Bra-burners and Corseted Ladies. The Female Body, Underwear, and Feminism

The history of the body is inextricably linked with the history of lingerie. Underclothes, apart from performing mundane functions of protecting the body from the elements and coarser layers of clothing, were also designed to shape the figure, especially the female figure, according to the currently fashionable beauty standards. They were to hide and to accentuate suggestively those aspects of the body that were considered titillating. The purpose of this article is to look at the history of underwear, focusing on its shaping, or even deforming properties, and to analyse the correlation between lingerie, class, and gender roles. Thus, the history of women’s undergarments is simultaneously the story of women’s liberation. Some types of underwear severely limited the possibility of movement, while others enabled the participation in sports and social life. The decision of what underclothes to wear (or whether to wear them at all) is not a mere matter of aesthetics but a powerful political statement. It is not a coincidence that feminists were labelled, erroneously, bra‑burners, while there is also a more controversial variety of the movement, the so‑called stiletto feminism. Attitudes to underwear and its “sexiness” often correspondto individual and social attitudes to femininity and gender norms.