The Men’s Undergarment Hall of Shame by Kate Dolan

Welcome back to History Undressed, guest author, Kate Dolan (also writing as K.D. Hays)! She's written a fun piece for you all today that I'm sure you will enjoy!!!

The Men’s Undergarment Hall of Shame

by Kate Dolan

We all know there are men’s clothes and women’s clothes. And sometimes clothing that is exclusively masculine for centuries eventually becomes suitable for women as well – think of boots and most notably, pants. But with one notorious undergarment, the reverse was true – it started as a women’s garment and was appropriated by fashionable men, though few would probably have been willing to admit it. Some men even wore vanity devices that women never would dream of wearing. This is the Men’s Undergarment Hall of Shame (and since this is history, we’re not even getting as far as Speedos).

“You want pain? Try wearing a corset.” This advice from the character Elizabeth Swan in the movie Pirates of the Caribbean sums up the modern perception of the garment that has been alternately referred to over the centuries as a corset, stays, and "a pair of bodies." A pair of stays or a corset are a stiff garment worn around the ribcage and waist. They are usually “boned” which means they have channels filled with pieces of metal, cane or baleen “boning” to make them fairly rigid. Some of them come down lower than others and therefore compress the waist and lower abdomen more. If laced tightly, they can make it difficult to breathe, bend, reach or eat. I have worn reproduction 18^th Century stays on numerous occasions and in my experience, if they are not laced too tight, they are much like wearing a back support brace. But the same garment, if laced up tight to improve the fit of a gown, makes it really hard to take a full breath.  

Women started wearing these by at least the 1400s and period satire suggests that men may have also secretly worn them during the Elizabethan period to give themselves a fashionably unnatural pinched waist. There is no doubt that by the 1780s, some men of fashion were wearing stays, and they continued to do so for about the next 100 years. One source described the well-dressed man as “pinched in and laced up until he resemble an earwig.” Before we condemn them too thoroughly, however, we should also consider that these dandies were the same men who made it fashionable to bathe, so we do owe them a certain debt.    

The thought of men wearing a corset may be shameful to some, but if women wore them, too, it seems a bit hypocritical to criticize them too much. But there was a another fashion device for which ridicule is justly deserved – the calf pad. From about 1770 onward, men began padding their stockings to make their calves look more round and well developed. This fad lasted until men discarded their knee breeches and took to wearing full length, loose fitting trousers. In Sheridan's play A Trip to Scarborough, the character Lord Foppington berates his hosier for thickening the calves of his stockings too much. When the hosier, Mr. Mendlegs, protests that the stockings are the same he supplied in the fall, Foppington explains that "if you make a nobleman's Spring legs as robust as his autumn calves, you commit a monstrous impropriety, and make no allowance for the fatigues of the winter."

So we have men padding their legs to make them look muscular, cinching their waists with corsets to make them look trim and fit, what did they do with the shirts? After all, shirts were considered the basic undergarment for a man for at least the last 500 years. In the early 19th Century, they added "ears" to the shirts by creating collars that were so high, before being turned down, they entirely covered the head and face. Even when folded down, the points of the collar still came to nearly ear level. Lady Stanley commented "I think that part would be very comfortable to keep one snug from flies and sun."

Since most of the time it seems to be women who are slaves to fashion's torture, I found it amazing to see the devices used by men in the name of vanity. But then it really should have come as no surprise, since men were also the first to wear wigs and high heels.

Thank heavens the men in my family pay no attention to fashion and are content to wear whatever's on the top of the laundry basket. You never know when corsets might make another comeback!

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Kate Dolan writes historical fiction and romance under her own name and contemporary mysteries and children’s books under the name K.D. Hays. You can learn more about her misadventures with history by visiting www.katedolan.com.

'Twas the Fright Before Christmas by Kate Dolan

 Today I'd like to welcome Kate Dolan back to History Undressed! She's written a fun post today about Christmas and ghosties... Enjoy!

Twas the Fright Before Christmas

by Kate Dolan

Most people these days associate scary tales of the supernatural with Halloween, not Christmas.  Oh, there are usually a few haunted gingerbread houses at the annual  "Festival of Trees" because of Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas, and this year I saw a zombie-themed Christmas tree, but generally our modern interpretation of the holiday is jolly elves and smiling gingerbread men.

That was not always the case.

The church designated the celebration of the nativity to occur during the shortest, darkest coldest days of the year not because clerics thought Jesus was actually born in December but because pagans already celebrated a number of holidays around the winter solstice and overlaying the Christian holiday on top of a pagan festival made it easier to keep converts from backsliding.

The winter solstice is a time of cold deadly fear reaching back into the collective unconscious of mankind's earliest days. It taps into our deepest, darkest terrors. What if the sun doesn't come back? What if we remain in a perpetual state of chill, darkness and hunger, just a hair's breadth away from the cold finality of the grave?

A great time to celebrate, right?

