It isn't just the clothes.....

The National Park where I volunteer as a living history demonstrator works with the time period of 1710-1740. Many, many things are different about living in an era before the discovery of germs, medicines, polyester, electricity and mechinization. I try to explain the differences to the visitors that come through our Park. One way I do this is through wearing clothing that would have been appropriate to that time period. In doing some research about 17th and 18th century clothing, I realized that their entire concept of the most attractive bodyshape is different than ours. Way different. And they were willing to use the technology of the day to achieve it. Where today we use spandex to pull it all in, they used "scaffolding" or pads to made some parts stick out grotesquesly. It has been a fascinating study.

The interesting thought that I have been chewing on from this study: we all feel a need to "reform" the human. We aren't satisfied with humans as they are, so we will augment or eliminate some part of them; to make them more in the image of what WE would like them to be. This doesn't just apply to clothing: we try it with other parts of our basic makeup as well. We may decide that all emotion is a dangerous part of humanity, and that therefore the ideal human has no significant emotions. To further the injury we do to ourselves trying to follow that ideal, we then judge others based on it. We use our judgements to determine the relationship we maintain with the prejudged human.

The fashionable colonial women labored under dresses that could weigh up to 50 pounds. But that is lighter than the weight of expectations we put ourselves and others under.