January 11, 2024 • 40 mins
Have you ever looked at a childhood photo of a noted historical dude and thought -- huh, why did his folks put him in a dress? If so, you're seeing evidence of a strange parenting practice of yesteryear... the phenomenon known as breeching. In today's episode, Ben, Noel and Max explore how awarding a boy his first pair of pants became a rite of passage in Western society, and why it seems so strange in the modern day.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so much
for tuning in. We've got a shout out to our
super producer, mister Max white Pants Williams.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
Actually I'm on Brieft right now.
Speaker 3 (00:40):
Oh no, boy, Well can we only see your upper
body here in this zoom video? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (00:46):
Yeah, yeah, we're we're audio family show. So the only
nudity here is emotional and we're so glad he joined us.
I am Ben Bullen joined us always with the one
and only the man with the legend, mister Noel.
Speaker 3 (01:01):
Brown and legend.
Speaker 4 (01:03):
That's the kind of thing.
Speaker 1 (01:04):
Yeah, what's it? What's a geig economy? So what's your
what's your pants situation? No, before HR gets mad at
me for asking.
Speaker 3 (01:13):
My pants are HR approved. I'm wearing a bit of
a gene, a dark gene. They're kind of new, so
they're a little stiff, but I'm liking them. I'm breaking
them in.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
You're a gene guy, you're a deniman.
Speaker 3 (01:25):
I'm aneman. But would you say that we are going
forth into the breach? Yes today, yes, breach do some
breaching unbreaching.
Speaker 4 (01:34):
Perhaps there we go.
Speaker 1 (01:36):
It's time to breach a to breach and broach a
subject that we set up earlier this week with some
lovely help from our research associate for this episode, mister
Max Williams, you might have looked at childhood pictures of
many historical figures, especially in the anglosphere, in Western Europe,
in North America and Canada and so on, and you
(01:58):
might have said, whole why is this really well known
influential dude as a child, Why do they appear to
be wearing a dress? Today's episode is the episode wherein
we conclusively answer that question.
Speaker 4 (02:17):
It's true, it's true.
Speaker 3 (02:19):
We also do have already in the back catalog an
entire episode about kids wearing pants and the idea of
you know, short short pants and breeches and all of
that good stuff. But we're really gonna go this is
going to be sort of a sister episode to that
one in many ways. And Natasha Frost over at Atlas
(02:39):
Obscura points out delightfully and a little missive involving a
gentleman by the name of John Neil who was an
eighteenth century resident of post Revolutionary War America, and he
remembers the day that he and his twin sister were
parted torn a sunder is the phrase that she but
(03:00):
here here's his remembrance. They put me into jacket and trousers,
he wrote in seventeen ninety five. And he gathered up
his call from the article, gathered up his collection of
petticoats and flung them over to his sister. And he
basically was gifting these to his sister. And being twins,
we had always been alike, he says, till then, but
(03:22):
from that time forward, I was the manchild and she
poor thing only sissy, which was something very different back then.
Just so true, it's very true. And then only forced
to wear petticoats.
Speaker 1 (03:35):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And you've seen it. This is
for the parents, the teachers in the audience today. You
see it all around the world pretty much. Most Western
children start wearing some form of pants, pantaloon, trousers, breeches,
breches at an early age. And this is quite expensive
(04:01):
when the kids growing up, you know, you have to
buy this, get new pants every.
Speaker 4 (04:05):
Time, to be tailored too.
Speaker 3 (04:06):
I mean, this is not off the rack kind of
stuff back in those days, and this was you know,
celebrated as a sort of coming of age, you know,
a lot like a bar mitzvrs.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
That's right, yeah, and so this is what our palmac
sees as a nightmare fuel tradition. You tell us what
you think, folks, You're absolutely right. No, this was seen
as an early rite of passage. You are no longer
an infant, you are a full on child. I love
(04:43):
that you mentioned Natasha Frost from that Atlas Obscure article
which does great work on this. Frost dates this back
to the United Kingdom in the middle of the sixteenth
century and says that when early migrants from Europe came
over to North America, they brought this custom with them,
(05:06):
the custom of celebrating this evolution of a child's life,
this passage of time. You don't see this breaching ceremony
almost at all in the early twentieth century and going forward,
primarily because laundry technology improved, which I know is how
(05:26):
it is ridiculous and a little bit silly, but people
used to be pretty.
Speaker 3 (05:32):
Dirty, sure, and you know, having a child of self
soiling age wearing custom tailored pantaloons could have posed a
laundry conundrum, right, And once you know, we were able
to use better chemicals and technologies to desoil garments. It
(05:57):
became a little bit less of an issue.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
Yeah, yeah, a little bit, you know, and shout out
to everybody who is concerned about the environment and using
cloth diapers.
Speaker 4 (06:08):
We know, we know, we know.
Speaker 1 (06:10):
It's a rough gig, folks, But look, humans are the
same back then as they are today. For centuries and centuries,
people thought of pants as more than just clothing. It
was symbolic. It represented a transformation. It was a statement.
(06:30):
And this sounds weird, it probably hasn't aged well, but
back in the day, giving the kid pants was seen
as assigning a kind of gender role in society. Because
now now you can climb trees, you can do all
the Huckleberry Finn Tom Sawyer stuff.
Speaker 3 (06:48):
Right, paint fences, there are trick people to paint them
for you. It's you know, the origin is surely of
the expression, you know, wearing the pants in the family,
the idea of this representing a masculine leadership role and
sort of being in charge, you know, being the head
hot show.
Speaker 1 (07:06):
Before this pants ritual, all small children would wear long
dresses comparable in some ways to the modern hospital gown,
except it was nighty. Perhaps yeah, like moo moo and
a shift, if you will. And a lot of times
when families were not royalty and they had a lot
(07:29):
of children, these pieces of clothing were purposely made to
be sort of one size fits all. You pass it
down to the next kid, and so on and so
on and so on. And of course more well to
do families had the flex they had to have fancy
dresses for their children.
Speaker 3 (07:50):
Yeah, I mean, and even you know, after passing into
that manhood kind of role and being breached oftentimes, you know,
folks in this era of history would still wear what
are called dressing gowns, you know, for bed, Like you
think of old Ebenezer Scrooge in his best dressing gown,
you know, clutching a candle, you know, as he was
(08:13):
spooked by holiday ghosts.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
Yes, which also I would argue helps the structure of
the story because it puts that titan of industry in
a more childlike position.
Speaker 4 (08:27):
That's a really good point.
Speaker 3 (08:28):
You know, this is done not to get on too
much of a tangent, but I read a really interesting
thing about how oftentimes villains in fiction and cinema are
seen drinking milk because it puts them in this sort
of like they are this they've got issues with, you know,
arrested development in some way, shape or form. And it's
(08:51):
also I've seen it used as a way of representing
sort of whiteness as well, like I believe specifically in
Get Out, the excellent Jordan Peel movie where no spoilers,
but one of the villains is seen drinking milk and
eating cereal separately.
Speaker 1 (09:10):
Clockwork Orange, No country for old Men. Whenever you see
someone drinking milk in a film, it is a very
purposeful choice. Shout out to Quentin Tarantino and inglorious bastards.
There are a lot of There are a lot of
bad people drinking milk. And I'm sure that the old
Got Milk campaign and trade associations have opinions on that,
(09:34):
but we haven't called them yet.
Speaker 4 (09:35):
Nope, no penalty. I don't know the number. O T
M I L k oh.
Speaker 3 (09:40):
That is seven digits.
Speaker 4 (09:41):
That could be a number we should try. Let's try
a ring.
Speaker 1 (09:44):
Let's try it because we've got our big boy bridges
on for this episode, so we can cold call people,
just like that pigeon that's been giving me nightmares.
Speaker 4 (09:53):
We are scared.
Speaker 1 (09:55):
So yeah, the the idea of breeches. If we go
to s. Lombard in her work making Manhood growing up
Male in colonial New England, what we see is that
this clothing, the transformation into trousers, functioned as a passport
to the world beyond the childhood home. You could get
(10:18):
into adventures, you could ride horses, you could go on
high jinks. And while you did that, just like the
story of the twins that we opened with here, while
you did that, your unfortunate siblings, if they were assigned
female at birth, they have to stay in these stresses.
They don't get pants, and this keeps them closer to
(10:40):
the home. This is a lot of like handmaid's tail, oh,
hierarchical stuff.
Speaker 4 (10:45):
Well think about it too.
