Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
Speaker 1: back to the show, Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always
Speaker 1: so much for tuning in. We hope this message finds
Speaker 1: you well. We hope this message finds you comfortable, especially
Speaker 1: in your undergarments. I'm Ben. That's our super producer Max Williams,
Speaker 1: who I just met today. Right, It's true, and you know,
Speaker 1: and speaking of being comfortable, we're all comfortable cozied up
Speaker 1: in a in a studio, in person, in person, three
Speaker 1: of us. And you know I'm no by the way,
Speaker 1: you're no old yeah. And and in a way we're
Speaker 1: accompanying not just with you, fellow Ridiculous Historians, but with
Speaker 1: our pals Josh and Chuck, because we have poached their studio.
Speaker 1: It is festooned with fan art from the one and
Speaker 1: Only Coop Aaron Cooper. I know the guy, know him well.
Speaker 1: He's a He's a good dude and a master of
Speaker 1: photo shopery is indeed he is. Indeed we uh, you know.
Speaker 1: Student listeners may wonder why we said, well, hope, I
Speaker 1: hope you're comfortable, especially in your undergarden. You're like, whoa, hey,
Speaker 1: why are you getting all up in my in my
Speaker 1: little Australia. Yeah, this is it's weird because you know,
Speaker 1: we we talked about this in the past when we
Speaker 1: did an episode on the Days, which was a lot
Speaker 1: of fun. Uh. We we decided to lean into this one.
Speaker 1: Did we know? We have been hanging out with the
Speaker 1: people at Fruit of the Loom, lovely people, lovely people,
Speaker 1: lovely people, and they asked us a little bit about
Speaker 1: the history of underwear. I think they know about it,
Speaker 1: but they asked us to to help, you know, fill
Speaker 1: in some gaps for them. I think when it came
Speaker 1: to us to put the pieces together, and I don't
Speaker 1: know if they knew just how exciting these kind of
Speaker 1: topics are for us. God, I mean the most exciting.
Speaker 1: It turns out that the history of undergarments goes back
Speaker 1: way further than I think either of us realize. So
Speaker 1: far back man. And also it's a the history of
Speaker 1: undergarments is kind of also a history of fashion, history
Speaker 1: of sexual liberation, history of sanitation. Max Williams plays a
Speaker 1: huge role in this. I had no idea Max, how
Speaker 1: how instrumental you were. And it's different throwing you under
Speaker 1: the bus in person. It's a lot different getting thrown
Speaker 1: under the bus in person, Like normally I can just
Speaker 1: turn my camera off or just like like, oh, I
Speaker 1: gutta have to do something else, but I'm just sitting
Speaker 1: right here. You know, I'm not doing anything else. We're
Speaker 1: gonna make Hey, what if we make some Max facts
Speaker 1: the show? Why am I getting the Jonathan Strickland treatment
Speaker 1: right now? More times? And I'll show up right Yeah,
Speaker 1: please don't. He is actually here. He is, he is
Speaker 1: in the building. Yes, I'll keep your voice, um, but no,
Speaker 1: there's not even a proper corner in this tiny studio
Speaker 1: for you to like get into a fetal position and crying.
Speaker 1: And you know, the corner is something I think all
Speaker 1: three of us came to take for granted, the zoom corner,
Speaker 1: being able to turn off your camera. We are live
Speaker 1: and direct, so we have to just stay our ps accused.
Speaker 1: We're all wearing clothing, and that's that's something I think
Speaker 1: that we take for granted to especially underwear. It's weird
Speaker 1: you can't really talk to people about underwear. Like if
Speaker 1: I said, like, Noel has all these great hats, and
Speaker 1: so I could walk up to Nolan. We know each
Speaker 1: other very well, and I could be like oh, hey man,
Speaker 1: that's a kick ass hat, especially, like we know each
Speaker 1: other well enough that I know a lot of your hats,
Speaker 1: so I can tell if there's a new one. But
Speaker 1: if I was like, hey man, what kinda kind of
Speaker 1: are you wearing? Today? Well, it's funny and have kind
Speaker 1: of come full circle in an interesting way because initially
Speaker 1: around seven thousand years ago, when the first evidence of
Speaker 1: undergarments were uncovered or you know, from that era, it
Speaker 1: really was outerwear because it was the only where right
Speaker 1: you found evidence of prehistoric humans wearing were referred to
Speaker 1: as loin claws, which is like a thin strip of
Speaker 1: fabric that you'd loop between your your legs and cover
Speaker 1: your naughty bits with and kind of you know, the
Speaker 1: cents around your waist. And it was I don't know,
Speaker 1: what do you think that why they even like, was
Speaker 1: there a built in modesty already at that point or
Speaker 1: was it just to protect their bits from you know,
Speaker 1: being blanched by the sun or what do you think?
Speaker 1: Pretty fragile? So I think there's definitely like a safety imperative.
Speaker 1: Then yeah, maybe that becomes modesty, but writer, it's very
Speaker 1: much outerwear. In the ancient days. They were also leather too.
Speaker 1: This was not you know, this was not an aesthetic
Speaker 1: thing or a kink. This is just what they had
Speaker 1: available at the time. And it's still a primary form
Speaker 1: of dress for a lot of people, a lot of
Speaker 1: indigenous people in warmer climb especially. Very true and something
Speaker 1: I didn't realize. I've heard of the Iceman. Apparently he cometh.
Speaker 1: His name is Otsi, and he died in a region
Speaker 1: known as the Tyrolean Alps in Tyrol, which I believe
Speaker 1: is in in Germany and in that would be modern
Speaker 1: day Germany, around five thousand years ago. And they uncovered
Speaker 1: his remains, uh and found him wearing a goat skin
Speaker 1: breech or loincloth, right, real clothes horse the ice man.
Speaker 1: But but but he but because it was so cold, right
Speaker 1: he he was He had overwear as well. It was
Speaker 1: not the same situation as with the prehistoric humans. He
Speaker 1: had furry kind of leggings on. And they found that
Speaker 1: underneath that he was wearing this goat skin loincloth. And
Speaker 1: didn't he have a cape of some sort like a
Speaker 1: cloak that I can have a confirm, rightn't I? Okay,
Speaker 1: all right, well, let's stick to the facts that because
Speaker 1: his name was the iceman has to have like uh
Speaker 1: so this like at this point, we can also see
Speaker 1: examples of underwear in other parts of the world. If
Speaker 1: we fast forward about a thousand and a half years,
Speaker 1: then then we just blip just a historical record in
Speaker 1: the world of podcasting and the historical record, we see
Speaker 1: that Egypt also had underwear. They had a specific type
Speaker 1: of linen underwear called a shinty s h E n
Speaker 1: t I, which was kind of like loincloth, kind of
Speaker 1: like a brief. Yeah. Yeah, And this is interesting because
Speaker 1: if you were the pharaoh, you would or you know,
Speaker 1: a higher class person in that society, you would maybe
Speaker 1: wear a skirt over your shinty. But if you were
Speaker 1: just the you know, average day to day worker, you
Speaker 1: would probably just be wearing the shinty. And there's there's
Speaker 1: a great article we want to shout out from The Independent,
Speaker 1: written by Susie Rushton, which goes over so much ancient
Speaker 1: history of pants and pants as in the British pants,
Speaker 1: which is underwear. Yes, most I'm sure everybody knows that
Speaker 1: he watches British comedies, but I always love that pants
Speaker 1: are underwear and trousers are pants. Trousers are pants. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's an important distinction, right. Fanny also means something different,
Speaker 1: totally different, totally different. And this is a family show,
Speaker 1: so we're not going to tell you exactly what it is,
Speaker 1: but you might not want to google it on your
Speaker 1: school computer. This is interesting in that we see multiple
Speaker 1: groups of people, not often without having contact with one another,
Speaker 1: have been wearing loincloths. It just makes sense. It's the
Speaker 1: most elegant answer to the question how do I hide
Speaker 1: and or protect my stuff? And then we see this
Speaker 1: evolution in detail throughout history. I think the there's there's
Speaker 1: a little bit of controversy or speculation with the ancient Greeks.
