's Underwear and
the Rise of Women's Sport, which is really fascinating it
It obviously focuses a lot on sport, and we're not
going to talk about sports so much, um, but it
talked about how these fabric innovations and also the arrival
(32:45):
of elastic really did so much for us. It meant
that we could wear the underwear that we are wearing
or not wearing today. And then alongside elastic, which in
the early twentieth century was slowly began to replace things
like draw strings and buttons in under pants, we get
(33:05):
the affordability of breathable cotton fabric finally breathable cotton. And
so this was coming about thanks to spreading prosperity and
shrinking poverty, which kind of gave rise to the use
of cotton dresses in addition to cotton underwear, especially as
our environments that we were living and existing in were
(33:26):
better heated. Yeah, and all of us is contributing to
better hygiene at home. I mean, we also have better
understanding of hygiene UM and things like running water and
electricity which would eventually facilitate washers and dryers, all of
which contributes to the kind of underwear that we were
able to wear. Um. But then during the World wars eras,
(33:49):
you also have the development of synthetic fibers, which were
both a blessing and a curse for women's crotches because
in the twenties and thirties, for instance, on was all
the rage, and then in World War Two, nylon was
a big deal, and polyester as well, and so it
allowed these for these new and lighter kinds of underwear
(34:13):
for women in those different kinds of shapes that we
had talked about, but it took a while for them
to figure out, especially after we got to the sixties
with lycra and spandex, that while that's all fine well
and good, but you probably need to have cotton in
the crotch for that breathe ability factor because of the
vagina's respiratory system, it's gotta breathe. You gotta let that
(34:37):
lady breathe. Really, you just don't want sweat too much
down there, no uh no more under flannel um and
so yeah, and that's when in the nineteen seventies you
get those cotton gussets that help improve underwear hygiene. And
Caroline for a possibly t M I side note on
something my mom did tell me. I remember when I
(34:59):
was hitting puberty and she was talking to me more
about my sweet lady bud. She emphasized the importance of
the cotton crotch and underwear. You know. She was like, Kristen,
don't you need to do that? You need to let
her breathe. So I'm really just like parenting my mother
because she was emphatic about it for the prevention of
(35:22):
things like yeast infections and all of those other things
that can happen. And it has stuck in my brain,
Caroline ever since. So thanks mom. Yeah, I don't I don't.
I feel like my mother and I had an underwear conversation,
but I can't remember it, and that's probably like mentally
on purpose. Well, it's probably a big deal for my
(35:44):
mom and women of our mom's ages because it was
in the nineteen seventies that those cotton gussets the crotches
were brought along, like became more standard in underwear to
improve underwear hygiene, because there was I think it was
and maybe the late nineteen sixties or early seventies where
(36:04):
there was sort of an outbreak of infections that women
were getting from panties made with certain synthetic fibers that
were not good for your vaginal ecosystem. Right, Well, your
body is natural, and your underwear should be natural, that's right,
(36:25):
just all made of gluten free uh no, partially hydrogenated oil,
sugar free underwear. But one thing that we haven't really
talked about in this timeline we've been going through is
the increased sexualization of underwear because it really did start
out as this utilitarian kind of thing. I mean, if
(36:47):
you look back in in art, for in like the
eighteenth century, of course there are eroticized images of women
just in their corsets and petticoats, but it's so different
from today where you have Victoria's Secret and it's it's
very it's all about sexiness or cute. You need to
(37:08):
be sexy cute. Yeah, Well, the impression that I got
reading Jill fields paper erotic modesty, which I mean she
goes she goes in depth on underwear and clothing and
just sort of the political implications of all of these things.
