The Birth of Maternity Fashion

Compared to pregnancy, the history of maternity clothes is in its infancy. Cristen and Caroline strut through the timeline of maternity fashion and what those prenatal outfits then and now tell us about how we view pregnant bodies.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to stuff Mom never told you from house top
works not Come hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Kristen and I'm Caroline, and today we're talking about something
Caroline and I don't have any personal experience with directly,

(00:24):
although we have found ourselves accidentally being drawn to it. Yeah,
maternity clothes. Yeah, we were just talking about how we've
both accidentally ended up in maternity sections. Me at Target
typically because that's I don't typically wander into maternity stores,
but yeah, I'll be in the maternity section at Target

(00:46):
and be like, God, these dresses look so oh okay,
that's why they're so flowing. Yeah. Yeah, I usually end
up at least once every time I'm browsing a SOS,
clicking on some thing that's really cute and flowy, and
then realizing, oh, that is a maternity top. Kristen, Well,

(01:06):
that's the way of maternity clothes though, is that we've
We've gone from you know, ages and ages of having
maternity clothes be boxy and an attempt to hide the
pregnant woman's body or bump to now being like, yeah,
pregnancy is just another phase of life. You might as
well look cute for it. Do you remember, well, obviously

(01:29):
you don't remember what your mom wore when you were
pregnant with you. When I was pregnant with me, yes,
do you have you seen photos? Are you aware of
I should say, perhaps through photographic evidence or retellings of
what your mom wore when she was pregnant with you? Yeah,

(01:52):
I I think I've only seen like one picture of
pregnant Sally, and she was wearing, uh, things that had
big bows on them and big collars, multiple things. Yeah,
it's just a dress made out of bows. That's it's. Uh,
it's like the prom dress and pretty and pink, horrifying. Um.

(02:15):
She also had those like boxy smock tops, and then
she had like the dress version of the boxy smock tops,
so the top that just became a dress with bows,
the classic Princess Die pregnant look. Yeah, basically yeah, her
and like every other pregnant woman in the eighties. Yeah.
The photo of my mom pregnant that I remember the

(02:37):
most was from when she was pregnant with one of
my older siblings, said, was taken in the seventies, and
she looks amazing by the way, uh, and Nancy knows, um,
but she was wearing this very much like a shirt
you would see a pregnant woman wearing today. It was
form fitting T shirt over her second trime uster bump

(03:00):
that just said baby with an arrow pointing down and
then jeans, and I remember her mentioning that at that
time the shirt was considered a little bit scandalous. Yeah. Yeah,
from everything that you and I have read, Kristen about
maternity fashion, like that was just not a thing. I'm
really surprised to hear that. So was your mom like

(03:23):
she was a hip lady. Well. I think one of
the reasons why that photo does stand out to me
is because growing up she was always so conservative minded
in how my sisters and I would dress. She was always,
you know, very um insistent on modesty, and of course,
seeing that photo, she was completely clothed, so I didn't

(03:47):
think of it as im modest, you know. But I
guess maybe in the seventies my mom was a bit wilder,
and I thought, oh, Nancy, although I think that that
T shirt was kind of the extent of her wildness.
But she was always one though, who really loved her body.
In a lot of ways, she always took pride in
the fact that she had great gams and a slender waist.

(04:11):
I think that says a lot. I don't think Sally
has traditionally been one to have a lot of body
pride or body shape pride, or or a positive body image.
And so there you have it. The picture of mom
and her big flowing Princess Diana maternity dress. I don't
think this picture. I don't think she was smiling well.

(04:33):
And think of the contrast to to tabloids today and
just going to the beach today where you see pregnant women,
fully pregnant women in bikinis that would have been unheard
of probably back in our mom's pregnant days. Absolutely, So
let's talk about how maternity wear came to be, because

(04:57):
for a long time it wasn't actually a thing. I mean,
maternity clothes are a relatively new invention, yeah, so what
were women wearing before that? If if maternity clothes are
a relatively new invention as we think of them today,
were women just wandering around in blankets? Yes, basically, or
those dresses made of bows like your weird Yeah exactly. Um,

(05:21):
this is coming from Lindsay Mannering, who uh is a
clothing expert. He was writing over red HuffPo um. Basically, early, early, early,
we're talking Middle Ages. Maternity wear so to speak, just
involved modifying clothes you already had, or relying on lots
and lots of flowing fabric. Yeah, so a seamstress or

(05:45):
yourself might just let out your seams to give you
a little more room. Or I loved this. If you
couldn't close your dress or your smock or whatever you
were wearing at the time, just put an apron on it. Yeah.
A brinds were the belly bands of the Middle Ages. Yeah,
because pregnancy was just a thing. It was fine. It's like, okay, well,