Speaker 1: There's the idea that loin cloths were around in ancient Greece,
Speaker 1: but only enslaved people wore them. Interesting, and then the
Speaker 1: ancient Romans or the least sexy name for an undergarment
Speaker 1: you're gonna get in this whole show. I almost have
Speaker 1: a hard time pronouncing it, or at least I had
Speaker 1: to do a double tick when I first read the word.
Speaker 1: I believe ben it is subleigaculum. Yes, who came up
Speaker 1: with sculum? A Roman with a love of tongue twist.
Speaker 1: I suppose so. And it's sort of an advanced loincloth, right, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you got a little more up thigh coverage. It's kind
Speaker 1: of think of them like short shorts or a loincloth
Speaker 1: with some added bells and whistles, extra wrapping. And this
Speaker 1: was this was I believe, something that could be worn
Speaker 1: by anybody, right, it wasn't just for dudes of the
Speaker 1: day or what have you know. And writing over on
Speaker 1: History Extra Greg Jenner, who has a really cool website
Speaker 1: called Horrible Histories, Um, this is in league with the BBC.
Speaker 1: He also says that this is worn by um gladiators
Speaker 1: and actors, you know, and it was even worn by
Speaker 1: There was a version of it for women that he
Speaker 1: referred to as a boob tube. But he put it
Speaker 1: in quotes so and he must have gotten it from somewhere.
Speaker 1: I don't think he made this up, but I love
Speaker 1: the idea of boom tube. And then you know, adapting
Speaker 1: that term to refer to the television US you know,
Speaker 1: not underwear related at all, but would play a large
Speaker 1: role in spreading the gospel of underwear, you know, and
Speaker 1: through advertisement much later in the game. Yes, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: That's that's a very good point. Another cycle or full
Speaker 1: circle of history. And if we go to the century,
Speaker 1: then we see the creation of loose, just pull on underpants.
Speaker 1: These were baggy. They went down to your calves, so
Speaker 1: they're there, you know what they would look like capri
Speaker 1: pants today, that's what you would think of. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: they were referred to as drawers, and I've always thought
Speaker 1: of that as being like, you know, well, yeah, but
Speaker 1: a drawer, like you know, the thing you open up
Speaker 1: and close and put things in. But it actually refers
Speaker 1: to the drawstrings as in drawers. You know, you're drawing
Speaker 1: the drawstrings to sent them around waste, right, And that
Speaker 1: was They were called braises, I believe, or braise, that's right,
Speaker 1: that's that's probably its own plural. It's like sheep, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: a sheep and those sheep a braise and those braids. Also,
Speaker 1: I just love you know, it's part of our show
Speaker 1: being based in the southeast of the United States, but
Speaker 1: we love a good Southern accent. And I have had
Speaker 1: people in my family who do refer to underwear as draws.
Speaker 1: Draw it out, don't they. And then you sort of
Speaker 1: had a style on braise called shows, uh, that the
Speaker 1: upper class would wear, and they were a little more
Speaker 1: like leg warmers, you know, they would just cover the
Speaker 1: thigh up to the thigh. Yeah yeah, ice man style, right,
Speaker 1: And then we know that we know that for many
Speaker 1: people in northern climbs, these weren't just worn to protect
Speaker 1: yourself from like hazards of your environment. They were also
Speaker 1: worn to keep you warm. And let's not forget there
Speaker 1: were also like armored versions of these things that maybe
Speaker 1: we're made of like chain mail or something, for example,
Speaker 1: and we're gonna bounce around ever so slightly here and there.
Speaker 1: Mainly it's could be sort of a linear history of underwear,
Speaker 1: but we might double that couple of times. Vikings and
Speaker 1: Celtics they also wore those brays, but they wore long socks,
Speaker 1: and that was because it was cold, like you said, Ben,
Speaker 1: so they wore those to keep them warm. Romans, however,
Speaker 1: did not wear socks. That's largely because of the warm temperature.
Speaker 1: We know that they wore sandals with no socks, because
Speaker 1: sandals with socks obviously a total fashion faux pap. Even
Speaker 1: though it's sort of coming back now, sandals with socks
Speaker 1: like sort of becoming cool again, sort of like crocs,
Speaker 1: like cast firmly on board. It's debatable as to whether
Speaker 1: crocs are cool or not, but they are definitely making
Speaker 1: a big comeback. Is not on board with It's not
Speaker 1: on board a terrible look. I don't sand socks or
Speaker 1: crocs both like crocs with socks absolutely not in a box.
Speaker 1: Are you? Are you a shoe supremacist. No, I'm not
Speaker 1: a shoe supremacist. But it's just like, this is clearly
Speaker 1: like something that's horribly wrong. Unless you're working on a
Speaker 1: line in a kitchen, should not wear crocs period. Well
Speaker 1: there there there's all kinds of innovations and crocs like
Speaker 1: you have little the dazzl e things that you stick
Speaker 1: in the holes in them. You've got kind of goth
Speaker 1: crocs which are black and have little spikes that come
Speaker 1: up out of the holes. It's a whole thing. The
Speaker 1: kids are crazy about him. Um, so it became uncool
Speaker 1: enough to be cool a good It's like norm core exactly.
Speaker 1: It's it's that level of irony where eventually it just
Speaker 1: becomes the thing, Like you do something ironically long enough,
Speaker 1: you're really just like it. Steely Dan, I mean Steely
Speaker 1: Dan used to be dad rock and now like all
Speaker 1: the new bands sound like Steely Dan. But the Romans
Speaker 1: looked down upon people who wore socks. In fact, they
Speaker 1: considered the Vikings and the Celtics to be barbarians, and
Speaker 1: they really thought that sock wearing was absolutely ghost More so,
Speaker 1: even it was like, oh my god, these animals with
Speaker 1: their socks, they had some they had some weird social
Speaker 1: mories or judgments that that definitely didn't age well. But fun,
Speaker 1: fun etymo logical note about barbarism and being barbaric. Where
Speaker 1: that comes from is also itself kind of a petty
Speaker 1: insult condescension. It just meant people who like when they
Speaker 1: when Roman forces couldn't understand a native language, they called
Speaker 1: people barbarians because in their mind it was on amatopeia
Speaker 1: because everything people said that they didn't understand sounded like
Speaker 1: barbararar yeah, berberism exactly. So we're at so we're at
Speaker 1: the Middle Ages, humanities, magic of magic, time travel, and
Speaker 1: during this time there's something that a lot of people
Speaker 1: might be surprised to learn. Guys were still wearing linen
Speaker 1: shorts that were still called brays, but women weren't actually
Speaker 1: wearing what we would consider underwear, right, Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1: It was. Actually I'm speaking to the general zeitgeist of time,
Speaker 1: which was very patriarchal and uh, misogynistic, and women who
Speaker 1: wore underwear we're seen as being somewhat low or base,
Speaker 1: not based like the kids would say, which means super cool,
Speaker 1: but um, you know, potentially promiscuous. It certainly wasn't seen
Speaker 1: as a sign of virtue, and virtue was king back then. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: very uh patriarchal, they did not they Yeah, they were jerks.
Speaker 1: They were beading jerks about it. But the the only
Speaker 1: common underwear for women before the nineteenth century at this
Speaker 1: point was something called shift, or a in France would
Speaker 1: be what a cami? You know what makes me think
Speaker 1: I've been We both I think are big fans of
Speaker 1: the David Egger's film The Witch. Yeah, this mild spoiler,
Speaker 1: I guess, but I'm not gonna ge. I'm not gonna
Speaker 1: give the complete context. I'm just gonna read the line.
Speaker 1: It's remove the shift. Yeah, oh yeah, what's that like
Speaker 1: the taste of butter, and it's the taste of butter.
Speaker 1: It's not butter. I remember we had off air when
Speaker 1: that film came out, we we all went and hung out.
Speaker 1: A good friend of the show, Lare and vogel Baum
Speaker 1: was there and we talked for like an hour and
Speaker 1: a half analyzing The Witch in the theater and I
Speaker 1: we we both seen it. We're seeing it for the
Speaker 1: first time, and we were just like, do you want
Speaker 1: to live deliciously? Ben? What's that? I think we all do.