I assume the celebrations started as a way to triumph humanity's power of the intellect over the power of our fears. We know that once we've reached the solstice, the worst is behind us. Each day from then on the sunlight will grow stronger and the earth will come back to life. We have faith in our future.

So we can tell ourselves things will get better and we can stage a celebration. But deep down, we are still mourning the loss of light and life.

It is a natural time for telling scary stories of spirits roaming the earth during the long dark nights. The cycle of work which demanded grueling days of hard labor during planting and harvest seasons left little to do during the winter months. People huddled inside and told stories to while away the hours. And very often they were scary stories.

These were sometimes called "winter tales," a term which eventually became synonymous with "old wives tales" of the fantastical and this is why Shakespeare named his tale of a statue coming to life A Winter's Tale. In the beginning of the play ,the character Prince Mamillius proposes to tell a story and suggests "A sad tale's best for winter:  I have one/Of sprites and goblins…"

Unfortunately, most of these tales have been lost and scholars conjecture even how the prince's tale ends. 

One scary legend we do know a little about comes from the Germans and it is about "der Belznickel," the Christmas demon.  He's sort of the evil twin of Santa Claus. Often said to visit on the eve of St. Nicholas Day (December 6), he comes not to reward the good but to punish the bad. He carries a switch to whip misbehaving children and chains to tie them up. In short, he is not a good role model  for positive discipline practices. Like St. Nick, he is often said to dress in clothes trimmed with fur, but they are ragged and black. He sometimes has goat horns reminiscent of the devil, and glowing red eyes.  Tales of this "Anti-Claus" inspired me to write my first ghost story, "Bride of Belznickel," which was released in anthology of Christmas paranormal tales a few years ago and has just recently come out as a standalone ebook.

Some have argued that the tradition of telling winter tales died out and was not revived until the early 19th Century.  I disagree.  I have no evidence whatsoever, but I suspect that at least in some places, the tradition continued simply because the pattern of life continued. It was not until industry drew workers to the cities and gaslight extended the working day that  people lost the long idle storytelling hours of winter.

But regardless of whether the tradition carried through or was re-started by the Victorians, there is no doubt that ghost stories, including several by Charles Dickens, made up a key component of their celebrations. "It is quite unnecessary to mention the date at all," Jerome K. Jerome explains in his introduction to Told After Supper, a collection of Christmas ghost stories published in 1891. "The experienced reader knows it was Christmas Eve, without my telling him.  It always is Christmas Eve, in a ghost story. Christmas Eve is the ghosts' great gala night."

Jack Skellington tried to tell us that when he urged the ghoulish characters of Halloween Town to take over Christmas.  Not everyone was ready to listen, but with sightings of zombie Christmas trees on the rise, who knows? Maybe we are ready again to wish each other a Very Scary Christmas.

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Told After Supper is available free online through Project Gutenberg (http://www.gutenberg.org/catalog/world/readfile?fk_files=1447582)

Kate Dolan writes historical fiction and romance under her own name and contemporary mysteries and children’s books under the name K.D. Hays. You can learn more about her misadventures with history by visiting www.katedolan.com.

Guest Author Kate Dolan on Reenacting

Kate and her daughter at the Colonial Craftsman
Weekend at Jerusalem Mill Village

Today on History Undressed, I'd like to introduce you to our guest author Kate Dolan, who also happens to be a historical reenactor. I can not think of a more fun hobby! 

Reenacting

by Kate Dolan

My packing list includes a basketful of petticoats and a sugar axe—not what most people typically bring when they go camping, but this is not a typical camping trip. I’m headed to the Ft. Frederick Market Fair, an event which evokes the atmosphere of an 18th Century colonial village. I’m a reenactor without a gun.

We’re not attempting to recreate a past battle or specific historical event. Rather we’re trying to recreate, as much as possible, a bit of everyday life in the 18th Century. This includes cooking over an open fire, sleeping in shelters or barracks that were used during the time period, and avoiding modern conveniences as much as possible. And we do it all wearing 18th Century clothing, which isn’t that big of a problem unless you have to get somewhere in a hurry.

My family and I only camp at a couple of such events each year, so I’m not the most experienced “primitive” camper on the block, but we’ve been doing this for eight or nine years so I generally know what to expect at an event.

I know that if we’re cooking, we’ll need a lot of firewood. And that means I’ll need someone to collect it, replenish the supply, and most importantly, to split the big hunks into small chunks about the size of a small box of spaghetti. Those small chunks start to burn quickly and help keep a fire at an even temperature. This is really important when cooking things like pancakes and bacon. (The pancake recipe is period-correct; the modern bacon really isn’t but we like it too much to leave it off the menu!) By contrast, baking something like an apple pie requires a big, long-burning fire that produces lots of red-hot coals. Then even after cooking, you need to keep the fire going to heat water to wash the dishes. Over the course of a day, it’s a lot of wood.