(06:08):
you're gonna have lots of children and you're gonna be
big in your clothes are gonna have to grow with
you and if they can't, just cover that little open space.
And it's not like you're probably out in public all
the time being seen, so you just hang out wearing
an apron. You're like all right, fine. Um. Well, as
we move into the Baroque period in the seventeenth century,

(06:30):
we get the first maternity dress on record, called the
Adrian It basically involved lots of fabric and folds that
would grow with your belly and women also would wear
men's style coats with adjustable laces in the back. So
it's all about just like wearing what you normally wear,
but just making it looser. And then in the eighteenth

(06:50):
century everything is still very flowy. You have lots of
fabric folds in it to accommodate that growing belly. But
then we have the innovation of a bib for easier
breastfeeding after that baby is born. Because as we have
mentioned on stuff, mom never told you once you have
your baby, that doesn't mean that your stomach magically shrinks

(07:12):
back to its prenatal size. That's right. And isn't this
all also, if we're referring back to our topless feminism
and free the nipple episodes, isn't this also the raw
when like nips were cool? Yeah, well cooler, yeah, because
they were you know, more associated with with purity or

(07:33):
in this case, more of that that maternal life force. Yeah. So,
so bibs were all the rage. Just just unbutton your
little top and babies happy, flop it open. There's something
strange about the word flopped to me. But anyway, and
this is when it really starts to be divided by class.
We see wealthier women showing out money for custom made clothes,

(07:55):
and less well off women continuing to just alter the
clothes they already had. And so during this time, wealthier
women could wear dressing gowns at home stay comfy, but outside,
when they emerged from their homes, they could wear this
button up, jacket style bodice that served to both hide

(08:16):
the waistline but also confirmed like, yes, as you can
see from this very specific fashion, I am indeed pregnant,
but just don't look at my tummy. I don't want
to talk about it. And this is also when we
do see that more cultural shift to a pregnant belly
being improper to be seen out in public, When when

(08:38):
that association between pregnancy and sex really starts to make
a lot of prudish people nervous. Yeah, exactly. And so
there was this idea that kind of continued for quite
a while, uh that pregnant women, maybe you shouldn't go outside,
or if you have to go outside, can you please

(08:59):
just cover it up. It's so gross. We don't want
to think about you being pregnant. And this is something
that continues for a long time, as we'll talk about.
But by the turn of the twentieth century, we do
have quote unquote official maternity where being invented Lithuanian lingerie
seemstress Lane Bryant. That name should sound familiar. Her real

(09:21):
name was Lena Himmelstein Bryant. The Lane came about when
the bank misspelled her name. Uh. She creates the first
maternity where because one of her customers was like, oh,
I need to go outside, but I don't want to
look inappropriate. Yeah. So we learned about this in Randy
Hutter Epstein's book Get Me Out, A History of Childbirth

(09:43):
from the Garden of Eden to the Sperm Bank um
and Epstein talks about how when Bryant was a young
widow and a new mom, she'd been sewing lingerie for
new brides and expectant mothers out of her home to
support herself. And so then she gets that request us
like you mentioned Caroline, from a client who wants something

(10:03):
comfortable but appropriate for being pregnant in public. So she
makes this accordion pleat dress and other women saw it
and like I've got to have one of those things. Yeah,
demand quickly grew. Epstein writes that Bryant's stretch waist skirts
offered a comfortable alternative to the corsets that some women

(10:26):
wore well into pregnancy. The belly pinching gear allowed pregnant
women to get out of the home and walk about
without showing. And this, of course is blowing my mind.
We've read about course, it's being used in all sorts
of facets of life and phases of life. But but
somehow I just keep forgetting that women were still wearing
corsets during pregnancy to minimize the appearance of like just

(10:51):
visibly being with child, although it seems like they would
not be wearing those corsets while they were at home.
Was that something mostly reserved for and they left the house? Yeah,
at home, it was all about the dressing gown. And
just to clarify, pregnancy coursets at the time would not
have been tight laced, but would be more comparable to
things like medical coursets that provide back support today. Yeah,

(11:15):
so it was a combo of maintaining that abdominal and
back muscle support while at the same time smoothing and
minimizing the whole tummy issue. But doctors were super excited
at the prospect of these maternity accordion plee looser dresses
because they were saying, oh, finally, stop crushing your fetuses

(11:37):
with your pregnancy corsets. This is also a time the
doctors were claiming that well fed women didn't get morning sickness.
Keep in mind this was pre Waify Flapper era. Um
Bryant's clothes worked really well for the thicker curve or
more athletic woman. And this was a woman that Lena

(11:58):
and her second husband Al at Malls in We're really
targeting with their clothes. With Lena's clothes, they had conducted
their own survey of women's sizes and proportions through insurance
company data and measuring more than four thousand of her
own customers, and she found that quote unquote, women of
ample figure made up more than half of the surveyed population.