Speaker 1: It's interesting too, because there's an argument about extremism and
Speaker 1: radicalization in The Witch. Oh well, you know what we're
Speaker 1: doing our conversation, we are going to try to take
Speaker 1: Max out. That is a true story. So there were
Speaker 1: there is another thing that occurs in this space that
Speaker 1: we have to talk about, and that is also the
Speaker 1: evolution of you know, I love how you pointed out
Speaker 1: how dangerously endured a lot of this was, but there
Speaker 1: were other things evolving as well. Because even though we're
Speaker 1: saying people identifying as as female weren't wearing what we
Speaker 1: would recognize as modern underwear today, they were wearing things
Speaker 1: like petticoats. Of course it's and then this kind of
Speaker 1: leads us to eventually, we'll we'll get to it a
Speaker 1: little bit, but it leads us to launching. It does eventually,
Speaker 1: but the version that we're talking about was much more
Speaker 1: of a imposed kind of dress, or a imposed idealization,
Speaker 1: or like the way women should appear. And these petticoats,
Speaker 1: of course, it's especially they were reinforced by things like
Speaker 1: whalebone or reads or willow rods to stiffen them, and
Speaker 1: they wanted to create this almost conical shape like we
Speaker 1: talked about the Barbie doll frame without the bust. That's
Speaker 1: sort of what it was like the bottom of the
Speaker 1: hour exactly, because the bust was flattened and if you
Speaker 1: see these course it's I mean, there is no plunging
Speaker 1: neckline at this point. It was very modest and very
Speaker 1: unpleasant to where I can only imagine it's tough. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's it's It was around for a while and it
Speaker 1: was high fashion, right. It was introduced by Catherine Dave
Speaker 1: Medici into France and the fifteen hundreds. It was originally
Speaker 1: from Italy, but I think it really took off in
Speaker 1: the European imagination when Queen Elizabeth right, Queen Elizabeth the
Speaker 1: First started popularizing this idea of the big, big petticoat
Speaker 1: and the high and tight course exactly the petticoat, and
Speaker 1: they were supported with these hoops that were kind of
Speaker 1: concentric circles made of again that stiffening material. I think
Speaker 1: even there were versions of it later when steele became
Speaker 1: more accessible. This is down the line, but then they
Speaker 1: I think they became replaced with steel and they were
Speaker 1: essentially cages that were covered in uh in fabric. And
Speaker 1: the more opulent you were, the larger your skirt would be. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, the bigger you were, the bigger you're well,
Speaker 1: we said, we wouldn't say, but at this point, the
Speaker 1: bigger like your belt was exactly exactly the bigger a
Speaker 1: deal you were, Yes, exactly. So we're talking about a shift.
Speaker 1: We're if you're trying to picture it in your head,
Speaker 1: you're essentially picturing something that looks like a nightgowns. I
Speaker 1: don't know, do I don't think a lot of people
Speaker 1: wear nightgowns. It's certainly not the Ebenezer Scrooge style. That's
Speaker 1: the nightcap that people speak of so fondly. And I
Speaker 1: don't understand how late night drink became a nightcap. I got.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's you know, it's the thing you've dawned
Speaker 1: before bed I guess that's why. But you're right then,
Speaker 1: and the shift or chamis really was kind of a nightgown.
Speaker 1: Men would even wear them shortened versions. They would tuck
Speaker 1: them under their Genitaliam. Okay, yeah, peoplettle extra security there
Speaker 1: and they always tucked in. Tucking in was huge back then. Um.
Speaker 1: But this was something that like the upper class, for example,
Speaker 1: would have shifts made of fine linens and silks and
Speaker 1: things like maybe not silks yet, I don't know. I
Speaker 1: don't know if I forget when the trade lad to
Speaker 1: the availability that would have been I'm not quite sure,
Speaker 1: but people got into silk underwear, that's true a million percent.
Speaker 1: But then the lower class or peasants would have had
Speaker 1: shifts made of like wool, you know, or more rough,
Speaker 1: itchy kind of material. But one thing that both classes
Speaker 1: had in common where these garments were worn repeatedly and
Speaker 1: they could be washed, and one very popular for watching
Speaker 1: these was using stale urine. Why apparently made things brighter,
Speaker 1: the would make a yellower. Yeah, well, you know, it
Speaker 1: depends on the source of the urine, honestly, and and
Speaker 1: also at this time we should mention the people in
Speaker 1: both the world of medicine and popular culture had a
Speaker 1: little bit of a different idea of urine than we do.
Speaker 1: To this true, right, A lot of medicine was here,
Speaker 1: p into this vial or this uh feed into this container,
Speaker 1: and I will hold it up to the cardinalite of
Speaker 1: the sun to determine whether you are melancholic, to engage
Speaker 1: the levels of your humors exactly. And so they did
Speaker 1: those side doe because again, these are these are people
Speaker 1: just like us listening or doing this show today. They
Speaker 1: weren't dumb. They were working with what they had, and
Speaker 1: they didn't want to smell like peace. So they would
Speaker 1: hang these uh they would hang these undergarments outside and
Speaker 1: try to air drive them long enough that they didn't
Speaker 1: smell like pea, which probably also means they wore them
Speaker 1: for quite a long time before they would wash them,
Speaker 1: because especially if you were a peasant, you wouldn't have
Speaker 1: that many of these no. No, And it wasn't until
Speaker 1: the Middle Ages that it even became a thing and
Speaker 1: was somewhat of a luxury for a while, because before that, you,
Speaker 1: if you were the average person in this area, you
Speaker 1: would have either slept naked or you would just sleep
Speaker 1: in the clothes you had already been wearing. It's not
Speaker 1: like you had fifty pairs of trousers. You had you know,
Speaker 1: you had the good pair and then you had the
Speaker 1: other pair maybe, and so you would just leave those
Speaker 1: on nightgowns. Because they were made of these thin fabrics.
Speaker 1: Originally you had to be pretty well off to wear them.
Speaker 1: And then you know, as we see this catch on
Speaker 1: with the quote unquote lower classes, that's where we see
Speaker 1: the rough wool you're talking about. Yeah, and uh, then
Speaker 1: I don't know, let's go back to Chauce's because you've
Speaker 1: mentioned those. In Europe goes into the Renaissance period and
Speaker 1: that's when things start getting a little racier. These were
Speaker 1: the roughly capri pants initially, or like you know, the
Speaker 1: kind of loose fitting they became. I believe silk hose, right.
Speaker 1: I think it was Gosh, who was a queen Elizabeth
Speaker 1: the first as well, made a big stand on wearing
Speaker 1: this silken hose and really popularized it. So while these, uh,
Speaker 1: while these tight hose approaches are becoming more in vogue,
Speaker 1: brais also start to get shorter. And then there's this
Speaker 1: one full innovation that I think we should all appreciate
Speaker 1: more the predecessor of the fly. That's right. If you
Speaker 1: are wearing uh if if you're wearing pants, you'll often
Speaker 1: find that there is an opening, especially dudes pants, you'll
Speaker 1: find that there's an opening, often with the zippers, sometimes
Speaker 1: with a button that allows you to use the restroom
Speaker 1: without entirely dropping troal. This flap could be buttoned up
Speaker 1: because zippers didn't exist yet, or you could tie it
Speaker 1: close with like draw strings. And this was the first
Speaker 1: ever thing that we called a cod piece. It is
Speaker 1: not named after fish uh fun only slightly an s
Speaker 1: f W. Fact. Cod was a Middle English term for scrotum. Right,
Speaker 1: it's scrowed um. This is my scrotum piece. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: it's oh my god. By by the way, I said,
Speaker 1: not a dumb thing. I just wasn't sure, and I said,
Speaker 1: as much. Silk was around by the time of the
Speaker 1: second Crew saved um, so they would have had silk,
Speaker 1: but again it would have been very rare and coming
Speaker 1: from Afar feel like the king. Absolutely, But then it
Speaker 1: became a little more available around the time that we're
Speaker 1: talking about these uh, these hose, these leggings kind of
Speaker 1: coming into fashion. But you're right, then the cod piece.
Speaker 1: Uh uh, you want to talk about syphilis? Was the time? Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's always time to have frank discussions
Speaker 1: with our friends about important issues, and syphilis is one.
