Welcome to your weekend open thread. Happy hotter than heck weekend! How are you coping. I’m actually blogging from my brand new sectional that was delivered this morning. I feel so luxurious.
Nature put together a video tribute to all the shuttle missions. It might make you a little weepy.
This next story is educational. Bodice ripping is a lot harder than you think.
For most people, giving a presentation in skivvies to 100 professional peers sounds like a bad dream. But Ms. Gist was giving a workshop on Victorian clothing at the Romance Writers of America’s annual convention this summer. The romance novelists had gathered in New York to learn how to dress—and undress—heroines in their novels.
It took an hour for Ms. Gist to squeeze into a dozen layers that a lady would have worn in the 1860s—stockings, garters, bloomers, chemise, corset, crinoline or hoop skirt, petticoats, a shirtwaist or blouse, skirt, vest and bolero jacket. By the end, workshop attendees were skeptical that seductions ever occurred, with so many sartorial barriers.
“How did they ever have hanky panky?” asked novelist Annie Solomon.
With great effort, it turns out. Women wore blouses under their corsets—making actual bodice ripping fairly pointless. Corsets fastened in front and laced up the back and couldn’t be undone in a single passionate gesture. “You’ll see pictures of corsets on bare skin. That’s completely historically inaccurate,” Ms. Gist told her audience.
I wonder what percentage of women in the Victorian era actually wore all of that? Most women wouldn’t have been able to afford a maid to dress them so they probably had clothes that were easier to get into, right?