(12:21):
So here's her niche. She can make clothes for the
woman who just doesn't want to try to suck it
in or minimize the pregnancy. Yeah, and this is happening
to in the era before the rise of ready made
consumer goods too, which is notable to think about how
she really was kicking a lot of this off. And
we're gonna come back to Lane Bryant and her advertising

(12:45):
later on in the show. But if we move now
into the nineteen twenties, think about that wafy flapper style.
You did have lots of belts that could be adjusted
during pregnants, and it was a good thing that drop
waste and slip dresses were in fashion. They were a
lot more accommodating for those growing bellies. Yeah, we've got

(13:08):
a picture here in front of us of this woman
in the es wearing a fantastic It looks like a satiny,
silky slip dress with the belt tied under her tummy,
and she looks fantastic. And when you move into the
nineteen thirties, there's a whole question of how do we
disguise still disguising pregnant bellies when fashion is calling for

(13:29):
defined wastes and high waistlines. Well, you get a cape,
or you get a ballero jacket, or or here's the
advent of giant bows and wrap dresses and coat dresses,
anything that would allow you to still be that fashionable
woman wearing structured fashion. Um, but still, you know, minimizing

(13:50):
your your tummy that was the most mind boggling, you know,
decade or two even into the forties to read about
just like seeing these advertisements for maternity clothes with these
women wearing, like you said, these waste defining garments that
would have hidden buttons inside that you could let it

(14:10):
out gradually as you know, your your stomach got bigger. Um.
But you can't tell really at all in the ads
that these women are even a hint of pregnant. I think, yeah,
I I am. We're looking at an ad from the
thirties showing these caped dresses and these wrap dresses, and
they have big bows and big collars, and I would

(14:32):
imagine that the models and these ads are not themselves pregnant.
It's more of like early pinterest, like aspirational images of like,
are you concerned about getting larger when you're pregnant? Well, don't,
but you can look like as women who weren't pregnant
at all. Well, And I wonder if that has to
do with lingering discomfort over seeing pregnant women in public,

(14:54):
because in the nineteen thirties this is still the early
days of advertising as well, And when we hit nineteen
thirty eight, we're getting to the tipping point of most
women starting to buy ready made clothes, and along come
three sisters from Dallas, Texas, and not Elsie and Louise

(15:16):
Frankfurt who create the Page Boy maternity line. And not
surprising because I wasn't pregnant in nineteen fifty, I had
never heard of Page Boy clothes, although I wanted to
ask my mom about this because I have a feeling
that NaNs and Sally we're probably familiar with with Pageboy clothes. Um,

(15:39):
but they really elevated this whole maternity wear concept. Yeah.
So their key design was Elsie's patented skirt that fits
snugly around the hips without hiking up in front. And
they managed to achieve that because there was a quote
unquote window that allowed room for your tummy to expand,

(16:01):
and it came with panels that you could so over
that window. Once you gave birth in your stomach started
to shrink back down. Now, of course, you're not walking
around in some like Lady Gaga outfit with like a
short crop top and your belly sticking out of some
hole in your skirt. This of course came with those longer,
boxier tops that would extend down over the stomach. And

(16:23):
as we learn from k. Goldman's book Dressing Modern Maternity,
which is a history of the Frankfort sisters and their
page Boy line. Celebrity clients loved these clothes. I mean
you had women like Debbie Reynolds, Lucille Ball, and Judy
Garland all sporting page Boy designs during their pregnancies. Yeah,

(16:43):
and Goldman points out that this is the first time
that we really get Hollywood and celebrities and maternity where
sort of coming together in a pop culture moment. Finally,
celebrities are like, oh wait, I can still look fashionable
and still wear what to be a slim fitting skirt. Great,
I can still maintain my fashion. Yeah. And during this

(17:06):
time we are seeing more wrap dresses, which are still
very commonly worn as maternity clothes, and also those boxy
smock tops which you mentioned, and my favorite pant playsuits.
Yeah literally literally that's what they were called. Suit for
grown women, Caroline, I can't say anything as I am

(17:27):
talking into this microphone. I'm a grown woman wearing overalls.
So well, but I there's something that just bugs me
about calling an outfit for an adult a play suit
preceded by the singular pant. Stacy London would be so proud, um,
but yeah, so this is the forties, and let's describe.