Speaker 1: This is It was rampant, Yes, it was. It was,
Speaker 1: as our friend Frank would say, wide rife, wide rife, indeed,
Speaker 1: and and it was even because you couldn't you couldn't
Speaker 1: get rid of it, right, So it was even rampant
Speaker 1: among the upper class. And King Henry the eighth, for example,
Speaker 1: war cod piece. Uh. And part of the point of
Speaker 1: the cod piece was the point literally too uh em
Speaker 1: big in in big in your your area, like a
Speaker 1: push up only absurd. I alas, I always think of
Speaker 1: a clockwork orange. You know. They obviously wore for effect,
Speaker 1: and it's sort of like a weird retro kind of
Speaker 1: European callback, I guess, but it's very odd. But yeah,
Speaker 1: Henry the eighth um wore quite a large one, and
Speaker 1: apparently it was so large because he needed extra room
Speaker 1: in there to stuff it with ointment soaked rags like poultices, huh,
Speaker 1: so that it would reduce the pain and the swelling
Speaker 1: he was experiencing was associated with syphilis. Yeah, and there
Speaker 1: there were other people because the cod piece wasn't covered
Speaker 1: by outer layers, right, so there are other people who
Speaker 1: are stuffing it. Whether that's because they've contracted syphilis, or
Speaker 1: whether that's because they won't make more of a visual impression.
Speaker 1: That probably goes case by case, but that was happening.
Speaker 1: And uh, there's some paintings you can look at it
Speaker 1: from this era. They're like shaped like a like a
Speaker 1: like a like a dog. Yeah, like like outwardly it's
Speaker 1: it's like an outward yeah. That thing. Um, it's weird.
Speaker 1: Thank god that that fell out of fashion. So strange.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, we certainly have instances of like
Speaker 1: rock stars stuffing pants with socks and and like, you know,
Speaker 1: I think there was in spinal Tap where I believe
Speaker 1: David st. Hubbins is going through security and it keeps
Speaker 1: no I know it is. It's it's Derek Small the
Speaker 1: basis he's going through security and he keeps setting off
Speaker 1: the metal detector and he pulls out a cucumber wrapped
Speaker 1: in tinfoil out of his pants and shamefully turns it
Speaker 1: over to the airport security. And other other dudes and
Speaker 1: other parts of the world had the similar idea, like
Speaker 1: there's a thing called the Koteka, which is yeah, it's
Speaker 1: uh their communities in New Guinea that where these Because
Speaker 1: we're in person, it looks like it's like a gord
Speaker 1: I would say, it's definitely made of a gourd and
Speaker 1: it's uh something that with a with a waist band
Speaker 1: that you would attach to your your your waist and
Speaker 1: you know it's a giant, thick picture, a giant cord
Speaker 1: that's painted you know, ornately that you're wearing on the
Speaker 1: outside of your clothes in your area. Yeah. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: is made from a dried out gourd. But we're we're
Speaker 1: saying the cod piece idea is a is a revelation
Speaker 1: that multiple men have thought of parallel thinking, Man, how
Speaker 1: do I get people to notice my junk more notice junk? Yeah,
Speaker 1: so this thank goodness that this didn't you know, carry on, right,
Speaker 1: But we do have to talk about something else, especially
Speaker 1: in not in the all of the world, but especially
Speaker 1: in the late Middle Ages and in London. Things were filthy.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, it was gross. There's a whole episode
Speaker 1: of ridiculous history on the Great Stink of London call
Speaker 1: and that Great Stink in question was the Thames, Uh,
Speaker 1: and just the streets because they didn't have indoor plumbing.
Speaker 1: It was just like you know, privs, these like open
Speaker 1: pots and they would just get dumped out into the street,
Speaker 1: you know, like a spittoon. But it was instead of
Speaker 1: you know, being full of gross like tobacco spit, it's
Speaker 1: full of like poop and urine and it's just literally
Speaker 1: the streets are flowing with excrement and the Thames is
Speaker 1: absolutely just you know, festering with rut toxic runoff from
Speaker 1: leather man because you know, all the chemicals used to
Speaker 1: cure leather um and animal waste and animal carcasses and
Speaker 1: parts and guts coming out of butcher shops. I mean,
Speaker 1: it was bad and it smelled. And to make it worse,
Speaker 1: people didn't wash. It wasn't as easy to wash, you know,
Speaker 1: like unless you live next to clean water source or
Speaker 1: unless you are I don't know. It just wasn't normalized.
Speaker 1: But at the same time, people like when when we
Speaker 1: say the streets were filthy, that you know, as Asneal said,
Speaker 1: there's no sewage. There's the sewer is the middle of
Speaker 1: the street. And the buildings are also often built such
Speaker 1: that the second floor protrudes over the first floor, so
Speaker 1: it also restricts airflow. And this leads to Uh, the
Speaker 1: reason this is such a perfect storm is because at
Speaker 1: the time people believe that you could the current medical
Speaker 1: theory was that you could get disease through something called miasma,
Speaker 1: that's smelling something that it was going into you. Not
Speaker 1: to mention, you know, accurately, I would argue they believed
Speaker 1: you could get these diseases through your skin and also
Speaker 1: through bodily orifices, openings, you know, natural openings in the body. Um.
Speaker 1: Depending on what disease we're talking about, what kind of contact,
Speaker 1: that can be true and it can be not true. Right. Um.
Speaker 1: But they washed infrequently, and so the closest thing they
Speaker 1: had infrequently means frequently does they didn't watch that much
Speaker 1: and uh, they got around this, or at least the
Speaker 1: closest thing they had to personal hygiene was washing their garments,
Speaker 1: their under undergarments as much as possible. Um. But even that,
Speaker 1: again because of the availability of clean water. That's why
Speaker 1: they were using urine. By the way, part partially, um,
Speaker 1: it was it was hard to do that as well,
Speaker 1: especially for the underclass. I always think of the scene
Speaker 1: in Monty Python the Holy Grail where somebody says something
Speaker 1: the effect of, oh, he must be a king because
Speaker 1: he's not covered in Yeah, right, that's that's pretty good line.
Speaker 1: And look, we're we're not saying people were um purposefully,
Speaker 1: you know, incredibly dirty or filthy. We're saying it was
Speaker 1: harder to stay clean. And now we enter in a
Speaker 1: time where this is weird. Things become a little bit
Speaker 1: more modest. People are putting away their pretend phalluses, and
Speaker 1: men in Europe are starting to wear these long cotton
Speaker 1: linen or if your fancy silk draws, I'm gonna say
Speaker 1: draws for the rest of the episode. And in the
Speaker 1: most common the thing that was sort of like the
Speaker 1: Honda Civic of underwear at this time was a knee
Speaker 1: length garment with a button flap at the front. This
Speaker 1: was the ancestor of something that was called, I don't
Speaker 1: know why I love this name, the union suit or
Speaker 1: a union suit. That's the thing you picture like an
Speaker 1: old prospector wearing with the butt flap, right, And for
Speaker 1: some reason it's read usually and yeah, and maybe they
Speaker 1: watched it in the clown pants. And this later evolved
Speaker 1: into what we recognize as Long John's. Have you guys
Speaker 1: ever had a pair of Long John's or do you
Speaker 1: ever wear thermal under Let's trying to call him thermal underwear. Now, No,
Speaker 1: I haven't really lived in cold enough area to really
Speaker 1: warrant it, but I know they can be comfy. Max, Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: so Alex and I are actually from Detroit originally, so yeah,
Speaker 1: from birth we had Long John's and then we moved
Speaker 1: on here and we're like, why do we still happy?
Speaker 1: It is like nine degrees every day more realistically like
Speaker 1: ninety five degrees and horribly human gets cold here though
Speaker 1: in the winter, and certainly, if let's say you don't
Speaker 1: have central heat, for example, Long John's air thermal underwear
Speaker 1: would certainly be a you know, pretty affordable fix. I
Speaker 1: wear him every winter. I hope to tell you guys,
Speaker 1: because it's a weird thing to say in conversation. How
Speaker 1: would come up? You know, how needed to bring it
Speaker 1: up out of nowhere? Well, you know, for hanging out.
Speaker 1: We're sitting at Patty over our favorite wings spot or something,
Speaker 1: and someone's has come up once maybe know you guys,
Speaker 1: but someone's like, oh, it's cool, we should go in
Speaker 1: and it was like, I'm fine and picked the weirdest,
Speaker 1: dumbest flex I did that winter. I was like, because
Speaker 1: I always wear thermal underwear when it's cold, It's like,
Speaker 1: would you like to see it? I pulled up my
Speaker 1: shirt while everyone was saying no, Can I say that?
