The boutique lingerie shop – the one that falls somewhere between the fetish shops and the department stores and appears to be aimed at the new bride or date night for the marrieds or the improper rendezvous – has been hitherto foreign territory. Last week, in search of a gift, I ventured into one and was immediately plunged into a scarlet, pink, black, white, lace and satin world of flimsy smalls. All that fragile fabric was held in place by bits of metal and plastic – in some cases a lot of it. For the most part they were innocently naughty and to underline this a few sported the Playboy bunny. But most of all they looked uncomfortable, especially the corsets which looked suitable for spanking Swinburne or to be more current, Max Moseley, thus contributing to masochism all around.
I bought the gift and walked away a little contemplative. After six years here, I can say with some authority that in these most liberated of times (every woman can wear a trouser, every woman can wear shorts!), the clothing choices for Western women remains a fraught territory. The magazines are clogged with women writers bemoaning the perils of the change room mirror, addressing the question of “does my bottom look big in this”, the lack of age appropriate clothing, deciding on “what do I wear today” and offering tips to be beach ready. Immensely irritating as all this, the truth is the sartorial choices of women here, particularly once they start working, are boring (the professional dress must hew as close as possible to what men wear), functional (sportswear or the jeans and T) and inappropriate (where everyone upward of 25 wears variants of clothes aimed at teens). Add to this the tyranny of the dress size (now almost an identity marker; some women will only shop at stores where they are a "size 8"), the unforgiving and uncomfortable materials du jour (lycra), the fashion for near bare shoulders and tailoring itself which makes the proper fit all important and necessitates many trips to the change room and the task of dressing oneself becomes an unpleasant, time consuming task.
Even if the days of corsetry seem long past, much Western clothing is still meant to truss you up and keep things “in place”. People no longer wear pantyhose and with good reason. The alternative, however, cannot be unfashionable woollen socks so many a girl will be caught shivering in the night air and claiming she is not cold. Eventually you mutate the pantyhose into tight body stockings and dispense with any outerwear (see Lady Gaga, Duffy). Ditto “body shapers” to keep bits and pieces firmly tucked in. Both shirts and trousers must be adapted to varying feminine forms and they do this with varying degrees of success, which inevitably leads to the boredom and – if the writers are to be believed - the terror of the change room. Skirts are fitting and tight, not easy to walk in. And last but not the least the crown jewel of uncomfortable fashion, the tapered toe and the high heel. So essential is this deemed for the professional heterosexual woman that I was a little surprised to find my modest and plain shoes being deemed “butch”. Add to this the whole weekly beauty regimen of removing body hair, getting your hair set and the like and it becomes that whatever you do, you must be in a stage of discomfort or at least arrive at it by way of discomfort.
And therein lies the nub – you can submit yourself to this refashioning and mutilation of the self or you can settle for the no fuss, ordinary. There is no middle ground. But it is fertile ground for public humiliation, albeit light hearted, of sites like Go Fug because a million things can and do go wrong.
In India of course, smalls of any sort are comparatively recent. To the best of my knowledge my great-grandmother never wore any underwear (a point of view I might add that found much favour with my hostel mates who wished to be “boyfriend ready”). Ditto stitched clothing - in Tagore’s Farewell my Friend, the fashionable girls wear blouses with their sarees, in some of Kerala’s temples, stitched clothing is still banned. Indian garments therefore tend to be fluid with little that is constricting. The modern saree, an uncomfortable if elegant marriage between Victorian dress and the yardage of draped cloth that is the basic saree, is still simple to wear once you know the basics. The word tailoring may only be loosely applied to the salwar kameez. Add to this the bewildering array of prints and colours in India which makes regimentation impossible and the task of dressing up in India is relatively painless even if this seems contradictory to the cumbersome “look” of our garments. Like in Herrick’s poem, sweetly flows the liquefaction of the Indian garment (bar the fussiness). And you can arrive at it in a matter of minutes.
I bought the gift and walked away a little contemplative. After six years here, I can say with some authority that in these most liberated of times (every woman can wear a trouser, every woman can wear shorts!), the clothing choices for Western women remains a fraught territory. The magazines are clogged with women writers bemoaning the perils of the change room mirror, addressing the question of “does my bottom look big in this”, the lack of age appropriate clothing, deciding on “what do I wear today” and offering tips to be beach ready. Immensely irritating as all this, the truth is the sartorial choices of women here, particularly once they start working, are boring (the professional dress must hew as close as possible to what men wear), functional (sportswear or the jeans and T) and inappropriate (where everyone upward of 25 wears variants of clothes aimed at teens). Add to this the tyranny of the dress size (now almost an identity marker; some women will only shop at stores where they are a "size 8"), the unforgiving and uncomfortable materials du jour (lycra), the fashion for near bare shoulders and tailoring itself which makes the proper fit all important and necessitates many trips to the change room and the task of dressing oneself becomes an unpleasant, time consuming task.
Even if the days of corsetry seem long past, much Western clothing is still meant to truss you up and keep things “in place”. People no longer wear pantyhose and with good reason. The alternative, however, cannot be unfashionable woollen socks so many a girl will be caught shivering in the night air and claiming she is not cold. Eventually you mutate the pantyhose into tight body stockings and dispense with any outerwear (see Lady Gaga, Duffy). Ditto “body shapers” to keep bits and pieces firmly tucked in. Both shirts and trousers must be adapted to varying feminine forms and they do this with varying degrees of success, which inevitably leads to the boredom and – if the writers are to be believed - the terror of the change room. Skirts are fitting and tight, not easy to walk in. And last but not the least the crown jewel of uncomfortable fashion, the tapered toe and the high heel. So essential is this deemed for the professional heterosexual woman that I was a little surprised to find my modest and plain shoes being deemed “butch”. Add to this the whole weekly beauty regimen of removing body hair, getting your hair set and the like and it becomes that whatever you do, you must be in a stage of discomfort or at least arrive at it by way of discomfort.
And therein lies the nub – you can submit yourself to this refashioning and mutilation of the self or you can settle for the no fuss, ordinary. There is no middle ground. But it is fertile ground for public humiliation, albeit light hearted, of sites like Go Fug because a million things can and do go wrong.
In India of course, smalls of any sort are comparatively recent. To the best of my knowledge my great-grandmother never wore any underwear (a point of view I might add that found much favour with my hostel mates who wished to be “boyfriend ready”). Ditto stitched clothing - in Tagore’s Farewell my Friend, the fashionable girls wear blouses with their sarees, in some of Kerala’s temples, stitched clothing is still banned. Indian garments therefore tend to be fluid with little that is constricting. The modern saree, an uncomfortable if elegant marriage between Victorian dress and the yardage of draped cloth that is the basic saree, is still simple to wear once you know the basics. The word tailoring may only be loosely applied to the salwar kameez. Add to this the bewildering array of prints and colours in India which makes regimentation impossible and the task of dressing up in India is relatively painless even if this seems contradictory to the cumbersome “look” of our garments. Like in Herrick’s poem, sweetly flows the liquefaction of the Indian garment (bar the fussiness). And you can arrive at it in a matter of minutes.
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