(17:51):
So the pant playsuit is very much like, she's got
these really wide leg pants with a severe uh pleat
down the front or fold down the front in a
matching boxy button up shirt with a very smart collar.
So she's she's very sort of like rectangular shaped in

(18:12):
in all of this fashion. Um. But if we move
into the nineteen fifties, we see a continuation of those separates,
the boxy uh pleaded button down shirt like you saw
on I Love Lucy, which was, of course the first
show to feature a pregnant woman. Oh my god, mind blown.

(18:32):
But I think they right. They still couldn't use the
word pregnant. They had to continue to use euphemisms exactly.
The network said that it was que scandalous to describe
Lucy as pregnant, but it was okay for them to
refer to her as expecting. Ah yeah, so here we
are in the fifties. You don't have to have a
waistline like you did in the thirties. Uh sure, we

(18:56):
guess you can be outside and your third trimester, so
we have looser clothes. More of those separates still have
adjustable wrap around skirts, and those pleaded button downs. But
when you move into the sixties, we start to see
more slim fitting, super fashionable chic options for pregnant women.

(19:17):
We get fewer grow with you options, so there's more
of a push to like, Okay, I have to spend
a lot of money on maternity where as I grow,
I'm I'm no longer a medieval woman where I can
just wear blanket dresses all the time. On that apron, yeah,
I can't wear my expandable wrap dress from the thirties
and forties. I have to continue buying more clothes as

(19:39):
I get bigger. On the flip side, though, this is
the same time period when those trendy tent dresses were
in fashion, and those could definitely double as maternity where
because basically it's just like a crew neck and then
armholes and then it just like blossoms out and hopping
over the seventies to the eighties, when you do see

(20:00):
a lot of women entering into the workforce, there is
concurrently a big demand for professional maternity wear. Welcome back
to the era of the big bows, right, But women
don't just want maternity brands, So this is when you
see guest jenes creating a maternity line, a Page Boy

(20:21):
stages a comeback with a personal shopping service trendy styles,
and I love this. This was not new in the eighties.
This is something that they've been preaching for decades by now.
But they were always emphasizing that pregnant women should show
off their legs, because while you can't completely erase the
fact that a woman is pregnant, you can at least

(20:41):
detract from it. So show off them. Gam Yeah, you
might be bigger in the middle, but you've still got
great legs. Which reading that not to keep coming back
to my mother in this episode, but I do remember
her saying something along those lines in terms of dressing
for pregnancy, how it as an excuse to show her

(21:02):
legs more than she normally would. Well, yeah, Goldman. Goldman
says that it was Page Boy who pioneered, so to speak,
this whole show off your legs idea that other maternity
where designers were not focused on that. As we see
with the pant playsuit, everything's very covered, very a sexual,

(21:23):
very rictangular. Meanwhile, Page Boy was like eyes down here,
like way down here. Yeah. And of course, though we
can't separate maternity fashion in the eighties from you know
it being the eighties, you have lots of big sleeves,
big bows, big ruffles, billowing fabric, just google fair listeners.

(21:45):
Princess Diana and her sister in law, Sarah Ferguson both
pregnant in the eighties. I mean, though, that is some billowing,
That's really the only word for it. And I was
wondering whether that was just a product of the maternity
style of the because Princess Dies, maternity clothes, especially when
she was pregnant with Prince William, were so maternity I

(22:07):
mean massive tent like clothes, and I wonder if it
was that or if it was it all fueled over
just the publicity surrounding her pregnancy too, of how people
were on edge wondering when she would get pregnant, would
it be a boy, would there be an air well.
There was an ad that I saw from this same

(22:27):
time period, and it was of some I think she
was a soap opera star and she's modeling the same
kind of dress that Diana was photographed in. She's on
the balcony with Prince Charles. She's wearing a smart hat
at a jaunty angle, and she's wearing this bluey tent
like forest green dress. And in this ad, this this

(22:49):
um soap opera star is wearing the same kind of thing.
It's just like a champagne color. So I think that
that was just I don't know, someone right in and
correct us if we're off the mark here, But I
think that was the fashion of the day, not needing
to emphasize it's it's loose and roomy, so you're not
constricting the stomach or the fetus. But it's also modest

(23:12):
because you're not having any tight, constricted clothes that could
show off the very shape of the bump. That's true.
I mean all of those dresses that she wears are
high necked and come down to mid calf or ankle. Yeah,
pretty pretty modest except for that, except for that ankle.
So when we get into the nineteen nineties, designers have

(23:36):
finally come around two pregnant women needing to go outside
and move from time to time, and there is a
huge innovation when Liz Lang introduces highly successful Fitted maternity line.
Wait what I know? Fitted? Oh my god, here we
are talking about like fancy tent dresses on princesses, yards