Speaker 1: You made a really good point that things took a
Speaker 1: turn towards the more modest, and I think that's largely
Speaker 1: for men. For women, that did start to see the
Speaker 1: push up of the of the plunging neckline and also
Speaker 1: more kind of ancient Greek and art inspired drapings and like,
Speaker 1: you know, if you look at the way art evolved,
Speaker 1: I believe it was Neo Classicism where it showed a
Speaker 1: lot more of these garments with you know, where you
Speaker 1: could literally see nipples, you know, it was it was
Speaker 1: very sheer and things like that. So that was something
Speaker 1: that we would start to see. But with men they
Speaker 1: did start to cover up more. Also, the shifts we
Speaker 1: talked about, I became a weird flex in and of itself,
Speaker 1: Like in the Victorian Age, you think of those like
Speaker 1: crazy like Delafosaurus from Jurassic Park, like neck fringes or whatever,
Speaker 1: the roughs they called them. That was just the part
Speaker 1: of the shift that you could see, Yes, yes, because
Speaker 1: it would and then you know, they would get more
Speaker 1: and more elaborate, because these richies just wanted to like
Speaker 1: one up each other and flex harder with these bizarro
Speaker 1: you know, like halo looking things exactly. And at the
Speaker 1: same time that these different things are occurring and that
Speaker 1: we're seeing a little bit of divergence, we're also seeing
Speaker 1: the end of an era. Because up to about the
Speaker 1: nineteenth century in Europe and North America, underwear was thought
Speaker 1: to have two main functions for the average person. First,
Speaker 1: it wasn't really meant to protect you as much as
Speaker 1: it was meant to protect your outer clothes from you
Speaker 1: because people didn't bathe and they didn't want to get
Speaker 1: their nice outside clothes dirties. So they're put on their there,
Speaker 1: you know, like this airlock for filth and because yeah,
Speaker 1: and and and then you know, bathing was very much luxury,
Speaker 1: and so in these colder climbs, especially like you know,
Speaker 1: modern day Detroit, this added an important extra layer of insulation. Noll,
Speaker 1: is it time to shout out before we go to
Speaker 1: the next phase? Is it time we should probably mention
Speaker 1: fruit of the loom uh started around this time, right
Speaker 1: nineteenth century. Yeah, it was around midway through the nineteenth century.
Speaker 1: In eighteen fifty one, the Fruit of the Loom Company
Speaker 1: was founded, but they didn't trademark their brand. Their ubiquitous
Speaker 1: brands and that I always think of that, uh, the
Speaker 1: image associated with fruit dressed up like the fruit. I
Speaker 1: always wanted one of those costumes, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: I like mascots. I like stuff with mascots, and I
Speaker 1: also think it's interesting too. Not to get too far ahead,
Speaker 1: this is way far ahead, but we talked about underwear
Speaker 1: as being like something you hide. But I always thought
Speaker 1: it was awesome when you were kids. You know, you
Speaker 1: get those fruit the looms that have like cartoon characters
Speaker 1: and stuff printed on. Who is that for? I guess
Speaker 1: it's just for us. You know, you're not They don't
Speaker 1: really expect you to be parading around in your and
Speaker 1: your skivvies. But at the same time, I'm certainly a
Speaker 1: good selling point for for us kids. Um, but you're right.
Speaker 1: In eighteen fifty six they did trademark that that brand,
Speaker 1: and now zoom zips au and the magic of podcasting
Speaker 1: and time travel through history, we are in the industrial era. Yes,
Speaker 1: the Industrial era, the Industrial Revolution, and your took us
Speaker 1: odds are the undergarments that you're rocking today as you
Speaker 1: listen to this, if you are indeed wearing undergarments, came
Speaker 1: do you? Courtesy the Industrial Revolution? After after this period, right,
Speaker 1: we see this massive expansion of commercial and manufacturing scale,
Speaker 1: and we see the ability to make instead of laboriously
Speaker 1: doing things in a very slow manner, now we can
Speaker 1: make hundreds, thousands, millions of undergarments. And cotton especially helped
Speaker 1: democratize these fabrics. So the that's because of the cotton
Speaker 1: gin that allows you to process that cotton, uh much
Speaker 1: more efficiently. And then you had things like the spinning Jenny,
Speaker 1: which was like you know, basically an industrial loom, if
Speaker 1: I'm not mistaken, Yeah, exactly. Because they had these technological breakthroughs,
Speaker 1: it became less expensive to create quality clothing. Right. And
Speaker 1: then I don't know if you were expecting this to
Speaker 1: show up in the show, folks, but then the invention
Speaker 1: of the bicycle inspires a revolution and underwear which is
Speaker 1: the jockstrap. It's called a jock strap because they called
Speaker 1: people who are on bicycles jockeys. Yeah, were they, like,
Speaker 1: I mean, they had to have been doing this for
Speaker 1: you know, business purposes, right, Were they like delivering things
Speaker 1: on bicycles or was it just like people writing as
Speaker 1: a mode of transportation. So there was enough demand for
Speaker 1: it that they were getting their junk rattled. You know,
Speaker 1: I have a bike and I don't have a jock strap,
Speaker 1: don't require one, but I have a memory, you know,
Speaker 1: gel kind of seat topper, not to protect my little asse. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they didn't. They didn't have that, so you're you're right.
Speaker 1: It must have been a problem in the you know,
Speaker 1: the jockstrap is still around today because it works. And
Speaker 1: this is interesting because with the industrial era also comes
Speaker 1: the rise of capitalism, and one aspect of capitalism is
Speaker 1: to generate as many markets as possible. Right, Why sell
Speaker 1: one kind of thing when you could sell the same
Speaker 1: thing four ways to four different groups. And that's why
Speaker 1: I would argue that's why we see this specialization in
Speaker 1: underwear at least as a selling point. Absolutely, the differentiation
Speaker 1: between underwear for men underwear for women, um which again
Speaker 1: created these two markets. So what do you do when
Speaker 1: you specialize? You start to get real specific and you
Speaker 1: start to sell people the idea of beauty or the
Speaker 1: idea of fashion. Right. Um, so that's when you start
Speaker 1: seeing things like lingerie. And that represented a really really
Speaker 1: great article by the way, on Love to Know Fashion
Speaker 1: dash History dot Love to Know dot Com about the
Speaker 1: history of lingerie by Caroline Cox, and she points out
Speaker 1: very astutely that the popularizing of lingerie kind of happened
Speaker 1: hand in hand with women becoming freed from some of
Speaker 1: those constraints that we talked about in terms of morality,
Speaker 1: notions of sexuality. They should, you know, kind of be
Speaker 1: more restrained, right, And this kind of became part of
Speaker 1: what led to like the sexual liberation and the idea
Speaker 1: of femininity and identity and sexual identity, or in parallel
Speaker 1: with the kind of emerging of sexual identity among women
Speaker 1: and femininity and the idea of you know, kind of
Speaker 1: tossing off some of those Victorian morals that were sort
Speaker 1: of kind of foisted upon them. But it was early
Speaker 1: nine hundreds and there was still kind of we weren't
Speaker 1: fully into the sexual revolution yet, but this was definitely
Speaker 1: laying the groundwork. And lingerie was considered something that was
Speaker 1: only for married couples if you wore it and you
Speaker 1: were not a married woman, then that would be considered
Speaker 1: low or promiscuous, or in some way lacking in in
Speaker 1: virtue and decorum. This really great quote from a fashion
Speaker 1: journalist from nineteen o two. Um that again is is
Speaker 1: cited in this fashion history dot Love to Know dot
Speaker 1: com article and it goes like this lovely lingerie does
Speaker 1: not belong only to the fast. Dainty undergarments are not
Speaker 1: necessarily a sign of depravity. The most virtuous of us
Speaker 1: are now allowed to possess pretty undergarments without being looked
Speaker 1: upon as suspicious characters. Here here caveats, but handing in
Speaker 1: the right direction. Yeah, agreed. And you know this is
Speaker 1: like this idea of to the morality jail with you
Speaker 1: based on your dress is it's it's dumb. It's an
Speaker 1: attempt to control people. And unfortunately it's not the only
Speaker 1: example of its kind. We know it occurs in other
Speaker 1: other countries, other cultures. Throughout history, people have been attempting
Speaker 1: to control each other through their dress. But this is
Speaker 1: why we have to examine all of these things at once.
