It was another Dickens Fair weekend - as well, of course, as other things - so my observations about life have a seasonal Victorian slant.
For one thing, it's hard not to put on the clothes and avoid pondering what it would have been like for the women who had to wear this full-time. It's debilitating, no matter how used to it you get (and you do get used to it). Before hoop skirts, women wore as many as a dozen starched and ruffled petticoats to get that pouffy, inhuman bell shape. With the flounces and beads and whatnot, I heard that at certain times during women's high fashion, they ended up with up to 40 pounds of clothes on their bodies.
I get by with the very least one can wear and still look properly dressed - for a lady (not street woman), and it's still excessive. In order, I get dressed like this:
So they make you wear all these things, and then say, go...go have fun, go dance. Go look beautiful. Can you imagine how surprised some of the more innocent men must have been on their wedding nights, when the women stripped away all the body-shaping and body-obscuring trappings? I read once about some famous Victorian (a poet or composer) who was so shocked by the sight of his wife's pubic hair on their wedding night - I guess he just wasn't expecting it, or something - that he became instantly gay. Who knows?
Another thing the Faire makes me think about is the luxury - or so it seems - of unmediated recreation. We spend so much time using devices during our recreation time (screens, mostly), it's a shame. Dancing is so immediate and real, plus it's fun. I watch people polka, and they are almost all smiling, and those who aren't look like they are having a ball but aren't the type of smile a lot or they are catching their breath because they are essential doing aerobics in a corset. It's hard to be sad when dancing at Fezziwigs. I mean, you can probably be depressed - or at least serious and even grim - when doing a tango, but English country dance is fun and bouncy and sometimes silly and sometimes romantic, and all of those make you happy. It's like - the ukulele equivalent of dance: automatic happiness.
Oh, I had more to say - a bunch of things - but I can't remember them all now, or don't have time. I spent all that time today getting dressed (and undressed). Oh, that's another thing about complicated clothes for the rich - when you have nothing to do, no ambition and no prescribed activity (someone else is tilling your field, raising your kid, cooking your dinner), you need *something* to do, and dressing and undressing can really eat away the hours. When a proper Victorian lady went visiting for the weekend, she sometimes had to take as many as 30 different outfits: travelling (to and fro), riding clothes, breakfast, lunch, tea and dinner clothes, clothes for those times in between when she's undressed but can't of course be walking around naked. It was a real strain on a women, and a great way to spend money (and employ people) and take up time. AND have something to think and talk about. I'm certainly obsessed with thinking of new outfits to wear, but sewing them is such a arduous task that I rarely get around to actually doing it. I'm not actually a wealthy Victorian, after all - I just play one during the weekends in December.
For one thing, it's hard not to put on the clothes and avoid pondering what it would have been like for the women who had to wear this full-time. It's debilitating, no matter how used to it you get (and you do get used to it). Before hoop skirts, women wore as many as a dozen starched and ruffled petticoats to get that pouffy, inhuman bell shape. With the flounces and beads and whatnot, I heard that at certain times during women's high fashion, they ended up with up to 40 pounds of clothes on their bodies.
I get by with the very least one can wear and still look properly dressed - for a lady (not street woman), and it's still excessive. In order, I get dressed like this:
- Stocking and shoes (they *have* to go on before the corset)
- Pantaloons
- Chemise (which I don't have, so I use a wifebeater; it works fine)
- Corset (I can lace and unlace it myself - it's a misnomer that's not possible)
- Hoop skirt
- Shirt
- Petticoat
- Skirt
- Vest
- Cravat, if I am wearing one, and gloves, hat, shawl, etc.
So they make you wear all these things, and then say, go...go have fun, go dance. Go look beautiful. Can you imagine how surprised some of the more innocent men must have been on their wedding nights, when the women stripped away all the body-shaping and body-obscuring trappings? I read once about some famous Victorian (a poet or composer) who was so shocked by the sight of his wife's pubic hair on their wedding night - I guess he just wasn't expecting it, or something - that he became instantly gay. Who knows?
Another thing the Faire makes me think about is the luxury - or so it seems - of unmediated recreation. We spend so much time using devices during our recreation time (screens, mostly), it's a shame. Dancing is so immediate and real, plus it's fun. I watch people polka, and they are almost all smiling, and those who aren't look like they are having a ball but aren't the type of smile a lot or they are catching their breath because they are essential doing aerobics in a corset. It's hard to be sad when dancing at Fezziwigs. I mean, you can probably be depressed - or at least serious and even grim - when doing a tango, but English country dance is fun and bouncy and sometimes silly and sometimes romantic, and all of those make you happy. It's like - the ukulele equivalent of dance: automatic happiness.
Oh, I had more to say - a bunch of things - but I can't remember them all now, or don't have time. I spent all that time today getting dressed (and undressed). Oh, that's another thing about complicated clothes for the rich - when you have nothing to do, no ambition and no prescribed activity (someone else is tilling your field, raising your kid, cooking your dinner), you need *something* to do, and dressing and undressing can really eat away the hours. When a proper Victorian lady went visiting for the weekend, she sometimes had to take as many as 30 different outfits: travelling (to and fro), riding clothes, breakfast, lunch, tea and dinner clothes, clothes for those times in between when she's undressed but can't of course be walking around naked. It was a real strain on a women, and a great way to spend money (and employ people) and take up time. AND have something to think and talk about. I'm certainly obsessed with thinking of new outfits to wear, but sewing them is such a arduous task that I rarely get around to actually doing it. I'm not actually a wealthy Victorian, after all - I just play one during the weekends in December.
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