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A review by karisannakathryn
Underneath It All by Amber J. Keyser
2.0
Feeling kind of bad about all the low ratings I've been giving this past week. Methinks I might just be extremely grumpy due to *gestures vaguely at everything.* This week in particular has really sucked and I'm sure that's reflected in this review, and I will try to come back to this in a year that is not 2020 to see if I like it more when the world isn't a total dumpster fire.
I had a couple problems with this book—one, it is extremely Western-focused. There's a paragraph or two about ancient Greece and Rome, a page or so about ancient China, half a sentence about the Egyptians, and other than that, it's pretty much all England, France, and American. On one hand, I do appreciate that due to colonization, western texts have been more valued, so they have been better-preserved and are more accessible to researchers; I'm also guessing the author speaks English better than, say, Japanese, which would also limit what she was able to study. However, in that case, I feel the summary or title of the book should have specified where the focus of the book was going to be, as calling this book simply "a history of women's underwear" implies that the western perspective is the be-all, end-all, which is simply untrue.
Additionally, I took issue with the fact that the book asserts that all throughout history, women's undergarments were worn with the primary purpose of satisfying the male gaze and conforming to the fashions that men idolized at any given time. There's no denying that women have consistently been pressed to conform to standards set by men (you can see this especially in stores such as Victoria's Secret, which are definitely targeted towards men, not the women buying the bras), and that is a very worthwhile conversation to have. However, to say that the sole purpose of stays and corsets was to please the male gaze is simply not true. Corsets and stays helped support the bust and the back. They made it easier to balance children on your hip and stand upright. Tight-lacing, while undeniably harmful, was practiced only by a select few, and in the vast majority of cases, only for special occasions. There were corsets made especially for dancing, for working women, for horseback riding—they were restrictive, yes, but so was women's clothing in general at the time. People still wear corset-like articles today, such as braces for scoliosis—they have their uses as well as their drawbacks.
Also, some of the crazier fashions discussed, such as the wide hoop skirts and crinolines, which were supposedly only to please the male gaze, were widely disliked and mocked by men. Look at jokes from the time periods—there are a lot of criticisms of hoop skirts because they made it so hard to get close to a woman! Not to mention, since cloth was so expensive, wearing outfits that used a crazy amount of fabric was a way for women to show off their wealth, not just show off for boys.
There were some aspects of this book I did like—I thought the author's criticism of fast fashion and its effects on the environment and the people who are forced to churn out cheap clothing at a breakneck pace were spot-on. I also appreciated that she acknowledged the way racism has affected our society's perception of women's undergarments and how black women and women of color have been both oversexualized and fetishized for the benefit of white men while also being shamed for being "immodest." The author also acknowledged the struggles faced by trans, nonbinary, and other LGBTQ+ folk and highlighted some of the undergarments which have been produced to assist with transition, which was really cool and something I would have expected to be overlooked. And like I said, there is certainly something to the claim that women's fashion through the years has been influenced by the male desire. I just don't think that's the entire story, and I would have appreciated a more balanced view that acknowledged the benefits as well as the drawbacks of the undergarments of old.
If anyone's interested in learning more about why corsets are maybe not as evil as we've been led to believe, I suggest they head over to Youtube to check out Karolina Żebrowska's "How Victorian Men Taught Us to Hate Corsets: The Biggest Lie in Fashion History" and Bernadette Banner's "I Grew Up in a Corset. Time to Bust Some Myths." There's two sides to every story!
I had a couple problems with this book—one, it is extremely Western-focused. There's a paragraph or two about ancient Greece and Rome, a page or so about ancient China, half a sentence about the Egyptians, and other than that, it's pretty much all England, France, and American. On one hand, I do appreciate that due to colonization, western texts have been more valued, so they have been better-preserved and are more accessible to researchers; I'm also guessing the author speaks English better than, say, Japanese, which would also limit what she was able to study. However, in that case, I feel the summary or title of the book should have specified where the focus of the book was going to be, as calling this book simply "a history of women's underwear" implies that the western perspective is the be-all, end-all, which is simply untrue.
Additionally, I took issue with the fact that the book asserts that all throughout history, women's undergarments were worn with the primary purpose of satisfying the male gaze and conforming to the fashions that men idolized at any given time. There's no denying that women have consistently been pressed to conform to standards set by men (you can see this especially in stores such as Victoria's Secret, which are definitely targeted towards men, not the women buying the bras), and that is a very worthwhile conversation to have. However, to say that the sole purpose of stays and corsets was to please the male gaze is simply not true. Corsets and stays helped support the bust and the back. They made it easier to balance children on your hip and stand upright. Tight-lacing, while undeniably harmful, was practiced only by a select few, and in the vast majority of cases, only for special occasions. There were corsets made especially for dancing, for working women, for horseback riding—they were restrictive, yes, but so was women's clothing in general at the time. People still wear corset-like articles today, such as braces for scoliosis—they have their uses as well as their drawbacks.
Also, some of the crazier fashions discussed, such as the wide hoop skirts and crinolines, which were supposedly only to please the male gaze, were widely disliked and mocked by men. Look at jokes from the time periods—there are a lot of criticisms of hoop skirts because they made it so hard to get close to a woman! Not to mention, since cloth was so expensive, wearing outfits that used a crazy amount of fabric was a way for women to show off their wealth, not just show off for boys.
There were some aspects of this book I did like—I thought the author's criticism of fast fashion and its effects on the environment and the people who are forced to churn out cheap clothing at a breakneck pace were spot-on. I also appreciated that she acknowledged the way racism has affected our society's perception of women's undergarments and how black women and women of color have been both oversexualized and fetishized for the benefit of white men while also being shamed for being "immodest." The author also acknowledged the struggles faced by trans, nonbinary, and other LGBTQ+ folk and highlighted some of the undergarments which have been produced to assist with transition, which was really cool and something I would have expected to be overlooked. And like I said, there is certainly something to the claim that women's fashion through the years has been influenced by the male desire. I just don't think that's the entire story, and I would have appreciated a more balanced view that acknowledged the benefits as well as the drawbacks of the undergarments of old.
If anyone's interested in learning more about why corsets are maybe not as evil as we've been led to believe, I suggest they head over to Youtube to check out Karolina Żebrowska's "How Victorian Men Taught Us to Hate Corsets: The Biggest Lie in Fashion History" and Bernadette Banner's "I Grew Up in a Corset. Time to Bust Some Myths." There's two sides to every story!