Speaker 3 (10:45):
I mean, like so many women's garments, you know, back
in history were very oppressively tight, you know, things like corsets,
and you'd often see the male. The male escorts such
almost be necessary in order to help the women into
a coach or out of a coach, because they couldn't
(11:06):
do it on their own, largely because their legs are
so tight together and they had to be delicately sort
of assisted in and out or crossing a mud puddle
in the thoroughfare, you know, in the Western times, the
idea of a gentleman throwing his waistcoat across you know,
the said mud puddle and escorting the woman across dare she,
you know, besmirch her her petticoats? And the struggle continues
(11:29):
today in terms of just getting in a nice dress
with pockets. Got your back folks. By the way, we
are pro pockets here, and decorative pockets are for the birds.
What's that about decorative pockets? I still under why would
you do it?
Speaker 4 (11:45):
Anyways?
Speaker 3 (11:46):
So, I mean, we're not fashion experts, but still it
feels a little bit counterproductive. We're not there, make it,
make it be a functional pocket?
Speaker 4 (11:53):
Why why why not? Why is why is it sew
it up at the top? It doesn't make sense.
Speaker 1 (11:56):
We're fashion functionalists, not fashion fascists, and we're certainly not
he ghots. So there is a cool shout out that
that you found here.
Speaker 4 (12:06):
Max.
Speaker 1 (12:08):
One of my favorite books that is so often forgotten
in the modern day, the Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy.
This is a wild ride. If you like Don Quixote,
you're gonna like this book. It is bonkers.
Speaker 3 (12:23):
Yeah, and there is an episode of breaching that really
represents a you know, push forward into manhood. And there's
a great quote from it from the father of this
main character. 'tis high time to take this young creature
out of these woman's hands and push him into those
(12:43):
of a private governor. Okay, jumping right from a little
baby to a governor.
Speaker 1 (12:49):
Yeah, and it starts with the breaching. Let's go to
Jennifer Jordan, who wrote a pretty comprehensive deep dive on
masculinity as it was seen in the seventeenth century, and
(13:10):
Jordan identifies the same phenomenon we're talking about the social
import of acquiring pants. This meant, you know, like you said,
you're wearing the pants in the family, you're the young
man of the house. It became a huge significant milestone
in a boy's journey toward adulthood, toward manhood in some ways,
(13:36):
not in terms of the ceremony itself, but in terms
of what it represented. In a way, it's similar to
like a bar mitzvah or abot mitzvah. You know, it's
a huge passage in your life. And people in the
canon of Western literature talk about this all the time,
not just in their like bangor singles like in their
(13:58):
letters to their friends, the equivalent of DMS pre internet.
Samuel Coleridge talks about it with I think his son
was five years old? Is that correct when he got
this right?
Speaker 4 (14:09):
Is it?
Speaker 3 (14:09):
Samuel Coleridge, the guy who wrote in Kublai Khan's Pleasuredome
doth decree or what? I love that one. Yeah, it's
a good one.
Speaker 4 (14:16):
You know.
Speaker 3 (14:16):
It's funny too talking about manhood. Maybe I'm off the
mark on this one, but a lot of these pantaloons
were quite revealing in the swimsuit region, let's just say.
And often women's clothing were designed to be as modest
as humanly possible. It was almost as though the cut
of one's breach could in fact be designed to accentuate
(14:40):
one's literal manhood, you know, like David Bowie and Labyrinth.
Speaker 4 (14:45):
Here we go.
Speaker 1 (14:46):
We're reference rich today, folks. That's how we start. Twenty
twenty four. Coleridge is kind of surprised when he's talking
about his son's his son's introduction to pants in a
letter in eighteen oh one, he said he did not
roll and tumbled over and over in his old joyous way, No,
it wasn't eager and solemn gladness as if he felt
(15:10):
it to be an awful area. It is life, so
like that is an area. He gets pants and he's like, uh,
beat me your max. He gets pants and he's like, hush,
it's getting real kind man stuff.
Speaker 3 (15:23):
Yeah, And didn't they have like sort of like you
know again, like the bar Mitzvah type situation. They had
sort of gathering sort of celebrations of these breaching occasions, right,
and there were like gifts given to make the pockets
of said breeches jingle with cash or coin to represent
(15:45):
the transition of this young lad into manhood.
Speaker 1 (15:49):
So one of the first questions naturally occurs is how
old are these kids when they are allowed pants. The
answer varies from situation to situation, but in general it's
somewhere between four and eight years old. And it's something
like it's a liminal space. It's kind of like when
(16:10):
parents decide whether or not to let their kid in.
On the Santa Claus conspiracy, the ways depicted is that
there were sometimes conflicting desires on the parts of the parents.
The dads were like, let's make him a little man,
a little mini me that can go in trapes about,
and the mothers were depicted as saying, Oh, I don't
(16:32):
want them to grow up. Yeah, he's not ready. I
want him to be my little little guy forever.
Speaker 4 (16:37):
And in fact, a historian named Catherine K.
Speaker 3 (16:39):
Cain had this to say, And this is another pull
from the incredible Atlas Obscure article by Frost that we
mentioned earlier. Some mothers might try to delay the event,
especially if there were no other infants or toddlers in
the nursery, So that we know that in general it
can be the case often only children get peg with
(17:00):
having a little bit of arrested development, perhaps because they
are so precious, you know, there's no one else to
replace them once they leave the nest, so to speak,
so they're often kind of held back a little bit.
Speaker 1 (17:12):
Yeah, yeah, it's true. It's kind of a stereotype or
social observation that can have some sand to it. But
of course we don't want to paint with a broad
brush if it's not necessary. We do know that sometimes
children might not get pants because of their perceived health conditions,
(17:35):
like we need him to be on the mend, he's
sick with one of the weird medical maladies of our
day is the brain fever, the dropsy, the shoe foot,
et cetera, break bone fever. There it is, and the
dancing plague, the dancing plang. This kid's got moves. We
(17:55):
can't put them in pants just yet. Let's see if
they can pop and lock and do a dougie or.
Speaker 4 (18:00):
Perhaps a stinky leg.
Speaker 3 (18:03):
Also, of course, and we've already kind of alluded to,
this class continued to play quite a big role in
when and under what circumstances a boy.
Speaker 4 (18:14):
Was to be breached.
Speaker 1 (18:17):
And you know, another thing is again, I keep going
back to this. People are not incredibly different from one
generation or one age to the next. So this is
a shout out to everybody in the US or Canada
who had, as a young child been dressed in a
(18:37):
costume for Halloween without your parents' consent. My folks always
kept is a place of pride in their mantle. Picture
of me as a pumpkin and then as what I
can only describe as a dangerously out of shaped French
chef nice. I was like not even two years.
Speaker 3 (19:00):
Remember those really kind of shoddy plastic costumes that like
came with like sort of like a smock that was
sort of made of a weird rubbery material and then
almost like a like a reusable tablecloth, but not particularly reusable,
and then the accompanying mask. Those would be pretty much
single use. You wouldn't really get much hand me down
(19:20):
action out of those. But the class aspects here is
really important because, as we mentioned, these garments were custom made,
or they needed to be, especially if you know, there
were lots of differences in size and build between various children.
So a less well to do family might not have
the coin to commission a tailor, you know, to to
(19:42):
you know, cut a brand new tailored suit of pants,
you know, for a young lad passing into manhood, So
they might have to deal with these hand me downs
and for a while, and or continue on with the
sort of dressing gown situation until it became untenable. And
if there was going to be some sort of gathering
or party, it certainly wouldn't be at the scale of
(20:05):
that the rich might be capable of throwing.
Speaker 1 (20:08):
Here is a cookie, congratulations your man now. Child labor
is definitely with being so into the minds up.
Speaker 4 (20:15):
To the mines. Yeah, so yeah, class.
Speaker 1 (20:20):
It always makes me sad when we have to talk
about class this way. It makes me think of things
like hard candy Christmas, about all these absolutely wonderful, innocent
kids who are rightly asking, well, why don't I get
the same kind of party? Wealthy families balled out on
this stuff. There are accounts of kids being given a
(20:43):
ceremonial toy sword, and the history we mentioned earlier. Cain
talks about how in more well to do families, the
kid would change into his new custom made suit because
mass production of clothing not really a thing yet, Nope.