And some of the things she talks about are the
fact that you know, underwear is a functional thing and
(37:31):
and women do need it for various reasons, have needed
it for various reasons, and have needed it to perform
various functions. But going all the way back to people
being scared of women wearing bifurcated garments, up to today,
there's been that fear of women being too masculine, and
so in the Night she talks about how in the
nineteen twenties and and really any time that underwear veers
(37:53):
too close to being too masculine or too functional, that
there's always the a push that accompanies this to make
it very pretty. Also, so as soon as women start
wearing semi bifurcated underwear, uh, let's make them panti lets
and attach lace on the bottom of the knee. Or
as soon as women are wearing more panty style underwear,
(38:17):
oh well, let's make them sexy and have a garter
belt and have more of a wink wink, nudge nudge
sexuality to it, because while it's bad and dangerous and
scary to think of a woman's crotch of her sexuality,
of course people associated underwear with eroticism and being sexy. Yeah,
(38:37):
she actually talks about the relationship between those things. In
going back to the open crotched era, she said, wearing
these drawers marked a female body is conforming to the
dictates of respectable femininity, including the unspoken provision of sexual
accessibility via that open crotch. But then as a cross
(39:00):
closes up and women attain things like the right to vote,
and then more of us atret going to work. She says,
in the twentieth century, open crush garments were signified as
primarily erotic, and that the transition from open to close
doors reveals not only the power of clothing as a
medium of signification, but how women struggles for autonomy interact
(39:23):
with resistant social forces to reconfigure gender distinctions. Because this
is one thing that popped out in a few sources,
how in the nineteen eighties you have the woman in
the power suit. She's going to work, and she's got
the big shoulder pads and she's trying to make her
way and outwardly, she's wearing clothes that really mimic men's clothes.
(39:43):
You know, you have the ladies suits, women wearing the
floppy bow ties. But underneath this is the era of
the sexy teddy's, right. Yeah. I think of Sigourney Weaver
and Working Girl, which is one of my all time
favorite movies. But Sigourney Weaver being like the tough, ball
busting boss. But when she breaks her leg and she's
at home, or I think even when she's in the
hospital too, with her leg like up in a cast,
(40:05):
she's wearing a sexy, silky neglige because you can't have
a woman just being too masculine or too powerful. Yeah,
and and now it seems like a lot of our
concern has shifted interestingly, uh to the age that someone
is wearing sexy underwear. We get concerned about a nice
(40:27):
When I say we, I mean like culturally, the conversations
that crop up when say, you know there are too
sexy of underwear in the girls section at Target. Well, yeah,
I mean, but there have been There have been eight
things around underwear and age forever. Because Fields writes about
I think it's in the nineteenth century. If I'm not
mistaken early nineteenth century, when you know, boys and girls
(40:49):
would basically be dressed the same up until they're about five,
but that girls, young girls would wear panties or pantaloons
or you know what. The basically the underwear that you
and I were joking out at the top of the podcast,
the puffy panda lands that would allow girls active play.
It would allow them to be rough and tumble, allow
them to get a lot of activity. It wasn't until
(41:10):
they hit puberty or hit like sexual maturity or marrying
age that it was like, Okay, well, now you put
on the course that restricts your movement. Now you put
on the all of the petticoats and undergarments and other
things that restrict your movement, because now you're a sexually
mature adult woman who was just expected to sit there. Well,
and that ties into one thing we didn't have a
chance to talk about, which was the development of the trousseau,
(41:34):
of the tradition of uh woman of a marrying age
being sort of storing up her her sexy petticoats that
she would wear for her husband. And that's where the
wink wink, nudge nudge thing comes in because underwear is
not supposed to be sexy. It's just functional, but it's
supposed to be seck that it's supposed to be sexy. Yeah.
But one final note though, Caroline, before we sign off,
(41:56):
is that when it comes to women's underwear, movie away
from the age thing, but just women's underwear. I feel
like today we don't even talk about underwear so much
because we have so many styles to choose from. People
have kind of gotten over the whole thong horror and
now we're just focused on talking about what's underneath our
boy shorts, thongs, laser cut briefs, whatever it might be.
