The joke was fun while it lasted but last month, a Montana, USA legislative panel moved to kill a bill that would put some whale bone in the state's indecent exposure law and consequently ban some "provocative clothing.''
Republican Rep David Moore introduced the bill to outlaw yoga pants in public.
The proposal would have expanded the definition of indecent exposure to "include garments that give the appearance of a person's buttocks, genitals, pelvis or female nipple."
Poor guy. He obviously suffers from a rare and inconvenient hormonal imbalance which makes him a blithering idiot in the presence of female flesh, so he has to punish women by dictating what they can and cannot wear. Kind of like the greybeards who want women to imprison themselves in niqabs because their hair gives off libidinous rays which overpower men.
If these folks from Montana to the Middle East lived in 12th-century England, they would have had to boil their eyeballs every night. It used to be very fashionable for men to wear a codpiece–a bag or pouch stuffed with sawdust and worn over the crotch to make it look huge and bulging. Henry VIII, in his athletic youth, was quite a sex symbol and praised for his impressive codpiece and nicely-turned calves.
Tight-fitting breeches, the ancient version of yoga pants, put the family jewels on display, and remained staples of the masculine wardrobe until the drain-pipe trousers became popular in the late 1800s. It is even rumoured that Prince Albert, husband to Queen Victoria, had a piercing down there–to allow the appendage to be fastened to the thigh so the skin-tight royal pants could fit properly. Probably just a nasty bit of celebrity gossip, but you get the point.
After Janet Jackson in 2004 bared a nipple in a SuperBowl half-time performance with Justin Timberlake and called it a wardrobe malfunction, fashion watchers have made capturing "nip-slips'' on the red carpet a fulltime hobby. But Janet and other modern headliners had nothing on 18th-century French women who put decolletage on display as if serving it up on a platter like a well-dressed ham. Women competed to see how low their friends would go and the bodices were so daring that one false move and the plump petals would be exposed. Madame would then appropriately appear ever so shocked.
In the 1900s, the X-ray dress was all the rage in some circles. In August 1913, the Chief of Police of Los Angeles announced his intention to recommend a law banning the transparent trend.
And the Mayor of Pittsburgh ordered the arrest of anyone caught on the street in the diaphanous X-ray dress–proof positive that boring old men find positions of power in every decade.
Just think what the Royal Family would be like today if Kate Middleton had not modelled a see-through dress at a charity fashion show in 2002 and caught Prince William's eye. The dress, by the way, later sold at an auction for US$127,500.
Women usually get the worst of rules and laws about clothing. In the Middle Ages sumptuary laws were passed to regulate how much people spent on clothing and to preserve class distinctions. You were what you wore, for real. King Edward III in the 14th century declared that "no knight under the estate of a lord, esquire or gentleman, nor any other person, shall wear any shoes or boots having spikes or points which exceed the length of two inches, under the forfeiture of 40 pence," which sounds like more like a safety code.
Women, on the other hand, were to be dressed according to the position of their fathers or husbands. Wives and daughters of servants were not to wear veils above 12 pence in value. The wife or daughter of a knight was not to wear cloth of gold or sable fur. And the wife or daughter of a labourer was not to wear a girdle garnished with silver.
While women are often the subject of fashion restrictions invented by foolish, idle men, there was once a young Roman lawyer who got his toga in a twist.
He pleaded his first case in a see-through toga with nothing on underneath. As the account goes, the judges dealt with the costume affront in a novel way: they ordered him to plead his case naked, since that would be a more "honest" presentation.