And sometimes the tailor who made the little man suit
(21:05):
would be there to dress the boy, or the father's
valet because people had valets there and as footman perhaps, yes, right,
And the family would gather in the room, and then
there would be another guest, the local barber. And remember
(21:25):
this isn't too far gone from the years in which
someone qualified to cut hair was also qualified to amputate
limbs and let blood.
Speaker 3 (21:34):
Right.
Speaker 4 (21:34):
Yeah, no.
Speaker 3 (21:35):
And it's interesting, too, Ben, because I think we've been
hinting at it. This really was a passage in many ways,
not only into manhood, but into like leaving the house,
you know, because you needed to fit into that gender
role in order to leave the house. And for the
wealthier class that would be more about being introduced into
society perhaps, but for the less well to do class
(21:58):
it would be my be put off until they literally
had to, like we said, go hit the mines or
the fields, you know, and that is terrible, but that
is they would put it off until that point because
you can't really work in minds there in fields wearing
a you know, like a nightie. Yeah, you gotta have
that flexibility in the leg areas.
Speaker 1 (22:20):
And like literally every other single thing humans have ever done,
there was a contingent of people who had a big
problem with it's there's a guy who maxic called mcclearpill.
I think he's a real pill. His name is George Nicholson.
In seventeen ninety seven, he writes a book called on Clothing.
(22:41):
I want to give him as due. This was the
time of stupid long book titles, So congratulations to you
on the brevity.
Speaker 4 (22:49):
Nicholson.
Speaker 1 (22:50):
However, your weird anti pants stance is kind of telling
on yourself, bro. He said, look, if you wear pants,
it's like comfortable to pee. And he also said this
would encourage self pleasure because yeah, he was like, if
you give these little boys pants, they're gonna play with themselves.
Speaker 3 (23:12):
Oh boy, but wouldn't it be easier to do that
just lifting up the dress.
Speaker 1 (23:17):
I think George Nicholson had probably had some things on
his own that he needed.
Speaker 4 (23:22):
To as wress.
Speaker 1 (23:24):
It's sort of like like if you read Hemingway writing
about bullfights, it's like, come on, dude, everybody knows but you.
Speaker 3 (23:30):
This is a metaphor for something that you haven't maybe
quite pegged yet.
Speaker 4 (23:36):
No, that's a very very good point. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (23:38):
Well, so, okay, we've got a quote from Nicholson and Max,
I'm really glad you found this because it shows us
this attempt at anti pants propaganda. Dare we say it
was during the first and second year. The boy can
neither button nor unbutton his breeches, and he's continually in
(23:58):
a sad condition. Uh, Max white pants Williams has added
L O.
Speaker 4 (24:03):
L like what the condition? Are they in a psychodicition
because they can't pee? Or are they a technician because
they peede themselves?
Speaker 2 (24:10):
Because he just in the way he's saying is they
can't get their pants off.
Speaker 1 (24:14):
He makes it sound like the reprehensible practice of footbinding,
which is totally different. But he makes it sound like
you're binding crotches well.
Speaker 3 (24:22):
But also he goes on to say he takes it
a step further in saying, in his breaches, a boy
is pent up and shackled, and by way of compensation,
his mind is stuffed with opinion and folly is he
saying this boy needs to let out some steam. I
feel like it sounds like he's encouraging touching himself exactly.
Speaker 2 (24:43):
Here's this whole part about this dude's This dude just
has something that doesn't what he's on about it.
Speaker 4 (24:50):
He's wearing his on brief dress.
Speaker 1 (24:52):
Still he got some bad pants too. Maybe maybe he
just got a really bad pair of pants and the
trauma stayed with him, Uh the call. As we know,
scientific studies have been conducted on the idea of pants,
like Shout Out Again, the Clockwork Orange, and the Lovely
Ongoing Narrative about the ephemeral cycles of fashion. We know
(25:13):
that sometimes bag you pants are in, sometimes type pants
are in, they come and go, and so there has
been science conducted on this that shows really tight pants
could damage sperm count ords. But that's like, honestly, guys,
that's like reading a study that says insert insert food
(25:38):
ingredient here gives rats cancer what they.
Speaker 3 (25:42):
Need massive amounts shovel it into their little rat maws, a.
Speaker 1 (25:46):
Larger amount than any human or any human sized rat
would ever actually eat. So I think there's a little
bit of context that we have to approach those studies with. However,
and this is something, uh, Max, I don't want to see.
You're excited about it. But this is something we've talked
about off air pretty often. For the past few weeks.
(26:08):
We talked about breaching, but Noel riddled me this, what
is unbreaching?
Speaker 3 (26:21):
Ugh into the unbreach go We Yeah, breaching, of course
is a thing, a ritualized kind of passage into into manhood,
into you know how, bearing responsibility, responsibilities of a head
of household type situation. But what on earth is unbreaching? So,
(26:42):
writing for a Jay Store in an article called Boys
in Dresses, Matthew Wills had this to say, exploring the
biographies of men as disparate as Czar Nicholas the Second, Franklin,
Delano Roosevelt, and Ernest Hemingway, you're apt to come across
pictures of them as young boys looking into distinguishable from
young girls, their hair is long, and they're wearing dresses.
(27:04):
This tracks this is sort of the pre breaching, you know, situation.
It also makes sense that that's when the barber would
make an appearance, because up to that point, if they're
not leaving the house, it would have been prohibitively expensive
or maybe like a waste of effort to cut their hair.
So you'd have a lot of these portraits having them
in this kind of pre breached state.
Speaker 1 (27:25):
Yeah, and this is not like culture war level stuff.
This is a matter of practicality for parents pretty often.
And you know, obviously, folks, kids should not have to
have uniforms unless they go to like a private school
where they make you do it. If we're big fans
(27:47):
of self expression and people arriving at their own identities
on this show, so we get the problematic aspects of this.
We also know that they were changing fashion trends in
the world of children's clothing as we get to the
turn of the twentieth century, now we start seeing more
(28:08):
overt kind of gender uniforms. As scholar Joe B. Poletti
points out in her work, until the First World War,
little boys were, like you pointed out in the dressed
and skirts had long hair. The color coating of like
giving little girls pink outfits, little boys baby blue outfits,
(28:29):
that wasn't really common until the nineteen twenties.
Speaker 3 (28:33):
Yeah, I mean, also there wasn't color photography, so it
made more sense. You know, it was black and white,
so most of these outfits were white. I'm still you know, guys,
I'm hilariously colorblind. It's all gray to me. I'm surprised
more people haven't died. When I drive through traffic lights,
you're not missing anything, well except maybe the color of
the stup.
Speaker 2 (28:53):
Like, I did feel bad because when I wore the
white suit and on the Christmas party, I wore a
green green tie and a red shirt and I did
not thing about telling Ben that, And so it was
until we were on Aaron Noles. A lot of Ben's like, oh,
that's the shirt you're wearing, Max Mi, Oh sorry, yeah.
Speaker 1 (29:07):
No, I knew the suit was white.
Speaker 3 (29:09):
It's good to be able to continuously be surprised by something, though.
Speaker 4 (29:12):
Yeah, that's very kind.
Speaker 3 (29:13):
I mean silver lining, you know, Yeah, so there.
Speaker 1 (29:17):
Is a course, there is a lining to this as well.
You let us know whether you think it's silver lightning folks,
our history lazy.
Speaker 4 (29:29):
Right, right right.
Speaker 1 (29:29):
Our historian Pilletti here says that children's clothing became more
like gender typed and at the same time, she notes
that clothing for adult women began to look there's a
quote from her more androgynous. And she points out that
(29:50):
there was a new sort of hierarchy of differences in
color and fabric, material and trim, perhaps the way it
was cut right that would separate boys and girls at
later stages, and that you also, she knows, to the
point about photography, she says, you know, you you're gonna
(30:14):
have a tough time seeing this in most photos of
the era, because photographs were kind of like everybody was
kind of like a photograph of Bigfoot.
Speaker 3 (30:24):
Right, But also just some of these specifics, you know,
were more kind of specific to that society, you know,
so we might not recognize those as being gendered based
on the standards that we've gotten used to, So it
might be something that we would just would kind of
go over our heads since we're used to seeing dress
equals girl, pants equals boy. There were more subtleties, and
(30:45):
especially to your point, Ben, or to Joe's point about
the more androgynous types of clothing that were briefly associated
with with women's dress.
