How ethical is your underwear?

“Correct underclothing, under all circumstances, shows a nicely balanced mind, and a sense of fitness of things, which some people can never acquire,” says the book, The Ethics of Underwear, published in 1889.

In an attempt to demonstrate a “nicely balanced mind and a sense of fitness of things” (I’m presuming that by “gaining a sense of fitness of things” that our female ancestors avoided the gym in favour of a corset in those days too!) iron stays were used to draw in a woman’s waist. The ‘ideal’ being a waist small enough for a man to put his hands round his partner.

Thankfully, the days of iron stays are over. Our obsession to achieve the perfect body shape however, is not, and in an attempt to slim, shape and lift our figures, our lingerie draws are bursting with everything from bust enhancing gel bra’s to thigh reducing toner tights. Not to mention the All in one Body Shaper.

In the seventeenth century, corsets were used to attract male attention. In a society where sex before marriage was socially unacceptable, the male was blissfully unaware about what was really hiding beneath the hourglass figure of his blushing bride-to-be. Is it any wonder that our Lord Protector, Oliver Cromwell, introduced a law by which any woman who used iron stays, hoops or bolstered hips to artificially shape her figure in order to trap a man into marriage, could be tried as a witch?

Developments in technology have changed the way we shape our figures, but does that mean that the reasons for changing our shape have developed too? Are we still slimming and shaping to impress our male counterparts? Perhaps, for the sake of naive men, we should revisit Cromwell’s views.