(23:59):
and yards, silk all the billows, and now we get
Nike and Target asking Liz Lang to create lines for them, like, oh, well, women,
so I guess I guess they're going to be outside
and like walking and moving, maybe picking something up like
at the grocery store. So we should perhaps continue this
whole fitted trend. Yeah, I can imagine that while those

(24:21):
tent dresses were super comfortable, so easy to get snagged
on things, you know, Yeah, you don't want to get
caught in a in a billowy day going through a
turnstyle like a subway turnstyle on one of those, I
would be a mess. I'd be late all the time,
deff breeze, like, who knows what will happen? But the
question is, O, Caroline, why did it take until the

(24:43):
nineties nineties for us to start being more okay with
pregnant women wearing fitted clothes. Well, people were generally skeewed
out by by pregnancy, by the outward manifestation of swapping fluids.
Basically um, And of course we need to kick off

(25:05):
this conversation with another Lane Bryant anecdote like Kristin tis
too earlier, So Lena and Albert back, We're going back
to the turn of the twentieth century. They had tried
to advertise her now popular maternity clothes in newspapers once
they realize that there was such a demand out there,
but no one would print the words maternity clothes. Finally,

(25:28):
in nineteen eleven, they convinced the New York Harold to
run a single small ad and Bryant sells out of
her inventory the same day, and she's like, Okay, I
think there's something to this maternity where and if you
guys in the newspaper business are not going to take
my ad money, I'm going to do this on my own.

(25:50):
And so she starts her own mail order catalog because
why not. She ends up expanding her business from pregnant
women to then outfitting women with larger frames in general,
and by nineteenth venteene her revenue was topping one million dollars.
And it seems like now we need to circle back
and do an entire podcast on Lena slash Lane, because

(26:10):
hers was the first company to mass produce clothes for
those two markets. Talk about a fashion innovator, Yeah, I
mean here she is answering a need that just about
every pregnant woman has to. Oh hey, go outside and
not be viewed as gross and feel comfortable and feel
good in my own skin, feel good in my own clothes.
And it's just funny that, like, it seems like there

(26:31):
were these cultural hangups on pregnancy and pregnant bodies and
women's sexuality or lack thereof that we're preventing I guess
other people from cashing in on this, and that wasn't
going to stop Lena. She was like, no, people need this.
I've been pregnant, I've had babies. Women need to have clothes. Well,
And it wasn't always that way either. If we go

(26:54):
pre nineteenth century, pregnancy was kind of just pregnancy, all right,
exchange some fluids, you're getting ready to reproduce again. What
do you want a whole closet full of maternity clothes
or something. I mean this was when, of course, as
we talked about, you were wearing your clothes as you
always did and would either let out those seams as

(27:17):
needed or throw an apron over it. But as for
the nineteenth century itself, these descriptions of quote unquote confinement
might be a little exaggerated. I mean, women weren't just
sitting in like a pregnancy hut for nine months awaiting
the baby to come. They still went about their lives,

(27:37):
they did their chores, they were social as before. And
especially to that we have to consider the class implications.
I mean, working class women would still be working. But
this also gets to the distinction between women being personally
self conscious about their bodies and this more cultural imperative

(28:00):
of confinement, of sheltering the public from pregnancy. Yeah, I mean,
one woman who expressed a degree of self consciousness was
Sarah Churchill, who's the Duchess of Marlborough back in seventeen
thirty five. So she writes a letter to her granddaughter
explaining her own pregnancy situation, and she says, I remember

(28:23):
when I was within three months of my reckoning, I
could never endure any bodice at all, but wore a
warm waistcoat wrapped around me like a man's and tied
my petticoats on top of it, and from that time
and never went abroad but with a long black scarf
to hide me. I was so prodigious big. So what
I like about that is here's someone in the eighteenth century,

(28:45):
kind of early eighteenth century who's saying the same thing
that women now say of, like, listen, it's not that
it was so awful. It's just that, like I felt
so big, and I like none of my clothes fit
like I wanted them to fit. I just had to
wrap a scarf around me or like a men's style
jacket around me to even have clothes to wear. And so, yeah,

(29:06):
there were these cultural ideas that had been floating around
for centuries about you know, women's sexuality being scary, the
womb being the site of a sacred event versus a monstrosity,
depending on how you viewed the body and bodily functions.
But there was simply also the issue of like I

(29:26):
feel big, I feel tired, I feel really self conscious
because my body doesn't look like it used to, and
I kind of just want to have a lie down.
And then, though, you take that layer of self consciousness,
which is completely understandable, and you add some cultural pressure
to it, and you get by the mid nineteenth century
norms and doctor's orders dictating that visibly pregnant women, especially

(29:52):
the ones who could afford it, because that's you know,
those are the ones probably having doctor's pavid. It's anyway
them stay inside. Again, they might be wearing some sort
of maternity course that if they had to go outside
for the back and abdominal support, but also to minimize
that appearance of pregnancy because it was considered a private matter.

