Historical undergarments and the hazards of reading historical AUs

[cimorene]

You really should check the names of garments and especially check what kind of underwear people were wearing whenever writing historical fiction, even if you think it's well within the era of modern clothing.

(You could be surprised all the way up to the 1960s! The modern bra - with cups - didn't really come into existence until the 1930s, although brassieres were first sold in the late 1800s; and elasticated fabrics first appeared in the 1930s, but they weren't like modern stretch fabric. Meanwhile, just because a corset was involved doesn't mean the standard pop culture perception of undergarments that went with it is correct. There was a vast difference between the early 17th century and the early 20th century, and the early 1800s were often uncorseted or corseted only minimally. On the other hand, the Victorian era, which may seem the most familiar to many people because of its frequent appearances in pop culture texts, demonstrably involved about twice as many garments and undergarments as many, including those educated by popular movies and television, are aware.)

Anyway, I've just discovered that two errors in historical undergarments is my limit before flinging my phone down in exasperation, and even though in this fanfiction it would be an easy fix, I don't know that I'll be sanguine enough to compose a polite, casual, and friendly comment on the subject any time soon.

Imagine being easily able to imagine how it feels to not care about the minute details of historical costume! I can't. I mean... I've tried. I've gotten as far as logically understanding that people don't, but there's a huge emotional gap. The narrative just won't hold together. It's essentially a complete cipher to me.

Comments

[amara1783]

You could have titled this post "getting your knickers in a twist about (cami)knickers" but you didn't. Respect! ;D

[cimorene]

I DIDN'T EVEN THINK ABOUT THAT. Dammit!!!

[phosfate]

Trippin' with Step-Ins

[cesy]

So frustrating!

[princessofgeeks]

I don't know much about undergarments, but I have other areas where the fine details really matter to me and I totally understand your frustration.

[ilyena_sylph]

Oh Gods Preach It.

I just.

Don't understand.

[phosfate]

Sports bras weren't a thing until circa 1990. Perfectly ordinary Midwestern men in the 1970s wore Speedos to swim that were half the size of their underpants. Girdles were standard for women under *everything* through the 70s - my sister wore a wig and a girdle in high school! And if you want to know that special quiet, Channel Zero style dread, google the menstrual belt.

[stultiloquentia]

Hahaha I was just about to comment, "And historical underwear is so much fun to research, why would anyone deny themselves?!" but you're right; I forgot about the menstrual horrors.

[cimorene]

You know, I saw a glancing reference to menstrual arrangements in the pre-industrial period that interested me recently and I meant to do more research about it because - and this is decidedly odd but still sadly predictable - you can do A LOT of reading on women's undergarments without finding a single mention of it.

[phosfate]

I've heard a lot of different stuff, from rags doing the job, to some women being constantly pregnant/nursing that it was rarely an issue, but most of it has been theoretical rather than evidence-based.

[cimorene]

Yeah, that's already a problem with garments that weren't worn by the upper classes and with a lot of undergarments from further back in time. I've also read that just bleeding on your clothes and everything else was done in at least some of Europe at least some of the time, so I guess there's got to be some documentation of that as well.

And of course there were menstrual huts and other forms of isolation to some extent.

But I'm curious about non-Western cultures, particularly the ones where pants for women were widespread - various Eurasian nomadic cultures, I mean. If you're already wearing pants, and also if you're riding horses daily, it seems like the leap to underpants or something of the kind would be more easily made...

[cimorene]

Haha, okay, I've heard about my mom's outfits in high school in the 70s and I know she did not wear girdles, but she and her sisters were dressing mostly in hand-me-downs and were definitely not middle class, plus my mom has always been comfort-oriented.

The wig got me though. A wig! A wig? That was a thing????

I know wigs were a thing for, like, performances, and parties, particularly for black women, but I'd never have guessed it would be a regular daily wear thing for teenagers.

[phosfate]

I'm sorry, my language wasn't precise enough. They were common through the 1970s, and were still advertised on television, but obviously by that time not everybody wore them because we weren't insane. My sister went to high school in the 60s. I have a photo of her where she looks like an astronaut's underage wife.

"Why did you wear that shit?" I asked her once.

"I have no fucking idea."

[cimorene]

an astronaut's underage wife.

😂

[phosfate]

Now I've got this mental picture of Jerry Lee Lewis as an astronaut. "WILL YOU STOP KICKING THE SWITCHES WITH YOUR FEET?"

[cimorene]

Is it like a real astronaut or more 2001 spacesuits and juiceboxes?

[phosfate]

Well now it's both.

[owl]

What did women wear when exercising? Surely not a normal underwired bra?

[phosfate]

Unless they had access to special athletic gear like Olympians (who tended to be small-breasted anyway, lucky fuckers) and could make do with hacked leotards) or hardcore joggers and runners, yes, we did. And yes, it was every bit as enjoyable as you might think. Although at least back then every clothing store had a lady who could fit you properly, and swimsuits covered your junk and the surrounding real estate properly.

Do kids still wear those knit gymsuits? Are they still horrible?

[sciatrix]

When I was in gym back in the 00s, we were expected to buy specifically marked cheap grey T-shirts with the school's logo on it and black athletic shorts, and we could wear that over whatever underwear we wanted. I think mostly people had sports bras, but I wasn't looking too hard.

[phosfate]

We had these one-piece knit jumpsuits that had aqua shorts and white-striped tops, which was the closest they could get to blue and white, our colors. I'm not absolutely sure, because I've hysterically blocked a lot of it out, but I think they snapped up the front.

[brownbetty]

I once failed out of a fic 40% of the way through because someone was using the wrong sort of shovel, so I feel this extremely.

[cimorene]

OMG, I would never know that, but I love it. What was it, and what should it have been?

[brownbetty]

It was some kind of ranch-hand AU, and someone was digging fence holes with a shovel, when the proper tool is a post-hole-digger (https://www.homedepot.com/b/Outdoors-Garden-Center-Garden-Tools-Digging-Tools-Post-Hole-Digger/N-5yc1vZc5ra). River Tam explains one to Simon, very telegraphically, in Firefly.

(For digging fence posts, the goal is to have a hole that is as close to possible the shape of the fence posts, and with a regular shovel, the hole tends to be an inverted pyramid shape, not least because the average shovel is much wider than the average post. The less the shape of the hole approximates the shape of the post, the more movement in the post, which contributes to your fence falling over sooner.)

[cimorene]

Oh, I even knew that! And here I thought I didn't know anything about shovels.

But I guess I've watched enough landscape and gardening on TV.

So odd to not just look up "how to build a fence" or something if you don't have fence-building knowledge...

[brownbetty]

I've never had an opportunity to use one but it's such a neat looking tool that I've always *wanted* to, so it's possible I just bailed on the fic because the opportunity was there, and they missed it, and I was that mad.

[phosfate]

I bailed on a Professionals fic because the author was too young to know she was sending them on a scenic vacation behind the Iron Curtain.

[phosfate]

No no sorry it was The Persuaders.

[brownbetty]

adskjfkh!!

No, I think this is wronger by a order of magnitude!

[phosfate]

Naw, if I were into shovels I would be pretty horked.

I'm also super picky so I would've researched, like, what shovel to use. I have two feet of books on British police procedure/history/anecdata just to write fucking Hot Fuzz fic.

[cimorene]

Hahaahaha! 😂😂