Erotic Modesty: (Ad)dressing Female Sexuality and Propriety in Open and Closed Drawers, USA, 1800–1930

Abstract

When middle–class women began to wear drawers in the early 1800s, they were feminised by fabric, ornamentation and an open crotch. Incorporating open drawers into respectable women’s dress within a framework of ‘passionlessness’ constructed female sexuality as both erotic and modest. Crotch construction figured in the twentieth–century struggle to establish modern boundaries of women’s sexual propriety. The accepted sexual and moral meanings generated by open– and closed–crotch undergarments reversed as women increasingly chose to wear closed drawers during a period of women’s greater public presence and feminist activism. The transition from open to closed drawers reveals not only the power of clothing as a medium of significance, but how women’s struggles for autonomy interact with resistant social forces to reconfigure gender distinctions.

Doing and meaning

“…The ethnographic work of Jantzen, Østergaard and Vieira may be one indication that the alleged rise of 'raunch culture' has been over-exaggerated. The middle-class underwear and lingerie market has always been a site of decorum, as highlighted by the move from open to close-crotched knickers at the beginning of the 20th-century (Fields, 2002). In recent years, this market has undoubtedly been influenced by developments at both the upper and lower end of the sector.…”

Women’s Bodies and the Evolution of Anti-rape Technologies: From the Hoop Skirt to the Smart Frock

“…Clothing selection plays a familiar role in the public legitimation of women’s claims that they have been raped, but the connections between fashion and rape persist across history and cultures. One example is that of crotchless underwear which was the norm prior to the industrial revolution in Western cultures because it was associated with good genital hygiene, proper ventilation and, counter-intuitively, modesty (Fields, 2002). With increasing urbanization and women’s growing occupation of the public square, this association between crotchlessness and purity ended and closed underwear became aligned with modesty.…”

“…With increasing urbanization and women’s growing occupation of the public square, this association between crotchlessness and purity ended and closed underwear became aligned with modesty. This symbolic inversion held that crotchless underwear made one available to illicit advances (Fields, 2002). However, there was never a clear point of transition from one ideology to the next, speaking to the unevenness of how fashion technologies and their attached ideologies intersect with the gendered body.…”

[art]ifact: Where History Meets Art, A Case Study in Shared Authority

“…While this became an issue around many objects the most obvious was the woman’s undergarment. Research by Jill Fields argues that the bifurcated underwear of the early 20 th century functioned to differentiate men and women (men in pants and women in skirts) (Fields 2002, 492–515; Fields 2007, 41). The open crotch of the undergarment functioned as a way of maintaining this tradition of not fully closing the garment, therefore still resembling a skirt, which ultimately allowed the woman wearing the undergarment to maintain her feminine modesty.…”