The registration fee at most events includes firewood, and there’s usually enough for everyone, but there’s no guarantee that it’s dry or that it will stay that way, so some people will start to hoard wood as soon as they set up camp. Sometimes roving gangs of oversized children go around trying to sell firewood, but we try to steer them to more honorable pursuits like stealing laundry (more about that later).

My son learned to split wood pretty well when he was nine, so he’s a big help with that. My daughter spends a lot of time bringing water into camp, one pitcher at a time. In addition to water for drinking, cooking and doing dishes, we need it for washing hands, faces, and occasionally, hair. At one event, I thoroughly grossed out a visiting fifth grade class by washing my hair with lard-based soap and then rinsing it with vinegar. (The vinegar restores the ph balance which is left too alkaline from the soap. The first time I used soap I ended up with hair that felt greasy and dry at the same time. Pretty counter-productive!)

So did I notice my hair smelling like vinegar? Well, no, because it smelled too much like smoke to notice any other smell. Words cannot really describe how pervasive the smell of wood smoke is after a day of living right by the fire. Wool clothing in particular absorbs the scent like a sponge, but it seeps into everything. I imagine back in the colonial era that was quite a blessing, as the smoke could cover up a great many less pleasant aromas. But it can be quite a shock when we return home and bring things in the house. Sometimes we turn right back around and leave them outside again for a few days to air out.

Most of my colonial wardrobe doesn’t get washed much, if at all. My basic undergarment, a shift, is like a thin white nightgown and those do get washed. Over that I wear a pair of stays (like pants, this pair is actually just one garment). They lace up around my ribcage and force me to sit without slouching. If I lace them tightly, they can make it difficult to take in a deep breath, but usually if I’m working I don’t make them tight so they’re fairly comfortable. Stays are similar to a corset, but they’re shaped differently and don’t come down as far so they don’t cinch in the waist as much.

Over the stays, I wear two petticoats, which are not undergarments but outer skirts. Sometimes they are worn under a gown, but they are meant to show and be pretty full. Women who are trying to dress in a more fashionable manner will make their skirts even more bulky with padding (bum rolls) or cage-like devices called panniers.

Not me. I find using the porta-potty challenging enough with two simple petticoats.

Anyway, back to getting dressed because it does take about twenty times longer than it does on a regular camping trip. Over the shift, stays, and petticoats I wear a short gown or or jacket of some kind. That is held together with pins and tied closed with an apron. I use the apron as if it were a giant paper towel, so it’s pretty dirty by the end of the day.

Unless it’s really hot, I wear period stockings that come up past my knees and shoes like loafers with about a two-inch heel. If I’m lazy, I’ll wear modern clogs. If I’m trying to be more authentic, I’ll put on (briefly) a pair of straight-lasted reproduction colonial leather shoes. Apparently, the 18th Century fashion for symmetry even carried over to footwear for a time. All feet were considered equal. In other words, no right or left shoes. This has to have been one of the dumbest fashions of all time. The only dumber decision was the idea to recreate the ridiculous fashion two hundred years later for the sake of authenticity.

If the day is cool, I wear a neck kerchief and possibly a cloak. And then I put my hair up in a bun and cover it with a white cap. Again, the more fashionable women in camp may be wearing fancy decorated straw hats or silk bonnets but I hate wearing anything on my head so I usually wear the lightest cap I can find. And if I need to keep the sun or rain out of my face, I wear a man’s plain felt hat over my cap.

So after a couple of days, my hair is either dirty or pickled, everything I own smells like it’s been stored up a chimney, soot and grease from the fire have stained my hands black and my face is red from sun and wind. That means I had a good time.. It means the weather was nice enough for me to stay out all day. It means I had fun cooking outside where it’s a challenge. Or if my hands are clean, it means that I was probably doing laundry demonstrations and my kids got to take turns stealing the clothes laid out to dry. (One group of “bad” kids are the laundry thieves and the other “good” kids chase them through camp yelling at the top of their lungs. This is done ostensibly to show visitors how valuable clothing was in the past. But really I think my kids like to have an excuse to chase each other with weapons.)

When they’re not stealing laundry, chopping wood or carrying water, the kids can usually be found at one of the many tents offering goods for sale. Their favorite purchase is maple sugar, and they like to hack it to pieces with a sugar axe before eating it. Again, the use of weaponry undoubtedly figures heavily in the appeal.

At the end of the day, I don’t know how close we’ve come, if at all, to recreating the colonial atmosphere we sought. But it’s a great excuse to avoid email for a few days. And it’s one vacation when I don’t mind coming home, because then my ordinary house seems miraculous. Running water! Electric lights! A washing machine! And pizza delivered while we put away the 66 lb canvas tent, baskets full of smoky clothing and the sugar axe.

*****

Kate Dolan writes historical fiction and romance under her own name and contemporary mysteries and children’s books under the name K.D. Hays. Her most recent historical release, The Appearance of Impropriety, won the 2010 Written Art Award for humorous fiction. You can learn more about her misadventures with history by visiting www.katedolan.com.