Speaker 1: If we go, if we check in to see what's
Speaker 1: going on with pants and uh pants in the U
Speaker 1: S sense, with trousers. Then we see that, oh, one
Speaker 1: of my favorite fun facts. Long John's named after a
Speaker 1: real guy. His name is John L. Sullivan. He's a
Speaker 1: boxer in the eighteen hundreds and he one of his
Speaker 1: flexes was he would show up in the ring in
Speaker 1: his long John's to box people. And then we also
Speaker 1: know the origin of the word pants. Using pants like
Speaker 1: this might be hilarious for some of our British listeners,
Speaker 1: but it comes from an Italian comedy called Pantalone. The
Speaker 1: character in this play where's these garments that come down
Speaker 1: to his ankles at a time when most folks were
Speaker 1: rocking stuff that came down to their knees. And then
Speaker 1: in the eighteenth century in England these were called pantaloons.
Speaker 1: By the nineteenth century we started shortening that word pants,
Speaker 1: and then in Britain, at least going to local histories
Speaker 1: dot Org, pants came to mean just any kind of
Speaker 1: long draws. I'm still gonna stick with draws that covered
Speaker 1: your the entirety of your leg and the things that
Speaker 1: you wore over those long draws, those long John's would
Speaker 1: become known as trousers. So there it is also if
Speaker 1: you go back to magic of time travel. If you
Speaker 1: go to the nineteen twenties, you'll see pants as a
Speaker 1: pants design. Pants Aesthetics again got an idea from boxing.
Speaker 1: Of all places, a guy named Jacob Golam developed a
Speaker 1: featherweight version of fighting shorts, and then in the nineties,
Speaker 1: it's primary villain appeared facts. Can we get some traumatic music?
Speaker 1: That's right? Is that? Okay? All right? You know what? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm budget conscious, I got you, so. Yes. The briefs,
Speaker 1: this is a question that you hear. If you're you've
Speaker 1: probably heard this pretty often. If you're male identified, people
Speaker 1: will ask you boxers or briefs. They'll still ask you
Speaker 1: that today. It's almost cliche, right, yeah, It's sort of
Speaker 1: like a a sort of flirtatious thing someone might ask
Speaker 1: you perhaps maybe right, yeah, yeah, exactly, a little bit forward,
Speaker 1: a little cheeky, like you know, depending on how well
Speaker 1: you know you're close male friends. I'm sure at some
Speaker 1: point everybody's had that talk. It's kind of like a
Speaker 1: high school, middle school talk where you're like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: any where, Tidy Whitey's boxer guy. And there's an interesting
Speaker 1: thing that happened with a public image of Tidy Whitey's
Speaker 1: But first well, I think we need to talk a
Speaker 1: little bit about how this Boxer's versus Briefs rivalry came
Speaker 1: to be. This it was nineteen five, Okay, cast your
Speaker 1: memory back there. Jockey Briefs go on sale in Chicago.
Speaker 1: They're designed by a guy named Arthur Niebler who calls
Speaker 1: himself an apparel engineer. These first under it's so hard
Speaker 1: because we're we're in the same room together, so I
Speaker 1: keep going to like stand up and demonstrate stuff, but don't.
Speaker 1: We're a family show. So this These were the first
Speaker 1: underpants that didn't have any legs unlike a lot of
Speaker 1: those other other designs, and they had their flap was
Speaker 1: this y shaped opening. And this was so revolutionary for
Speaker 1: the little Australia business that it's been compared with the
Speaker 1: invention of the brawl. I can see that, Ben. Have
Speaker 1: you seen the show Trailer Park Boys. Randy was one
Speaker 1: of my favorite characters, the guy who's never wearing a shirt.
Speaker 1: Whenever he wants to fight, he always takes his pants
Speaker 1: off because it gives him more freedom of movement to
Speaker 1: kind of like gyrate around. And that's what briefs did, right.
Speaker 1: They gave you more freedom of movement. Because you're not
Speaker 1: restricted because they just come right up to the joints
Speaker 1: of your legs as opposed to like coming down further.
Speaker 1: I personally, I'm gonna put it out there. Box brief guy,
Speaker 1: Box a brief guy. I like the tight fit, but
Speaker 1: I also like a little on the leg I see yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know. I guess we're putting all our all our
Speaker 1: draws on the table. I tend to go box or
Speaker 1: briefs myself. This this one, though, the jockey briefs that
Speaker 1: are sometimes called tidy Whitey's, they sold like hot cakes,
Speaker 1: like hot cakes for your butt. The thirty thousand were sold,
Speaker 1: and then they couple of months, in just a couple
Speaker 1: of months, yeah, exactly, in three months. And then they
Speaker 1: they started leveraging marketing in a brilliant way. They had
Speaker 1: a plane that would make special deliveries of what they
Speaker 1: called masculine support briefs to businesses across the state, and
Speaker 1: they called the plane the mascu line. You have to
Speaker 1: have the pause, you do. What does that print like, ben,
Speaker 1: Is it like separated by a hyphen or something? What's
Speaker 1: the branding? I think they do have a hyphen. They
Speaker 1: do have a little dash because they're they're really proud
Speaker 1: of that name. I get it, um, And they promised
Speaker 1: to deliver masculine support. Again. Part of why it was
Speaker 1: such a revolutionary development because you know, gave you support,
Speaker 1: male support, and that's why you connected it with the
Speaker 1: bra I believe. Yeah. Yeah. And so the battle for
Speaker 1: supremacy over what dudes would wear down South continued the
Speaker 1: rest of the twentieth century, and then it started to
Speaker 1: get weird because people were making these health claims and
Speaker 1: these are health claims that I am sure you Max
Speaker 1: and I all her growing up, or people say, hey,
Speaker 1: well if you and we're endeavoring to be honest. Your
Speaker 1: folks talking about the angle of the dangle. The angle
Speaker 1: of the dangle is a big, big one, you know
Speaker 1: in the idea? What explained that one? It was just like,
Speaker 1: you know, some folks are are hardcore evangelists for boxers
Speaker 1: because they think you need more hanging to uh promote
Speaker 1: you know, I guess procreation. Like maybe if you're stuff
Speaker 1: is too tightly packed, then it can overheat. I don't
Speaker 1: know exactly. Is that the hygiene Maybe you can get
Speaker 1: infections that yeah, maybe if it's like two tightly packed
Speaker 1: and you're you're getting hots and sweaty down there. It
Speaker 1: can cause some some hygiene issues. Yeah. But then the
Speaker 1: fans of the brief would argue other stuff, and they
Speaker 1: would say, well, here, okay, this is one I heard.
Speaker 1: I don't know in those common but I heard, uh,
Speaker 1: and I'm sure this is not scientifically sound. I had
Speaker 1: some folks tell me in middle school that if you
Speaker 1: wore boxers over time, what would happen is that your
Speaker 1: cod pieces would continue to draw. Yeah, you know, just
Speaker 1: like how is sometimes when how when people are elderly,
Speaker 1: sometimes their ears keep growing, you know, and struggling to
Speaker 1: and froing. Yes, exactly. And I do have a parody
Speaker 1: version of that another one. Oh you've heard the one. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: dear bees, it's something that happens. I think if you
Speaker 1: get older to that happens. They sure, that's gravity. It's
Speaker 1: just gravity. You can't mess with gravity. No amount of
Speaker 1: technological garment innovation can mess with gravity, exactly. And so
Speaker 1: because of these health claims, regardless of their veracity, a
Speaker 1: lot of people felt like they had their well being
Speaker 1: at stake. And this is where we get to, This
Speaker 1: is where we I think we switched back for a second,
Speaker 1: and let's talk about World War One because it played
Speaker 1: a role in Undergarden. Super interesting. Let's not forget like corsets.