Speaker 1 (30:54):
Yeah, and there's a lot packed in here because one
thing we haven't talked about yet is the tremendous role
of folklore of indeed pre Christian beliefs that go throughout
all communities in the world, not just the Western world
as we call it today. There was this superstition that
(31:16):
still persists in various various communities. There was this superstition
that one must take certain actions to protect one's children
from infernal or dangerous supernatural forces. So like, okay, you like,
don't say the kid's name, and these certain circumstances. And
(31:37):
this is probably part of the reason why the little
boys were dressed in dresses, which is very weird to
think about, but there's historical sand to.
Speaker 4 (31:49):
It one hundred percent. But also.
Speaker 3 (31:52):
The idea of toilet training, Oh, it was important so
to have, you know, a garment that was much easier
to change and walk and didn't require any you know,
fiddling with clasps or you know whatever, because it wouldn't
have been zippers or elastic bands. It would have been
like you know, more tricky buttons or you know, not
snaps even I mean maybe even things that had to
(32:14):
be kind of laced right, So it was a bit
of a to do to get out of your pantaloons.
Speaker 1 (32:21):
Yeah, the difference. I love that how Poleeti puts this.
The difference between boys and girls at an early age
socially was not seen as as important as the difference
between children and adults. That was the big line of demarcation.
And so yes, it becomes celebratory. It also, I gotta
(32:46):
say it, sometimes really wealthy parents treat their young children
like pets, and it's kind of weird. That's why we
get the knickerbockers, That's why we get the we get
the cosplay. When some of these children were in a
very very h well to do families got their first
pair of pants to get outfits.
Speaker 3 (33:05):
And just to clarify real quick, when we're talking about unbreaching,
we're talking about all of the fits that went into
this pre breached kind of period addresses.
Speaker 1 (33:16):
Until you get the pants, you are unbreached. When you
get the pants, you have been breached.
Speaker 4 (33:21):
I see.
Speaker 3 (33:21):
So this is and also a lot of this stuff
would be much more specific in terms of the bespoke
aspects of the unbreached uh phase, that would be much
more specific to the wealthy, you know, because they're probably
also largely the ones that are going to end up
in photographs because that was the thing that was everyone
didn't get to do that. That was an expensive process
and you know, required time away from the minds in
(33:45):
the fields to even you know, get the kid to
sit still, and to have you have to have the
whole crew, you know, to do these family photographs.
Speaker 2 (33:51):
I think about it before photographs, like you need someone
to paint you. You have to be important and have
a lot of right to have. I mean, you probably
have your vallee and your painter and you're something like
normal blokes like us.
Speaker 4 (34:04):
Now we ain't getting paid in Yeah.
Speaker 3 (34:05):
And unless there was some stylized sort of thing, impressionistic
sort of a portrait of three waifs in the gun,
you know.
Speaker 1 (34:13):
I like the idea of breaching coming with that, uh,
with that responsibility, like okay, you're six, you're a man now. Uh,
we're going to refer to each other by our surnames.
Speaker 4 (34:26):
Right, I am here's a gun.
Speaker 1 (34:28):
Yeah, I'm here's a gun. And to prove your manhood,
I need you to stand still for about four hours
holding this gun. Okay, I'm gonna I'm gonna leave you
with the valet. I've opium to attend to. So like that,
Like that's that's how it goes, all right. I know
we're getting toward the end. Uh, we do have a
conclusive explanation here. We do know that fashion continues to evolve,
(34:53):
and it does have a lot of symbolic import to
various cultures throughout time and across the world. But I
I want to give a shout out. It's one of
my favorite weird words. Finally got to use it. I
can't believe we got this far without saying it. Knickerbockers.
It's such a silly word. Knickerbockers.
Speaker 3 (35:12):
Yeah, it is, and it's uh, you know, you'll see
it in I think there's the Knickerbocker Hotel. I think
there's one in New York, and I think there's one
in Los Angeles too. But it just does it feels
like such a like it's of its time, you know,
this this word. But they were they were kind of
short pants, weren't They weren't nickerbockers, kind of like sort
of ruffled little little pantaloons or what's a knickerbockers?
Speaker 1 (35:33):
A look, it's style. Couple different things. There are also
oh gosh, okay, so yes, knickerbockers are a type of clothing.
They can also be oh gosh. They're also called knickers,
but they can also be a last name. It can
refer to part of the Dutch community of early New York, right,
(35:57):
the Knickerbockers. It's fascinating.
Speaker 4 (35:59):
I'm just fine.
Speaker 1 (36:00):
I need excuses to say knickerbocker more often. I think
maybe we can start using more specific names for pantsy guys.
When we compliment people, we can be like, no, there's
awesome smart trousers, mister.
Speaker 3 (36:14):
De some fetching pantaloons, Yeah, you've got a nack. Fetching
is a weird one too. It's like it makes it
like it's like I'm standing up and taking notice. You
done fetched me, and here I am remarking upon your
fabulous outfit.
Speaker 1 (36:29):
You've a knack for Knickerbocker's my friend. I So with this,
we hope that we have answered the question. And if
you were interested in learning more about the history of fashion,
there is a show with a great catalog that we'd
like to recommend. It is called Dressed Epede by our
longtime friend Holly Fry. The podcast is not putting on
(36:54):
new episodes for a while now, but it's deep and
it's really awesome exploration to us by co host April
Callahan and Cassidy Zachary.
Speaker 3 (37:03):
Yeah, both of whom I believe both have backgrounds in
literal fashion history, and they go pretty deep into it,
and there's a lot of detail and really interesting stuff
that even people that might not consider themselves interested in fashion,
there is history is forward in this podcast, So it
really is you know, we can learn a lot by
(37:24):
the Closed People War and the kind of circumstances and
ceremony around these garments and outfits.
Speaker 1 (37:31):
Absolutely, whether or not this podcast finds you wearing pants,
perhaps the most important thing we can leave each other
with today is dress how you want you know what
I mean, You have the agency to wear what you
would like, unless you know, I got you're at a
private school or you're in some sort of situation where
(37:53):
uniform is required. Because your clothing is more than just
a function. It can also be a statement of your
personality and how you feel and how how you want
to be seen and be felt. And that's a beautiful,
amazing thing, Oh.
Speaker 3 (38:09):
For sure, especially now where you know, gender is such
a fluid thing, you know, and that is much more
socially acceptable than it's ever been. There are a lot
more opportunities, you know, for going one's own way in
terms of fashion. So I think that's really liberating. And
you know, for the longest time, as we see in
this history, things were very much foisted upon people, you know,
(38:32):
because of perceived gender, and now it is very much
kind of up for grabs, like what direction do you
want to go in? Do you want to mix it up?
There kind of are no rules. It's just about, like
you said, Ben, wearing what feels good and what makes
you feel like the best version of yourself.
Speaker 1 (38:47):
Yeah, I'd like to end on that point again, you
have agency to present how you wish to the world
to be seen, to be felt. It is a beautiful
thing and we can't wait for you to join for
more Ridiculous History. Will be back next week. It's a
brand new Misadventures in the Meantime. Big big thanks to
(39:07):
super producer and research associate for this episode, mister Max Williams.
Speaker 3 (39:12):
That's right, Alex Williams, who composed this theme chrisphrosciotis Eve's
Jeff Coates here in the Spirit.
Speaker 1 (39:20):
Big big thanks to our pal Jonathan Strickland aka the Quister.
If you also enjoy food History, check out our sister
show Savor with Lauren Vogelbam and Addie Reese. Christ rossi
otis here in Spirit. I caught up with Christopher over
the holidays. He's doing well and you guys, he has
an official wizard beard now, oh cool. I asked him
(39:41):
if he knows spells and he thought I was joking.
Speaker 3 (39:44):
But with him briefly also and let him know that
we continue to shout him out in every episode, So
huge props to Christopher, who is here from the beginning
with Ridiculous History. Also for shouting out the Quist. We
kind of shout out a. J. Jacobs The Puzzler. Check
out his show too if you want a daily dose
of New York Times fun, you know, and in a
(40:06):
short form puzzles for your daily commute.
Speaker 1 (40:09):
Yeah, we'll be on The Puzzler in a different series
of episodes on the way soon. You can also tune
in to catch a. J. Jacobs in the future with
Ridiculous History. No big spoilers folks, but got a sneak
peek at his newest book, which comes out in May,
(40:30):
and I am so excited.
Speaker 4 (40:32):
Yeah, same year.
Speaker 3 (40:33):
I think you got a chance to read a little
more than I did.
