Whether Viking Women Wore Corsets Turned Into A Proper Rabbit Hole
My coworker who does the Renaissance Faire circuit every October and my sister in law, who once made me watch three hours of a Viking reenactment documentary on a flight…
Slips Under Dresses Feel Like A Dying Habit, I Wanted To Check If Thats True
“Nobody wears slips anymore, they’re your grandmother’s problem now.” That’s the line, isn’t it? Said with total confidence, usually by someone standing next to a rack of polyester dresses that…
Medieval Women And Corsets Get Mixed Up With A Completely Different Century
I’m standing in the checkout aisle of a costume shop in October, and the woman behind me is holding two things: a “medieval princess” dress with a laced-up, boned bodice…
Mini Skirts Defined The 70s According To Everyone Except Me, Apparently
“That’s just not true, the whole decade was mini skirts,” said a guy at a dinner party last month, with the specific confidence of someone who has watched exactly one…
The Corset Waist Training Claim Followed Me Into A Fitting Room Again
My aunt Denise brought this up over Thanksgiving stuffing, completely unprompted, the way she does with most opinions she’s held since 1987. Back in her day, she said, girls wore…
The Corset Has A Murkier Origin Story Than I Ever Expected
I used to tell customers the corset was a Victorian torture device invented by men to make women faint decoratively into settees, and I said it with real confidence, usually…
Crop Tops Were Everywhere In The 90s Before My Time, Apparently
I sell swimwear for a living, which means I spend half my shift talking people out of buying the exact same suit they had in a photo from three summers…
Whether Men Like Corsets On Women Or Just Think They Should
I have personally asked eleven different men whether they like corsets on women. Eleven, over about six years, mostly at bars where I had no business bringing up boning as…
Whether Guys Find Crop Tops Attractive Or Just Say So
I was standing in the parking lot outside a Target in Aurora, waiting for my sister to finish returning a blender, when the woman ahead of me in a cropped…
Whether Straight Men Wear Crop Tops Themselves Is A Different Question To Whether They Like Them
The question “do straight men wear crop tops” is doing something sneaky before you even get to the answer. It’s smuggling in an assumption that a garment carries a sexuality,…