Speaker 1: You know, you picture corsets and you picture petticoats, and
Speaker 1: that covered up pretty large swath of history, right, like
Speaker 1: you know, the Old West, for example, the Frontier. Even
Speaker 1: they were even though they were stepping through streets that
Speaker 1: were like covered in mud and and and you know,
Speaker 1: horse manure, they were still wearing these bizarre bell shaped
Speaker 1: you know um petticoats that were at this point surrounded
Speaker 1: by steel. Right. We initially in the early days of them,
Speaker 1: they were made with reeds or willow rods that could
Speaker 1: be bent because they were they were flexible. But because
Speaker 1: of the war effort, women were discouraged. It actually caused
Speaker 1: a sea change in fashion because all of that steel
Speaker 1: was needed for the war effort. So women were discouraged
Speaker 1: by the government from buying these courses, which essentially caused
Speaker 1: a sea change in manufacturing and style. And it also
Speaker 1: saved the government twenty eight thousand tons of metal. Amazing, right,
Speaker 1: And no, that's no small effort. And that's where the
Speaker 1: new brazier comes into play. And then we see a
Speaker 1: cavalcade of other innovations, garter belts, girdles to replace courses,
Speaker 1: perma girdles. I gotta say real quick, this is from
Speaker 1: some of these facts here are from a great article
Speaker 1: on Family Tree magazine called The Revealing History of Underwear
Speaker 1: by David A. Frisle, which is a great last name. Yes,
Speaker 1: shout out to you, Mr Frixele. Also then, also we
Speaker 1: see nylon stockings. We see sixty four million pairs of
Speaker 1: those sold, such that kind of like the PS five,
Speaker 1: manufacturers couldn't keep up with demand, and at some point
Speaker 1: some people were actually painting on stockings, which is I
Speaker 1: think interesting. It is interesting. And remember, you know, originally
Speaker 1: stockings were made of silk, which was a very you know,
Speaker 1: rare and expensive material. Nylon really democratized the wearing of stockings.
Speaker 1: And I have very distinct memories of being a kid
Speaker 1: and uh, those stockings that came in like the egg
Speaker 1: you know, you'd buy them in almost I can't remember
Speaker 1: the name of the brand, but it really became a
Speaker 1: fashion thing, especially kind of in the eighties. Maybe is
Speaker 1: when I picture like shoulder pads and nylon stockings, but
Speaker 1: obviously it was big before that. But here's something that
Speaker 1: I didn't realize. Wait wait wait wait wait before going
Speaker 1: I realized that's why they were called legs like l
Speaker 1: like eggs with two g Yeah, boom, that's why they
Speaker 1: were sold that way. You nailed it, very clever, very
Speaker 1: clever branding. But here's something I didn't know. The thong.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about the thong. It gets its own song. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'll tell you who who didn't want to see that thong? Um? Well,
Speaker 1: actually did no. Let me let me rephrase that. The
Speaker 1: mayor of New York in the nineteen thirties, the guy
Speaker 1: who the airport connector, Mayor Fiarrello LaGuardia. This is there's
Speaker 1: a huge like red light district. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: sex work was not legal, but there were lots of
Speaker 1: burlesque type joints and strip clubs. Right. Times Square used
Speaker 1: to be lousy with them up until I think the
Speaker 1: like the nineties, you know, when they kind of think
Speaker 1: it was Juliani who cleaned up quote unquote cleaned up
Speaker 1: Times Square turned it into basically like Disneyland for tourists.
Speaker 1: It's a little weird. I would have I vaguely remember
Speaker 1: growing up going to New York in the nineties and
Speaker 1: and the Trash Year, Dirty Year version, but LaGuardia ordered
Speaker 1: by like statute, I guess strippers to replace their g strings,
Speaker 1: which is, you know, it's like a thong, but it's
Speaker 1: literally a string. It's basically how they could get around
Speaker 1: with him them not being full nude. It doesn't look comfortable.
Speaker 1: I've never worn one, but it doesn't look comfortable. I
Speaker 1: haven't either. But the thong is just it's honestly full
Speaker 1: circle kind of back to the loincloth. It kind of
Speaker 1: is it's like a reduced loincloth that's stretchy and you know,
Speaker 1: shows enough of the butt, but it's not like just
Speaker 1: it doesn't disappear into the butt entirely. Right yep. And
Speaker 1: years later the four eight eleven original rise thong in
Speaker 1: like a jet it's a it's a jet fear button.
Speaker 1: The four at eleven model to mock three thong now
Speaker 1: with I C B. M. S. Yeah, it gets accepted,
Speaker 1: It gets widespread acceptance as underwear. Just like you said,
Speaker 1: it's a loin cloth. There was something else interesting we
Speaker 1: found here. Before the nineteen fifties, pretty much everybody thought
Speaker 1: of T shirts the way that we would think of
Speaker 1: underwear correct, like you would if you were a normal person.
Speaker 1: You would only be wearing a T shirt if you
Speaker 1: were doing hard labor, playing sports. And the fact that
Speaker 1: like right now, let's see, um, you know, you're wearing
Speaker 1: a T shirt, Max, you're rocking a tea. I've got
Speaker 1: one on, but I've got one on underwear style, Like
Speaker 1: so you're also wearing a polo on top of that,
Speaker 1: which is a style of tea with just like a
Speaker 1: collar there it is, yeah, yeah, exactly, And that would
Speaker 1: have been unusual. We would have looked out of place
Speaker 1: or way too informal, or that's the thing, way too informal,
Speaker 1: except for the intervention of a guy named Marlon Brando
Speaker 1: in one he started appearing in these canonical classic hits
Speaker 1: like Streetcar named Desire just wearing a tight T shirt
Speaker 1: showing off, you know, showing off his his bot a
Speaker 1: little bit. And then he did the Wild One where
Speaker 1: he also wore a T shirt. James Dean Rebel Without
Speaker 1: a Cause also a T shirt. And now a T
Speaker 1: shirt becomes an everyday thing that people wear, and you
Speaker 1: gotta think, and I'm just kind of spitballing here, but
Speaker 1: it was probably designed they didn't. I don't think they
Speaker 1: fully understood the pop culture phenomenon that it would create.
Speaker 1: I think initially it was probably like, this is an everyman,
Speaker 1: you know. The guy in street Car is meant to
Speaker 1: be kind of a working stiff, you know, so it's
Speaker 1: probably like, okay, this is what like. You know, it
Speaker 1: was meant to show he's not rich. He's not rich exactly,
Speaker 1: same with Rebel without a Cause, although I think he
Speaker 1: had rich parents. That's a really interesting movie. I need
Speaker 1: to watch that one again. It's a lot weirder than
Speaker 1: I thought. It opens with this weird little clown thing,
Speaker 1: like a little clown toy, and it's very interesting, odd movie.
Speaker 1: I I assumed it was gonna be all motorcycle racing
Speaker 1: in bravado, but it's actually very nuanced and strange. Film.
Speaker 1: Highly recommended. Also has a really great sequence that takes
Speaker 1: place in my favorite place in Los Angeles, the Griffith
Speaker 1: Park Observatory. Ah Yes. And if whether you're at Los Angeles,
Speaker 1: New York, or anywhere between in the nineteen sixties, you
Speaker 1: notice something called the sexual revolution. It's also revolutionize social
Speaker 1: latitudes towards unmentionables, and so it's important to note that
Speaker 1: a lot of things that would have formerly been considered
Speaker 1: scandalous or now increase seemingly being considered mainstream. Right. And
Speaker 1: and now we see that underwear sometimes followed larger trends
Speaker 1: and outer clothing, Like when in the UK, when I
Speaker 1: think it was maybe the eighties seventies, there was a
Speaker 1: move towards tight genes and so people went back to
Speaker 1: briefs because it couldn't put their boxers in the tight
Speaker 1: jeans without looking really awkward and weird. And then I
Speaker 1: found this really interesting quote where a person named Elizabeth
Speaker 1: Eliasson of bjorn Borg. Had to be clear bjorn Borg
Speaker 1: is a company named after the tennis player, said that
Speaker 1: all the underwear trends started in the nineteen eighties with
Speaker 1: the gay market. They wanted to have innovative products, and
Speaker 1: because of this you would see like there was a sexualization.
Speaker 1: You see like market mark and uh, designers like Calvin
Speaker 1: Klein are using pretty much nude models in their ads.
Speaker 1: And also people start associating boxers with kind of like success.