Speaker 4 (40:35):
But the peak that I got was a delight. So
be on the lookout for AJ's new book, and in.
Speaker 3 (40:40):
The meantime, we'll see you next time, folks. For more
podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so much
for tuning in. We've got a shout out to our
super producer, mister Max white Pants Williams.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
Actually I'm on Brieft right now.
Speaker 3 (00:40):
Oh no, boy, Well can we only see your upper
body here in this zoom video? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (00:46):
Yeah, yeah, we're we're audio family show. So the only
nudity here is emotional and we're so glad he joined us.
I am Ben Bullen joined us always with the one
and only the man with the legend, mister Noel.
Speaker 3 (01:01):
Brown and legend.
Speaker 4 (01:03):
That's the kind of thing.
Speaker 1 (01:04):
Yeah, what's it? What's a geig economy? So what's your
what's your pants situation? No, before HR gets mad at
me for asking.
Speaker 3 (01:13):
My pants are HR approved. I'm wearing a bit of
a gene, a dark gene. They're kind of new, so
they're a little stiff, but I'm liking them. I'm breaking
them in.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
You're a gene guy, you're a deniman.
Speaker 3 (01:25):
I'm aneman. But would you say that we are going
forth into the breach? Yes today, yes, breach do some
breaching unbreaching.
Speaker 4 (01:34):
Perhaps there we go.
Speaker 1 (01:36):
It's time to breach a to breach and broach a
subject that we set up earlier this week with some
lovely help from our research associate for this episode, mister
Max Williams, you might have looked at childhood pictures of
many historical figures, especially in the anglosphere, in Western Europe,
in North America and Canada and so on, and you
(01:58):
might have said, whole why is this really well known
influential dude as a child, Why do they appear to
be wearing a dress? Today's episode is the episode wherein
we conclusively answer that question.
Speaker 4 (02:17):
It's true, it's true.
Speaker 3 (02:19):
We also do have already in the back catalog an
entire episode about kids wearing pants and the idea of
you know, short short pants and breeches and all of
that good stuff. But we're really gonna go this is
going to be sort of a sister episode to that
one in many ways. And Natasha Frost over at Atlas
(02:39):
Obscura points out delightfully and a little missive involving a
gentleman by the name of John Neil who was an
eighteenth century resident of post Revolutionary War America, and he
remembers the day that he and his twin sister were
parted torn a sunder is the phrase that she but
(03:00):
here here's his remembrance. They put me into jacket and trousers,
he wrote in seventeen ninety five. And he gathered up
his call from the article, gathered up his collection of
petticoats and flung them over to his sister. And he
basically was gifting these to his sister. And being twins,
we had always been alike, he says, till then, but
(03:22):
from that time forward, I was the manchild and she
poor thing only sissy, which was something very different back then.
Just so true, it's very true. And then only forced
to wear petticoats.
Speaker 1 (03:35):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And you've seen it. This is
for the parents, the teachers in the audience today. You
see it all around the world pretty much. Most Western
children start wearing some form of pants, pantaloon, trousers, breeches,
breches at an early age. And this is quite expensive
(04:01):
when the kids growing up, you know, you have to
buy this, get new pants every.
Speaker 4 (04:05):
Time, to be tailored too.
Speaker 3 (04:06):
I mean, this is not off the rack kind of
stuff back in those days, and this was you know,
celebrated as a sort of coming of age, you know,
a lot like a bar mitzvrs.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
That's right, yeah, and so this is what our palmac
sees as a nightmare fuel tradition. You tell us what
you think, folks, You're absolutely right. No, this was seen
as an early rite of passage. You are no longer
an infant, you are a full on child. I love
(04:43):
that you mentioned Natasha Frost from that Atlas Obscure article
which does great work on this. Frost dates this back
to the United Kingdom in the middle of the sixteenth
century and says that when early migrants from Europe came
over to North America, they brought this custom with them,
(05:06):
the custom of celebrating this evolution of a child's life,
this passage of time. You don't see this breaching ceremony
almost at all in the early twentieth century and going forward,
primarily because laundry technology improved, which I know is how
(05:26):
it is ridiculous and a little bit silly, but people
used to be pretty.
Speaker 3 (05:32):
Dirty, sure, and you know, having a child of self
soiling age wearing custom tailored pantaloons could have posed a
laundry conundrum, right, And once you know, we were able
to use better chemicals and technologies to desoil garments. It
(05:57):
became a little bit less of an issue.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
Yeah, yeah, a little bit, you know, and shout out
to everybody who is concerned about the environment and using
cloth diapers.
Speaker 4 (06:08):
We know, we know, we know.
Speaker 1 (06:10):
It's a rough gig, folks, But look, humans are the
same back then as they are today. For centuries and centuries,
people thought of pants as more than just clothing. It
was symbolic. It represented a transformation. It was a statement.
(06:30):
And this sounds weird, it probably hasn't aged well, but
back in the day, giving the kid pants was seen
as assigning a kind of gender role in society. Because
now now you can climb trees, you can do all
the Huckleberry Finn Tom Sawyer stuff.
Speaker 3 (06:48):
Right, paint fences, there are trick people to paint them
for you. It's you know, the origin is surely of
the expression, you know, wearing the pants in the family,
the idea of this representing a masculine leadership role and
sort of being in charge, you know, being the head
hot show.
Speaker 1 (07:06):
Before this pants ritual, all small children would wear long
dresses comparable in some ways to the modern hospital gown,
except it was nighty. Perhaps yeah, like moo moo and
a shift, if you will. And a lot of times
when families were not royalty and they had a lot
(07:29):
of children, these pieces of clothing were purposely made to
be sort of one size fits all. You pass it
down to the next kid, and so on and so
on and so on. And of course more well to
do families had the flex they had to have fancy
dresses for their children.
Speaker 3 (07:50):
Yeah, I mean, and even you know, after passing into
that manhood kind of role and being breached oftentimes, you know,
folks in this era of history would still wear what
are called dressing gowns, you know, for bed, Like you
think of old Ebenezer Scrooge in his best dressing gown,
you know, clutching a candle, you know, as he was
(08:13):
spooked by holiday ghosts.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
Yes, which also I would argue helps the structure of
the story because it puts that titan of industry in
a more childlike position.
Speaker 4 (08:27):
That's a really good point.
Speaker 3 (08:28):
You know, this is done not to get on too
much of a tangent, but I read a really interesting
thing about how oftentimes villains in fiction and cinema are
seen drinking milk because it puts them in this sort
of like they are this they've got issues with, you know,
arrested development in some way, shape or form. And it's
(08:51):
also I've seen it used as a way of representing
sort of whiteness as well, like I believe specifically in
Get Out, the excellent Jordan Peel movie where no spoilers,
but one of the villains is seen drinking milk and
eating cereal separately.
Speaker 1 (09:10):
Clockwork Orange, No country for old Men. Whenever you see
someone drinking milk in a film, it is a very
purposeful choice. Shout out to Quentin Tarantino and inglorious bastards.
There are a lot of There are a lot of
bad people drinking milk. And I'm sure that the old
Got Milk campaign and trade associations have opinions on that,
(09:34):
but we haven't called them yet.
Speaker 4 (09:35):
Nope, no penalty. I don't know the number. O T
M I L k oh.
Speaker 3 (09:40):
That is seven digits.
Speaker 4 (09:41):
That could be a number we should try. Let's try
a ring.
Speaker 1 (09:44):
Let's try it because we've got our big boy bridges
on for this episode, so we can cold call people,
just like that pigeon that's been giving me nightmares.
Speaker 4 (09:53):
We are scared.
Speaker 1 (09:55):
So yeah, the the idea of breeches. If we go
to s. Lombard in her work making Manhood growing up
Male in colonial New England, what we see is that
this clothing, the transformation into trousers, functioned as a passport
to the world beyond the childhood home. You could get
(10:18):
into adventures, you could ride horses, you could go on
high jinks. And while you did that, just like the
story of the twins that we opened with here, while
you did that, your unfortunate siblings, if they were assigned
female at birth, they have to stay in these stresses.
They don't get pants, and this keeps them closer to
(10:40):
the home. This is a lot of like handmaid's tail, oh,
hierarchical stuff.
Speaker 4 (10:45):
Well think about it too.
