A comprehensive timeline of men telling women what to wear

[boston bean]

THIS HAS BEEN GOING ON FOR MILLENNIA.

It doesn't matter if you want to leave the house wearing a clown costume, or a pair of slightly-see-through-but-really-comfy leggings paired with a tie-dyed crop top - what you wear is always your choice.

Or at least, it should be.

And yet, throughout history, women have continually fallen subject to various rules and regulations that dictate what we 'can' and 'can't' put on our bodies. In fact, men telling women what to wear has been going on for thousands and thousands of years. So much so, that when we started making this timeline we thought it would take about 45 minutes. Instead, it took four and a half hours - and we'll probably have to come back and add to it some more next week.

From the recent burkini rulings in the south of France to the news that women in Iran are forced to cut off their hair and disguise themselves as men if they want to leave the house without a hijab - not to mention the ongoing insistence that rape victims should tell juries what they were wearing before their attackers are found innocent - society is still bafflingly obsessed with the way women cover up.

The list they have compiled goes back to 2500BC.. take a look.. such a proud rich history

http://www.marieclaire.co.uk/blogs/554431/timeline-of-dress-codes-men-telling-women-what-to-wear.html

[niyad]

1. a very interesting timeline. I do not know if it is mentioned in the article, but, in many cases,

the whole point of the way men insisted that women dress made sure that they had no freedom of movement--the styles of the victorian era, for example, had the upperclass women wearing anywhere from 30 to 40 POUNDS of material, and corsets that literally cut off their breath (think of the scandal of amelia bloomer, and the angst around the rational dress movement (where women decided (the hussies) that they would wear less than SEVEN POUNDS of undergarments!!)

[boston bean]

2. such hussies! How dare they want to wear less than 10lbs of undergarments!

[ismnotwasm]

3. K&R