Speaker 1: This is this is the grown man's panties. No, it's
Speaker 1: it's it's very true. And I gotta say to you, Ben,
Speaker 1: you're talking about those type jeans and having to wear
Speaker 1: briefs under them. Essentially we've come full circle again, and
Speaker 1: that's sort of the modern cod piece, Yes, the modern
Speaker 1: cod piece. This is where we also see this this
Speaker 1: strange shift in aesthetic or the strange shift shift. Yes,
Speaker 1: there we go, the strange chemise in in this in
Speaker 1: a cultural perspective, because for a time, boxers, you know,
Speaker 1: they're getting, they're becoming associated with, as he said, more
Speaker 1: well to do up and coming like yuppie types. They're
Speaker 1: the grown man's panties. And conversely, briefs are seen as
Speaker 1: like the underwear of boys children y, like the g
Speaker 1: I joe prints and all of that stuff, and it
Speaker 1: became seen like a sign of immaturity exactly. But then
Speaker 1: enters Marky mark And and Calvin Klein or or actually,
Speaker 1: you know, I always think of when I think of
Speaker 1: Calvin Klein, I think of back to the future. When
Speaker 1: she pulls this, you know, his mom in the in
Speaker 1: the past. You know, he's he's he's he's unconscious because
Speaker 1: I guess he gets hit by her parents car. And
Speaker 1: then she takes the pants off and she says that
Speaker 1: his name is printed is underwear and she calls him
Speaker 1: Calvin for the whole movie. Um, but this changes that
Speaker 1: exactly then right around because of Calvin Klein and um
Speaker 1: featuring you know, the idea of an underwear model. That
Speaker 1: wasn't even a thing, you know, Um, but it maybe
Speaker 1: it was. But this is really when it becomes front
Speaker 1: and center and on billboards, on TV commercials and like
Speaker 1: all over the place and sort of normalizes that sexuality,
Speaker 1: much to the chagrin of certain evangelical sets I would imagine. Right, yeah, now,
Speaker 1: underwear is not just functional, it's a statement about sex, fashion, money,
Speaker 1: and your appeal. And so seeing celebrities wearing these garments
Speaker 1: would cause people to run out and get their own
Speaker 1: or maybe get some for their partners, right, and by
Speaker 1: clothing were them. So this translates directly to sales. And
Speaker 1: that was starting in the seventies, yeah, going through to
Speaker 1: the eighties when that was probably at its peak with
Speaker 1: the with the market Mark stuff. Well that was also
Speaker 1: like Markie Mark would probably have been like late eighties,
Speaker 1: like early nineties. Yeah, that really never went away. No, no,
Speaker 1: And now we're reaching the conclusion of our tail. For
Speaker 1: now there is a future of underwear that will will
Speaker 1: cover Uh, I guess much much later. But as you know,
Speaker 1: one of our favorite arbitrary rules here on Ridiculous History
Speaker 1: is that we consider history stuff that happened before about
Speaker 1: the mid nineties. Max, did we tell you that? I
Speaker 1: don't think you guys did tell me that cut off
Speaker 1: as apartheid are cut off? Is literally yes, And that's
Speaker 1: that's why we're stopping at this era. Uh. The hybrid
Speaker 1: Boxer brief, there's so many more, know you and I
Speaker 1: did a round up of some just interesting underwear facts
Speaker 1: that we found. Dude, this first one almost makes me
Speaker 1: think George Lucas was all a little perth. So the
Speaker 1: story is unconfirmed that Harry Fisher didn't wear underwear while
Speaker 1: filming Star Wars because George Lucas told her there is
Speaker 1: no underwear at outer space. George, whatever, man, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's the future, man, there's future underwear. I would let
Speaker 1: to point out that at no point in Star Wars
Speaker 1: do they say it's the future. Well, actually it's supposed
Speaker 1: to have happened a long long time ha ha and
Speaker 1: a galaxy far far away, it's true. Um, you know.
Speaker 1: Sticking with maybe a military type theme, um, the expression
Speaker 1: of going commando apparently first started being used in the
Speaker 1: seventies as like university slang, like in frat type circles.
Speaker 1: One of the first mentions apparently occurred at the University
Speaker 1: of North Carolina back in nineteen four. Um. But it
Speaker 1: refers to, of course, the idea of a commando, a
Speaker 1: military man being ready to go at a moment's notice
Speaker 1: and not needing to put on drawers. Okay, that's illuminated eating. Okay.
Speaker 1: It's also illegal in Thailand to leave your house without underwear. Uh.
Speaker 1: And also I feel they also execute you for smoking
Speaker 1: pot in Thailand. Uh. It does have harsh drug laws.
Speaker 1: If you're traveling to a place that has that says
Speaker 1: they have harsh drug laws, just believe them. Just believe them.
Speaker 1: You know what I mean, you could party at home.
Speaker 1: But but but also one thing I thought would be
Speaker 1: would be fun for us to do it if you're interested,
Speaker 1: is I was looking for underwear slang because whenever we
Speaker 1: talk about things that are like the oh naughty stuff,
Speaker 1: we always find all this beautiful language about it, Like
Speaker 1: Benjamin Franklin's long List, his reference work that's just phrases
Speaker 1: for getting drunk, or all the various names people have
Speaker 1: for genitals. We found some cool underwear slang. One of
Speaker 1: them is pretties, which I think is so creepy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's super creepy. Um, it's only goodness pretty, that's not cool. Um. Then,
Speaker 1: of course we've got some there's different ones from from
Speaker 1: different regions. Like he said, We've got things like granny panties.
Speaker 1: We've got drawls. Of course, we've got brief thongs, g strings, pantaloons. Um,
Speaker 1: what else We've got weener basket. Oh finally, finally, that's
Speaker 1: high class banana hammock. Yeah, I've heard that there's uh
Speaker 1: tap pants, which the tap dancers. Cutty Sark is one.
Speaker 1: It's also whiskey, right, Budgee smugglers, manhole covers. Manhole covers
Speaker 1: is clever. Of course nickers is good, and that has
Speaker 1: its own interesting history. But my heart goes to the
Speaker 1: union suit. I just want to start referring to that,
Speaker 1: like I'm wearing my union suits. My union suit is
Speaker 1: covering your birthday suits. It covers your birthday. Well done.
Speaker 1: You've got a couple more dumb ones just from belatory
Speaker 1: dot com. We've got sausage skins, kicks under ru's mantees,
Speaker 1: punch and holder, Grundy's trolleys and skies. I'm gonna I'm
Speaker 1: gonna try to make some up maxigans, break these with
Speaker 1: salad cues. How about your your hands free? Yeah you go,
Speaker 1: because otherwise you have to just hold them right, It's true. Yeah,
Speaker 1: um fig leaf. There we go, There we go. Uh,
Speaker 1: let's see, let's see. Uh your your cross Roads. That's weird.
Speaker 1: That's a really good movie with Britney Spears and Okay,
Speaker 1: well we'll take that. And I think that's it's a
Speaker 1: great bone Thugs and harmony song. You have a really
Speaker 1: great I Do I Do I? I love that version.
Speaker 1: Maybe one day we'll all be able to play it
Speaker 1: together and not get sued by one of those giants.
Speaker 1: That's true. Gosh, this is a fun one. Thank you too.
Speaker 1: Free to the loom first and foremost like, thank you
Speaker 1: please send me one of those fruit mascot costumes. I
Speaker 1: wouldn't be the great We'll wear it on a soon
Speaker 1: to be announced live event that we're gonna do. Yeah
Speaker 1: they still if they still? Thanks to you, Ben, Thanks
Speaker 1: to you, Max Williams, super producer Max Williams, Alex Williams,
Speaker 1: who composed our theme, Super producer Casey Pegram, all the
Speaker 1: super producers of Days of Your Yes, and thanks to
Speaker 1: you knowl it's great to hang out in person. Thanks
Speaker 1: to Gabe Lucier, our research associate. Christopher ocotis Eve's Jeff Coat,
Speaker 1: and thanks to Nathan, and thanks to Yeah and thanks
Speaker 1: well this the second time we said the name, so
Speaker 1: we can power through this. Thanks to the Quister for sure,
Speaker 1: and then you know, thanks to all the people who
Speaker 1: have tirelessly worked to make underwear better. Honestly, because if
Speaker 1: you look at the history this this is a wild ride,
Speaker 1: it really is. See you next time, folks. For more
Speaker 1: podcasts for my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.