Speaker 3 (10:45):
I mean, like so many women's garments, you know, back
in history were very oppressively tight, you know, things like corsets,
and you'd often see the male. The male escorts such
almost be necessary in order to help the women into
a coach or out of a coach, because they couldn't
(11:06):
do it on their own, largely because their legs are
so tight together and they had to be delicately sort
of assisted in and out or crossing a mud puddle
in the thoroughfare, you know, in the Western times, the
idea of a gentleman throwing his waistcoat across you know,
the said mud puddle and escorting the woman across dare she,
you know, besmirch her her petticoats? And the struggle continues
(11:29):
today in terms of just getting in a nice dress
with pockets. Got your back folks. By the way, we
are pro pockets here, and decorative pockets are for the birds.
What's that about decorative pockets? I still under why would
you do it?
Speaker 4 (11:45):
Anyways?
Speaker 3 (11:46):
So, I mean, we're not fashion experts, but still it
feels a little bit counterproductive. We're not there, make it,
make it be a functional pocket?
Speaker 4 (11:53):
Why why why not? Why is why is it sew
it up at the top? It doesn't make sense.
Speaker 1 (11:56):
We're fashion functionalists, not fashion fascists, and we're certainly not
he ghots. So there is a cool shout out that
that you found here.
Speaker 4 (12:06):
Max.
Speaker 1 (12:08):
One of my favorite books that is so often forgotten
in the modern day, the Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy.
This is a wild ride. If you like Don Quixote,
you're gonna like this book. It is bonkers.
Speaker 3 (12:23):
Yeah, and there is an episode of breaching that really
represents a you know, push forward into manhood. And there's
a great quote from it from the father of this
main character. 'tis high time to take this young creature
out of these woman's hands and push him into those
(12:43):
of a private governor. Okay, jumping right from a little
baby to a governor.
Speaker 1 (12:49):
Yeah, and it starts with the breaching. Let's go to
Jennifer Jordan, who wrote a pretty comprehensive deep dive on
masculinity as it was seen in the seventeenth century, and
(13:10):
Jordan identifies the same phenomenon we're talking about the social
import of acquiring pants. This meant, you know, like you said,
you're wearing the pants in the family, you're the young
man of the house. It became a huge significant milestone
in a boy's journey toward adulthood, toward manhood in some ways,
(13:36):
not in terms of the ceremony itself, but in terms
of what it represented. In a way, it's similar to
like a bar mitzvah or abot mitzvah. You know, it's
a huge passage in your life. And people in the
canon of Western literature talk about this all the time,
not just in their like bangor singles like in their
(13:58):
letters to their friends, the equivalent of DMS pre internet.
Samuel Coleridge talks about it with I think his son
was five years old? Is that correct when he got
this right?
Speaker 4 (14:09):
Is it?
Speaker 3 (14:09):
Samuel Coleridge, the guy who wrote in Kublai Khan's Pleasuredome
doth decree or what? I love that one. Yeah, it's
a good one.
Speaker 4 (14:16):
You know.
Speaker 3 (14:16):
It's funny too talking about manhood. Maybe I'm off the
mark on this one, but a lot of these pantaloons
were quite revealing in the swimsuit region, let's just say.
And often women's clothing were designed to be as modest
as humanly possible. It was almost as though the cut
of one's breach could in fact be designed to accentuate
(14:40):
one's literal manhood, you know, like David Bowie and Labyrinth.
Speaker 4 (14:45):
Here we go.
Speaker 1 (14:46):
We're reference rich today, folks. That's how we start. Twenty
twenty four. Coleridge is kind of surprised when he's talking
about his son's his son's introduction to pants in a
letter in eighteen oh one, he said he did not
roll and tumbled over and over in his old joyous way, No,
it wasn't eager and solemn gladness as if he felt
(15:10):
it to be an awful area. It is life, so
like that is an area. He gets pants and he's like, uh,
beat me your max. He gets pants and he's like, hush,
it's getting real kind man stuff.
Speaker 3 (15:23):
Yeah, And didn't they have like sort of like you
know again, like the bar Mitzvah type situation. They had
sort of gathering sort of celebrations of these breaching occasions, right,
and there were like gifts given to make the pockets
of said breeches jingle with cash or coin to represent
(15:45):
the transition of this young lad into manhood.
Speaker 1 (15:49):
So one of the first questions naturally occurs is how
old are these kids when they are allowed pants. The
answer varies from situation to situation, but in general it's
somewhere between four and eight years old. And it's something
like it's a liminal space. It's kind of like when
(16:10):
parents decide whether or not to let their kid in.
On the Santa Claus conspiracy, the ways depicted is that
there were sometimes conflicting desires on the parts of the parents.
The dads were like, let's make him a little man,
a little mini me that can go in trapes about,
and the mothers were depicted as saying, Oh, I don't
(16:32):
want them to grow up. Yeah, he's not ready. I
want him to be my little little guy forever.
Speaker 4 (16:37):
And in fact, a historian named Catherine K.
Speaker 3 (16:39):
Cain had this to say, And this is another pull
from the incredible Atlas Obscure article by Frost that we
mentioned earlier. Some mothers might try to delay the event,
especially if there were no other infants or toddlers in
the nursery, So that we know that in general it
can be the case often only children get peg with
(17:00):
having a little bit of arrested development, perhaps because they
are so precious, you know, there's no one else to
replace them once they leave the nest, so to speak,
so they're often kind of held back a little bit.
Speaker 1 (17:12):
Yeah, yeah, it's true. It's kind of a stereotype or
social observation that can have some sand to it. But
of course we don't want to paint with a broad
brush if it's not necessary. We do know that sometimes
children might not get pants because of their perceived health conditions,
(17:35):
like we need him to be on the mend, he's
sick with one of the weird medical maladies of our
day is the brain fever, the dropsy, the shoe foot,
et cetera, break bone fever. There it is, and the
dancing plague, the dancing plang. This kid's got moves. We
(17:55):
can't put them in pants just yet. Let's see if
they can pop and lock and do a dougie or.
Speaker 4 (18:00):
Perhaps a stinky leg.
Speaker 3 (18:03):
Also, of course, and we've already kind of alluded to,
this class continued to play quite a big role in
when and under what circumstances a boy.
Speaker 4 (18:14):
Was to be breached.
Speaker 1 (18:17):
And you know, another thing is again, I keep going
back to this. People are not incredibly different from one
generation or one age to the next. So this is
a shout out to everybody in the US or Canada
who had, as a young child been dressed in a
(18:37):
costume for Halloween without your parents' consent. My folks always
kept is a place of pride in their mantle. Picture
of me as a pumpkin and then as what I
can only describe as a dangerously out of shaped French
chef nice. I was like not even two years.
Speaker 3 (19:00):
Remember those really kind of shoddy plastic costumes that like
came with like sort of like a smock that was
sort of made of a weird rubbery material and then
almost like a like a reusable tablecloth, but not particularly reusable,
and then the accompanying mask. Those would be pretty much
single use. You wouldn't really get much hand me down
(19:20):
action out of those. But the class aspects here is
really important because, as we mentioned, these garments were custom made,
or they needed to be, especially if you know, there
were lots of differences in size and build between various children.
So a less well to do family might not have
the coin to commission a tailor, you know, to to
(19:42):
you know, cut a brand new tailored suit of pants,
you know, for a young lad passing into manhood, So
they might have to deal with these hand me downs
and for a while, and or continue on with the
sort of dressing gown situation until it became untenable. And
if there was going to be some sort of gathering
or party, it certainly wouldn't be at the scale of
(20:05):
that the rich might be capable of throwing.
Speaker 1 (20:08):
Here is a cookie, congratulations your man now. Child labor
is definitely with being so into the minds up.
Speaker 4 (20:15):
To the mines. Yeah, so yeah, class.
Speaker 1 (20:20):
It always makes me sad when we have to talk
about class this way. It makes me think of things
like hard candy Christmas, about all these absolutely wonderful, innocent
kids who are rightly asking, well, why don't I get
the same kind of party? Wealthy families balled out on
this stuff. There are accounts of kids being given a
(20:43):
ceremonial toy sword, and the history we mentioned earlier. Cain
talks about how in more well to do families, the
kid would change into his new custom made suit because
mass production of clothing not really a thing yet, Nope.
And sometimes the tailor who made the little man suit
(21:05):
would be there to dress the boy, or the father's
valet because people had valets there and as footman perhaps, yes, right,
And the family would gather in the room, and then
there would be another guest, the local barber. And remember
(21:25):
this isn't too far gone from the years in which
someone qualified to cut hair was also qualified to amputate
limbs and let blood.