(30:15):
This was something that you and your husband did in
the privacy of your own drawing room if you were
really wild. That's right, And this is a different time
from so you know, looking back at like the sixteenth
or seventeenth centuries, when a woman's pregnancy was sort of
her own thing, like a woman's pregnancy wasn't thought of

(30:37):
as real until the quickening, so to speak, which is
basically the woman feeling the baby move inside of her um. Now,
as you're moving into the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, suddenly
you've got more medical intervention, the baby and the pregnancy
is more out there. So whereas it used to be
a private mother only kind of situation that was hidden

(30:59):
under those apron now more people have a say in
an opinion and what's going on in your body. And
even though they have a say in an opinion, they
also don't want to even be faced with it. Yeah,
So if you look at novels and advice books of
that time, they're not directly referring to pregnancy. It's all euphemisms,

(31:20):
as was still the case when I Love Lucy was
on the air. Yeah, And in terms of evolving style
once the course, it comes off as doctors from the
seventeenth to the twentieth centuries were advising women to do, uh,
clothes get looser. Women, pregnant women start to adapt and
wear looser clothes. Laura Tropp, writing in A Womb with

(31:44):
a View America's growing public interest in pregnancy rights, that
women in the nineteenth century had to be persuaded to
wear loose clothing, not because they wanted to show up
their bellies, but because they did not want to indicate
in public that they were pregnant at all. And so
then I mean nineteenth century wearing those buttoned up bodices
with their dresses. Forward to the early twentieth century, with

(32:06):
Lane Bryant being like, oh, hey, here's like an accordion
plete looser dress. We start to see people being like, oh,
I can kind of let it out. This is great.
So what does the maternity fashion landscape look like today?
We'll talk about that, and we come right back from
a quick break. So what does a maternity fashion landscape

(32:37):
look like today. Well, things were pretty healthy going into
the one century. TRP notes that maternity fashion sales jumped
from two thousand to two thousand five. Yeah, and that
really picks up where our timeline left off in the nineties.
We were talking then about how fitted maternity wear was

(32:57):
coming in and women were clamoring for stuff that wasn't
just maternity specific brands. That was like, hey, no, I
I'm just a woman who wants to continue wearing cool clothes,
like make me awesome clothes. And they began to really
want to acknowledge their pregnancies and their baby bumps and
stay fashionable. It's like your mom Kristen with her T

(33:18):
shirt that you know it's pointing with an arrow to baby.
A lot of that kind of stuff got really popular
in the nineties and early two thousand's. You've got more
pregnant bodies on display more often thanks to celebrity culture
and the paparazzi and you know, tabloid magazines featuring pregnant women,
but also women simply remaining at work longer and just

(33:39):
being outside, not feeling like they have to be constrained
by these old notions of hiding away when they're pregnant.
You also get a lot of celebrity maternity clothing lines,
people like Heidi Klum coming out with big ticket items
and then more affordable items for pregnant women. And along
the same lines, you've got a lot of the fast

(34:00):
fashion brands like a Sis Top Shop and get churning
out maternity where so that they don't lose their customers
once they get pregnant. But maternity where is still very
much a socio economic issue because clearly moms with more
disposable income can indulge in lots more maternity wear and

(34:20):
custom or otherwise well made maternity war that might transition
after baby, because that is something that we do see
really starting in the nineteen sixties that we mentioned that
no longer is it this skirt or dress that has
the buttons that you can expand throughout your trimesters, but

(34:40):
more of a profit hungry model where it's like, oh, well,
here's your first trimester wardrobe. Now here's your second trimester.
Bye bye, bye bye bye, get all of these clothes.
But now that we are in the teens, is that
what you call them now? The ot teens um most
recently the maternity where trend has been no maternity where Yeah,

(35:06):
so maternity specific stuff seems to be cycling out just
in terms of fashion, not not in general, not all
of it. Um. But Women's Where Daily read about this
back in May and said that fewer department and specialty
stores were offering maternity specific clothes. Why because you have

(35:27):
more women shopping their closets, and like they've done throughout history,
ladies and gentlemen adapting the clothes they already have. So
one great example of this was Kate Middleton, who had
such a public pregnancy and everyone's eyes were glued on
her fashion choices during her pregnancy too, because she notably

(35:48):
wore very few actual maternity clothes. She wore a lot
of the same kind of stuff, but she was wearing beforehand. Um.
And it was a similar pattern that we saw with
their celebrities. And she might have a couple of maternity
pieces that she would then just pair with non maternity clothes. Yeah.