(42:19):
Now we're just like it's all pupe talk, which says
a lot about how we culturally have evolved in terms
of women's sexuality, but still have lots of hang ups
in terms of our bodies. So with this really curious
to hear from people about your thoughts on underwear. I
want to know if other people are grossed out by
(42:41):
the word panty and why If we have costume historians listening,
I'm sure you have lots to contribute to this conversation
as well. And wondering from men whether we need to
do a podcast on Boxers versus Briefs or the closed
crotch with the k no Sha Cloths crotch. You can
(43:01):
email us mom Stuff at how stuffworks dot com is
our email address. You can also tweet us at mom
Stuff podcast or messages on Facebook. And we've got a
couple of messages to share with you when we come
right back from a quick break and now back to
the show. So I've got a couple of letters here
(43:22):
from our episode about Taylor Swift, and this one is
from Madison, subject line Teeth Swifty and her feminism. She
writes as one of the many people who just now
started recognizing Taylor Swift after that ridiculously catchy song of hers,
shake It Off, came out, and becoming more impressed of
the feminist impact she's having on young girls. Coming from
(43:44):
a small, mostly country town, I grew up under the
notion that feminism was a bunch of angry lesbians yelping
about how much they hate men. It never made sense
to me until I started listening to your podcast and
it clicked. These girls that are listening to Taylor's music
and seeing her self confidence need a fulfillment at this
time where they happen to be insecure while trying to
discover who they are. They see her as this woman
(44:06):
who knows what she wants and deserves, who isn't afraid
to stand up for something she should have rights to.
She has that girl next door essence it's easy to
relate to. Therefore, she can easily be that good influence
for girls while showing them how to be feminist powerhouses
all through songs. It really goes to show the music
is a powerful thing. This was such a well worded podcast,
another wonderful outstanding job. Well done, ladies, So thank you
(44:30):
Madison Well. I have a letter here from Aaron. She says,
I just finished listening to your Taylor Swift episode and
absolutely loved it. It's impossible not to respect her after
that light you shed. I'm obsessed, just as my boyfriend
who's forced a jam to in the car with me.
I haven't always been a swift ee though, like many others,
I used to think she was just a pretty face
manipulated by the biz and a little bit of auto tune.
(44:52):
One summer, my friend had an extra ticket for her
Speak Now concert and I reluctantly went. I was blown
away by her stage presence and the fact that she
play guitar, piano, ukulele, and banjo. There was no denying
she had talent. It wasn't until I learned more about
her completely boss ownership of her brand, her embracing feminism,
and her switch to a genre that was more at
my alley, that I absolutely adored her. But that isn't
(45:14):
why I'm writing. The number one reason why I put
Taylor Swift on a golden pedestal is that she's a
role model for young girls to pick up music. For
two years, I worked at a mom and pop music
store that catered to introducing kids to music, providing them
with their first instruments, and offering a great lessons program.
Seeing students glow when they played their first few notes
was my favorite part of my job. Unfortunately, only one
(45:36):
out of four students were girls. The endless supply of
dudes holding guitars and the media has made instruments a
boy thing. Yes, that is what a young customer told
his little sister. T Swift challenges this extremely ridiculous notion.
I have seen first hand how she inspires young girls
to learn music When we show them all the easy
sheet music from red in nineteen nine that they can
(45:59):
play there, immediately begging their parents to buy them a guitar.
We put on an optional semi monthly concert, but it's
usually only the boys signing up. That is, until we
had an exclusively Taylor Swift concert. It was our greatest
attendance ever. No other musician inspire such a love of music,
and I can't possibly put into words how important that is.
(46:20):
So thank you so much, Aaron. I love that story,
and thanks to everybody who's written into us Mom stuff
at how stuff works dot com is our email address
and to find links all of our social media as
well as all of our videos, blogs and podcasts with
our sources. So you can follow along with us, head
on over to stuff Mom Never Told You dot com
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