Speaker 3 (21:34):
Right.
Speaker 4 (21:34):
Yeah, no.
Speaker 3 (21:35):
And it's interesting, too, Ben, because I think we've been
hinting at it. This really was a passage in many ways,
not only into manhood, but into like leaving the house,
you know, because you needed to fit into that gender
role in order to leave the house. And for the
wealthier class that would be more about being introduced into
society perhaps, but for the less well to do class
(21:58):
it would be my be put off until they literally
had to, like we said, go hit the mines or
the fields, you know, and that is terrible, but that
is they would put it off until that point because
you can't really work in minds there in fields wearing
a you know, like a nightie. Yeah, you gotta have
that flexibility in the leg areas.
Speaker 1 (22:20):
And like literally every other single thing humans have ever done,
there was a contingent of people who had a big
problem with it's there's a guy who maxic called mcclearpill.
I think he's a real pill. His name is George Nicholson.
In seventeen ninety seven, he writes a book called on Clothing.
(22:41):
I want to give him as due. This was the
time of stupid long book titles, So congratulations to you
on the brevity.
Speaker 4 (22:49):
Nicholson.
Speaker 1 (22:50):
However, your weird anti pants stance is kind of telling
on yourself, bro. He said, look, if you wear pants,
it's like comfortable to pee. And he also said this
would encourage self pleasure because yeah, he was like, if
you give these little boys pants, they're gonna play with themselves.
Speaker 3 (23:12):
Oh boy, but wouldn't it be easier to do that
just lifting up the dress.
Speaker 1 (23:17):
I think George Nicholson had probably had some things on
his own that he needed.
Speaker 4 (23:22):
To as wress.
Speaker 1 (23:24):
It's sort of like like if you read Hemingway writing
about bullfights, it's like, come on, dude, everybody knows but you.
Speaker 3 (23:30):
This is a metaphor for something that you haven't maybe
quite pegged yet.
Speaker 4 (23:36):
No, that's a very very good point. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (23:38):
Well, so, okay, we've got a quote from Nicholson and Max,
I'm really glad you found this because it shows us
this attempt at anti pants propaganda. Dare we say it
was during the first and second year. The boy can
neither button nor unbutton his breeches, and he's continually in
(23:58):
a sad condition. Uh, Max white pants Williams has added
L O.
Speaker 4 (24:03):
L like what the condition? Are they in a psychodicition
because they can't pee? Or are they a technician because
they peede themselves?
Speaker 2 (24:10):
Because he just in the way he's saying is they
can't get their pants off.
Speaker 1 (24:14):
He makes it sound like the reprehensible practice of footbinding,
which is totally different. But he makes it sound like
you're binding crotches well.
Speaker 3 (24:22):
But also he goes on to say he takes it
a step further in saying, in his breaches, a boy
is pent up and shackled, and by way of compensation,
his mind is stuffed with opinion and folly is he
saying this boy needs to let out some steam. I
feel like it sounds like he's encouraging touching himself exactly.
Speaker 2 (24:43):
Here's this whole part about this dude's This dude just
has something that doesn't what he's on about it.
Speaker 4 (24:50):
He's wearing his on brief dress.
Speaker 1 (24:52):
Still he got some bad pants too. Maybe maybe he
just got a really bad pair of pants and the
trauma stayed with him, Uh the call. As we know,
scientific studies have been conducted on the idea of pants,
like Shout Out Again, the Clockwork Orange, and the Lovely
Ongoing Narrative about the ephemeral cycles of fashion. We know
(25:13):
that sometimes bag you pants are in, sometimes type pants
are in, they come and go, and so there has
been science conducted on this that shows really tight pants
could damage sperm count ords. But that's like, honestly, guys,
that's like reading a study that says insert insert food
(25:38):
ingredient here gives rats cancer what they.
Speaker 3 (25:42):
Need massive amounts shovel it into their little rat maws, a.
Speaker 1 (25:46):
Larger amount than any human or any human sized rat
would ever actually eat. So I think there's a little
bit of context that we have to approach those studies with. However,
and this is something, uh, Max, I don't want to see.
You're excited about it. But this is something we've talked
about off air pretty often. For the past few weeks.
(26:08):
We talked about breaching, but Noel riddled me this, what
is unbreaching?
Speaker 3 (26:21):
Ugh into the unbreach go We Yeah, breaching, of course
is a thing, a ritualized kind of passage into into manhood,
into you know how, bearing responsibility, responsibilities of a head
of household type situation. But what on earth is unbreaching? So,
(26:42):
writing for a Jay Store in an article called Boys
in Dresses, Matthew Wills had this to say, exploring the
biographies of men as disparate as Czar Nicholas the Second, Franklin,
Delano Roosevelt, and Ernest Hemingway, you're apt to come across
pictures of them as young boys looking into distinguishable from
young girls, their hair is long, and they're wearing dresses.
(27:04):
This tracks this is sort of the pre breaching, you know, situation.
It also makes sense that that's when the barber would
make an appearance, because up to that point, if they're
not leaving the house, it would have been prohibitively expensive
or maybe like a waste of effort to cut their hair.
So you'd have a lot of these portraits having them
in this kind of pre breached state.
Speaker 1 (27:25):
Yeah, and this is not like culture war level stuff.
This is a matter of practicality for parents pretty often.
And you know, obviously, folks, kids should not have to
have uniforms unless they go to like a private school
where they make you do it. If we're big fans
(27:47):
of self expression and people arriving at their own identities
on this show, so we get the problematic aspects of this.
We also know that they were changing fashion trends in
the world of children's clothing as we get to the
turn of the twentieth century, now we start seeing more
(28:08):
overt kind of gender uniforms. As scholar Joe B. Poletti
points out in her work, until the First World War,
little boys were, like you pointed out in the dressed
and skirts had long hair. The color coating of like
giving little girls pink outfits, little boys baby blue outfits,
(28:29):
that wasn't really common until the nineteen twenties.
Speaker 3 (28:33):
Yeah, I mean, also there wasn't color photography, so it
made more sense. You know, it was black and white,
so most of these outfits were white. I'm still you know, guys,
I'm hilariously colorblind. It's all gray to me. I'm surprised
more people haven't died. When I drive through traffic lights,
you're not missing anything, well except maybe the color of
the stup.
Speaker 2 (28:53):
Like, I did feel bad because when I wore the
white suit and on the Christmas party, I wore a
green green tie and a red shirt and I did
not thing about telling Ben that, And so it was
until we were on Aaron Noles. A lot of Ben's like, oh,
that's the shirt you're wearing, Max Mi, Oh sorry, yeah.
Speaker 1 (29:07):
No, I knew the suit was white.
Speaker 3 (29:09):
It's good to be able to continuously be surprised by something, though.
Speaker 4 (29:12):
Yeah, that's very kind.
Speaker 3 (29:13):
I mean silver lining, you know, Yeah, so there.
Speaker 1 (29:17):
Is a course, there is a lining to this as well.
You let us know whether you think it's silver lightning folks,
our history lazy.
Speaker 4 (29:29):
Right, right right.
Speaker 1 (29:29):
Our historian Pilletti here says that children's clothing became more
like gender typed and at the same time, she notes
that clothing for adult women began to look there's a
quote from her more androgynous. And she points out that
(29:50):
there was a new sort of hierarchy of differences in
color and fabric, material and trim, perhaps the way it
was cut right that would separate boys and girls at
later stages, and that you also, she knows, to the
point about photography, she says, you know, you you're gonna
(30:14):
have a tough time seeing this in most photos of
the era, because photographs were kind of like everybody was
kind of like a photograph of Bigfoot.
Speaker 3 (30:24):
Right, But also just some of these specifics, you know,
were more kind of specific to that society, you know,
so we might not recognize those as being gendered based
on the standards that we've gotten used to, So it
might be something that we would just would kind of
go over our heads since we're used to seeing dress
equals girl, pants equals boy. There were more subtleties, and
(30:45):
especially to your point, Ben, or to Joe's point about
the more androgynous types of clothing that were briefly associated
with with women's dress.
Speaker 1 (30:54):
Yeah, and there's a lot packed in here because one
thing we haven't talked about yet is the tremendous role
of folklore of indeed pre Christian beliefs that go throughout
all communities in the world, not just the Western world
as we call it today. There was this superstition that
(31:16):
still persists in various various communities. There was this superstition
that one must take certain actions to protect one's children
from infernal or dangerous supernatural forces. So like, okay, you like,
don't say the kid's name, and these certain circumstances. And
(31:37):
this is probably part of the reason why the little
boys were dressed in dresses, which is very weird to
think about, but there's historical sand to.