(36:09):
And and the magazine also talked to a designer, Georgina Chapman,
who said that she sees a lot of her clients
just buying a size or two up and then altering
the clothes to fit. While others shell out bunches of
money to have things custom made, and I'm just thinking, like, oh,
that must be nice, because not everybody can afford the
whole like custom maternity where thing, and wait what not

(36:31):
everyone can afford that? But who's your seem stress? This
I mean talking about harkening bag. This goes directly back
to what we talked about near the top of the
podcast when we mentioned women in the mid nineteenth century,
the upper class women wearing the custom made button nut
fitted bodice to indicate, yes, I'm pregnant. Yes, this is

(36:53):
kind of maternity where but don't look at me, my
my bumps being hidden, versus the less well off women
who were still just adapting their regular wardrobe, which is
more the fashion today. I mean, this is coming from
a fashion director at Bloomingdale's who said they've stopped carrying
maternity wear because women again are are still shopping kind

(37:16):
of their own closets and also just shopping regular Bloomingdale's
and buying things like wrap dresses, leggings, long t shirts,
structured blazers, and just wearing their husband or boyfriend's jeans adorable,
which I mean, I'm like that. I think I have
a maternity wardrobe right now, perfect Your overalls will fit

(37:39):
perfectly in with that. It's true, I'm planning for some future.
I don't know who's Thanksgiving. Maybe it's fine. Um. They
also cite Herod's, which has a couple of maternity brands,
specific brands that have done really well, but they were
mostly talking just pregnancy appropriate, non maternity wear. Herod's also

(37:59):
was offering a service where you can get your designer
genes customized with your own belly band. So still just
lots and lots of expensive custom stuff. And this reflects
changes in fashion, but also two changes in how we
are approaching pregnancy. Um. The whole eating for to model
has fallen by the wayside. Exercise is not as off

(38:23):
limits as it used to be UM, And pregnancy is
seen more as another phase of life. Yeah. And so
it makes sense that so much of your image that
you project to the world while you're pregnant has a
lot to do with your identity, whether it's maintaining it
or forming a new one. Uh. Georgina Chapman, the designer

(38:46):
we cited, said, I think it's important to stay true
to your personal style even while your body is changing
and this is this is an attitude that you hear
a lot nowadays, especially in any sort of maternity where
article it's fast and is all about identity these days,
and pregnancy where is no different and styles today really

(39:06):
do reflect that attitude of pregnancy being just another normal
phase of a woman's life. And this is something that
that author Randy Hutterer Epstein wrote about in her book.
She said, you can go on being yourself, which includes
maintaining your fashion sense, whatever it is, while you have
your baby. It doesn't mean striving to fit into skinny
jeans for six months, but maintaining your identity as we

(39:26):
all know. She says, fashion is a way to express
your identity and sense of self, and that is something
that research on how pregnant women dress themselves and feel
about their maternity wardrobe reflect. So there was a study
from two thousand fourteen in the journal Clothing and Textiles

(39:49):
Research that emphasized how for a lot of women today,
it's not about camouflage. It's trying to match that inward
self and style with your outward pregnant self. Um and
the researchers interviewed women and their second and third trimesters
about their body shape and satisfaction, and they found that

(40:10):
women war maternity clothes mainly for comfort and assurance. Not surprisingly,
it wasn't a thing of trying to pretend that they
weren't pregnant. I was just like, no, I think I
really want to feel comfortable in my clothes. Yeah. And
the authors wrote that pregnant women are likely to be
satisfied with their pregnant body, and their body image is
a determinant of how they end up managing their physical

(40:31):
appearance and self presentation. So how does maternity wear shape
self image and identity during pregnancy? This is a question
that researchers in the Journal of Consumer Culture looked at
in twenty thirteen. They studied consumption among women who were
in that transitional phase of pregnancy and looked at their

(40:53):
experiences of bodily controlled changing and affecting identity, and they
found that three themes emerge. One of those was that
maternity clothes, both the buying and the wearing, disrupt the
woman I am most of the time, identity or narrative.
That wearing these clothes basically changes women's usual way of

(41:15):
how they satisfactorily express who they are through their clothes.
And there were three layers to that. They kind of
disrupted that woman I am most of the time identity,
and it was thrifty nous the image of what pregnancy
looks like because of the clothes that you're wearing or

