Tag: lets bring this back

pitbullmabari:

penfairy:

I’m reading this Jacobean pamphlet called (and bear with me here) Hic Mulier; or, The Man-Woman: Being a Medicine to cure the Coltish Disease of the Staggers in the Masculine-Feminines of our Times, and it’s basically this anonymous author losing his shit over the fashion trend of women dressing ‘masculine’ in early 1600s London. 

I imagined that these costumes would be rather Shakespearean in style, where women just cross-dressed and adopted men’s clothing, but the real fashion is much better. The author describes women in broad-brimmed hats with jaunty feathers in them, French doublets unbuttoned to reveal naked breasts (!), bobbed hair, and a sword. Sometimes he speaks of skirts, sometimes breeches – trousers are optional in this ‘masculine’ ensemble, and ruffs could also be worn. 

It seems odd to me that a woman can have her tiddies out and wear skirts but still be considered unnaturally masculine, but it seems part of the horror came from their attitudes. These weren’t fainting modest maidens – these were armed, uncompromising women, carrying daggers or swords as they pleased, and wearing whatever the hell they wanted. O these times! O these customs! How will we recover from this wanton degeneracy, our author cries! Back in MY DAY women were MODEST. Men were men and women were women! What’s to become of this sinful generation! (Interestingly, there’s a follow-up pamphlet called the Haec Vir which addresses the phenomenon of foppish or feminine men, but I haven’t read that yet.) 

So there you go. In Jacobean London, armed women were walking the streets with their tiddies out, sometimes rocking skirts, sometimes breeches, and with feathers bouncing in their big ol’ hats. The sword lesbians of yesteryear, I’m almost tempted to say. That’s one fashion I’d bring back.

hat: feathered

breeches: on

tiddies: out