Speaker 4 (31:49):
It one hundred percent. But also.
Speaker 3 (31:52):
The idea of toilet training, Oh, it was important so
to have, you know, a garment that was much easier
to change and walk and didn't require any you know,
fiddling with clasps or you know whatever, because it wouldn't
have been zippers or elastic bands. It would have been
like you know, more tricky buttons or you know, not
snaps even I mean maybe even things that had to
(32:14):
be kind of laced right, So it was a bit
of a to do to get out of your pantaloons.
Speaker 1 (32:21):
Yeah, the difference. I love that how Poleeti puts this.
The difference between boys and girls at an early age
socially was not seen as as important as the difference
between children and adults. That was the big line of demarcation.
And so yes, it becomes celebratory. It also, I gotta
(32:46):
say it, sometimes really wealthy parents treat their young children
like pets, and it's kind of weird. That's why we
get the knickerbockers, That's why we get the we get
the cosplay. When some of these children were in a
very very h well to do families got their first
pair of pants to get outfits.
Speaker 3 (33:05):
And just to clarify real quick, when we're talking about unbreaching,
we're talking about all of the fits that went into
this pre breached kind of period addresses.
Speaker 1 (33:16):
Until you get the pants, you are unbreached. When you
get the pants, you have been breached.
Speaker 4 (33:21):
I see.
Speaker 3 (33:21):
So this is and also a lot of this stuff
would be much more specific in terms of the bespoke
aspects of the unbreached uh phase, that would be much
more specific to the wealthy, you know, because they're probably
also largely the ones that are going to end up
in photographs because that was the thing that was everyone
didn't get to do that. That was an expensive process
and you know, required time away from the minds in
(33:45):
the fields to even you know, get the kid to
sit still, and to have you have to have the
whole crew, you know, to do these family photographs.
Speaker 2 (33:51):
I think about it before photographs, like you need someone
to paint you. You have to be important and have
a lot of right to have. I mean, you probably
have your vallee and your painter and you're something like
normal blokes like us.
Speaker 4 (34:04):
Now we ain't getting paid in Yeah.
Speaker 3 (34:05):
And unless there was some stylized sort of thing, impressionistic
sort of a portrait of three waifs in the gun,
you know.
Speaker 1 (34:13):
I like the idea of breaching coming with that, uh,
with that responsibility, like okay, you're six, you're a man now. Uh,
we're going to refer to each other by our surnames.
Speaker 4 (34:26):
Right, I am here's a gun.
Speaker 1 (34:28):
Yeah, I'm here's a gun. And to prove your manhood,
I need you to stand still for about four hours
holding this gun. Okay, I'm gonna I'm gonna leave you
with the valet. I've opium to attend to. So like that,
Like that's that's how it goes, all right. I know
we're getting toward the end. Uh, we do have a
conclusive explanation here. We do know that fashion continues to evolve,
(34:53):
and it does have a lot of symbolic import to
various cultures throughout time and across the world. But I
I want to give a shout out. It's one of
my favorite weird words. Finally got to use it. I
can't believe we got this far without saying it. Knickerbockers.
It's such a silly word. Knickerbockers.
Speaker 3 (35:12):
Yeah, it is, and it's uh, you know, you'll see
it in I think there's the Knickerbocker Hotel. I think
there's one in New York, and I think there's one
in Los Angeles too. But it just does it feels
like such a like it's of its time, you know,
this this word. But they were they were kind of
short pants, weren't They weren't nickerbockers, kind of like sort
of ruffled little little pantaloons or what's a knickerbockers?
Speaker 1 (35:33):
A look, it's style. Couple different things. There are also
oh gosh, okay, so yes, knickerbockers are a type of clothing.
They can also be oh gosh. They're also called knickers,
but they can also be a last name. It can
refer to part of the Dutch community of early New York, right,
(35:57):
the Knickerbockers. It's fascinating.
Speaker 4 (35:59):
I'm just fine.
Speaker 1 (36:00):
I need excuses to say knickerbocker more often. I think
maybe we can start using more specific names for pantsy guys.
When we compliment people, we can be like, no, there's
awesome smart trousers, mister.
Speaker 3 (36:14):
De some fetching pantaloons, Yeah, you've got a nack. Fetching
is a weird one too. It's like it makes it
like it's like I'm standing up and taking notice. You
done fetched me, and here I am remarking upon your
fabulous outfit.
Speaker 1 (36:29):
You've a knack for Knickerbocker's my friend. I So with this,
we hope that we have answered the question. And if
you were interested in learning more about the history of fashion,
there is a show with a great catalog that we'd
like to recommend. It is called Dressed Epede by our
longtime friend Holly Fry. The podcast is not putting on
(36:54):
new episodes for a while now, but it's deep and
it's really awesome exploration to us by co host April
Callahan and Cassidy Zachary.
Speaker 3 (37:03):
Yeah, both of whom I believe both have backgrounds in
literal fashion history, and they go pretty deep into it,
and there's a lot of detail and really interesting stuff
that even people that might not consider themselves interested in fashion,
there is history is forward in this podcast, So it
really is you know, we can learn a lot by
(37:24):
the Closed People War and the kind of circumstances and
ceremony around these garments and outfits.
Speaker 1 (37:31):
Absolutely, whether or not this podcast finds you wearing pants,
perhaps the most important thing we can leave each other
with today is dress how you want you know what
I mean, You have the agency to wear what you
would like, unless you know, I got you're at a
private school or you're in some sort of situation where
(37:53):
uniform is required. Because your clothing is more than just
a function. It can also be a statement of your
personality and how you feel and how how you want
to be seen and be felt. And that's a beautiful,
amazing thing, Oh.
Speaker 3 (38:09):
For sure, especially now where you know, gender is such
a fluid thing, you know, and that is much more
socially acceptable than it's ever been. There are a lot
more opportunities, you know, for going one's own way in
terms of fashion. So I think that's really liberating. And
you know, for the longest time, as we see in
this history, things were very much foisted upon people, you know,
(38:32):
because of perceived gender, and now it is very much
kind of up for grabs, like what direction do you
want to go in? Do you want to mix it up?
There kind of are no rules. It's just about, like
you said, Ben, wearing what feels good and what makes
you feel like the best version of yourself.
Speaker 1 (38:47):
Yeah, I'd like to end on that point again, you
have agency to present how you wish to the world
to be seen, to be felt. It is a beautiful
thing and we can't wait for you to join for
more Ridiculous History. Will be back next week. It's a
brand new Misadventures in the Meantime. Big big thanks to
(39:07):
super producer and research associate for this episode, mister Max Williams.
Speaker 3 (39:12):
That's right, Alex Williams, who composed this theme chrisphrosciotis Eve's
Jeff Coates here in the Spirit.
Speaker 1 (39:20):
Big big thanks to our pal Jonathan Strickland aka the Quister.
If you also enjoy food History, check out our sister
show Savor with Lauren Vogelbam and Addie Reese. Christ rossi
otis here in Spirit. I caught up with Christopher over
the holidays. He's doing well and you guys, he has
an official wizard beard now, oh cool. I asked him
(39:41):
if he knows spells and he thought I was joking.
Speaker 3 (39:44):
But with him briefly also and let him know that
we continue to shout him out in every episode, So
huge props to Christopher, who is here from the beginning
with Ridiculous History. Also for shouting out the Quist. We
kind of shout out a. J. Jacobs The Puzzler. Check
out his show too if you want a daily dose
of New York Times fun, you know, and in a
(40:06):
short form puzzles for your daily commute.
Speaker 1 (40:09):
Yeah, we'll be on The Puzzler in a different series
of episodes on the way soon. You can also tune
in to catch a. J. Jacobs in the future with
Ridiculous History. No big spoilers folks, but got a sneak
peek at his newest book, which comes out in May,
(40:30):
and I am so excited.
Speaker 4 (40:32):
Yeah, same year.
Speaker 3 (40:33):
I think you got a chance to read a little
more than I did.
Speaker 4 (40:35):
But the peak that I got was a delight. So
be on the lookout for AJ's new book, and in.
Speaker 3 (40:40):
The meantime, we'll see you next time, folks. For more
podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History News
Hosts And Creators
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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