(41:37):
having to wear, and also your body shape, which you
don't really have a ton of control over during that time,
and that led to a lot of frustration and ambivalence
for a lot of these women. And that thriftiness angle
jumped out to me because it seemed to capture more
of a real world experience of maternity clothes versus the

(41:58):
Bloomingdale's fashioned or rector who is dealing, you know, with
women who can just go and buy some J brand
leggings and call it a day. Um. But in these interviews,
they were talking to women who didn't have a lot
of money to go and buy a lot of new
clothes for themselves, and would get maternity hand me downs
from family members or friends and sometimes just felt stuck
wearing the clothes that they were given the only things

(42:22):
that they could really afford. And there was one woman
they were talking to who was saying that there was
some orange floral dress that she had been given and
she wore it out one day and just made her
feel awful because it was nothing she would ever pick
out for herself. But it's not like she could go
and have some kind of, you know, maternity magical makeover either,

(42:45):
And I could. I could totally. I mean I can't
directly relate to it, but I can understand how it's
layers of feeling out of control of the image you're
presenting to the world old and also to having your
brain flooded with pregnancy hormones while this is going on. Yeah,

(43:06):
and so that ties into that other layer that you
were talking about of how the image of what pregnancy
looks like has changed thanks to seeing a lot of celebrities.
Because on the one hand, oh, well, I have more
options now I don't have to hide my bump. I
can dress it and and not be afraid of being
cute or sexy or really feminine or whatever. Um. But

(43:27):
on the other hand, like, oh god, I have to
look cute or sexy or super feminine. Like there's there's
a lot of pressures from both sides when it comes
to like, oh, fashion during pregnancy is like a big thing.
Now I really have to focus on it and spend
money on it, just like getting dressed every day for
a lot of women. Yeah. Yeah, well, so another thing

(43:50):
that the researchers found in terms of maternity where is
that buying and wearing these clothes affirms the identity of
pregnant and a spectant mother. And this is something we
heard about from listeners after our Baby Weight Loss Race episode.
It's the idea that once women start showing, they can
finally and they've told people that they're pregnant, they can

(44:13):
finally confirm through their clothes that yes, I am pregnant.
This is not just a burrito. Uh. And it's related
to those fears of being perceived as fat and out
of control that no, I'm embracing the bump. I'm really pregnant.
Please don't think I'm ugly and fat and out of
control of my body. So it's and we did have
at least a couple of listeners right in and say like,

(44:34):
I was so relieved to finally confirm my pregnancy and
wear maternity clothes, so people weren't looking at me like
I was just a tired slobed. Oh that's so so
much about our culture. Yeah, there is even a pressure
valve that can be released in this regard um. And
then finally we have the women who use pregnancy fashion

(44:55):
to maintain their woman I am most of the time,
I identity, and these are women who exert effort to
present a consistent image and sense of self, whether that's fashion,
sex appeal, or youth. And for this group of women,
they were more of the old school de emphasizing the

(45:17):
pregnancy hey look at my legs instead uh, line of
thinking yeah. They were experiencing all these mixed feelings about
so many things. Changing your body is changing, your relationship
with your partners, probably about to change your freedom, and
like what you do with your time is changing, And
so they're buying clothes that are like, oh, well, this
is this is purely a continuation I wore leggings before,

(45:40):
or I wore stretchy jeans before, I'm just going to
continue doing this, where I wore all black before, I'm
going to keep doing that. And this was particularly important
when it came to the professional arena. Not surprisingly, a
lot of women that were interviewed in the study, we're
trying to counteract people noticing the belly before they noticed
anything else and just stay wearing at it in meetings,

(46:01):
and one woman said, which totally hearkens back to history.
Being pregnant is like the adult Hicky. It's the ultimate
stamp of we've been having sex. And it's funny that
that's the case, because to me, pregnancy is not the
ultimate stamp of we've been having sex, but rather, oh,
someone went off birth control, which is I guess, oh

(46:26):
so millennial of me. But it's not like, as far
as we've come in terms of our acceptance of pregnancy
and public of celebrities being proud of their baby bumps,
non celebrities being proud of their baby bumps, that we
live now in a society where women aren't still judged
for their maternity fashion choices. If anything, it's there's even

(46:50):
more pressure or at least more opportunity for people to
express their displeasure at what you're wearing via social media.
That's gonna I was gonna say, are you talking about
the internet. Yeah, well yeah. We saw back in April
Canadian meteorologist Christie Gordon receiving hate male for wearing a

(47:12):
form fitting dress while pregnant. People wrote in to tell
her mainly the following three things. One stop showing off,
which are you kidding me? Two buy decent clothes, and
three have respect for your unborn child. Oh Caroline. These
stories of local newscasters and meteorologists being almost pregnancy shamed,

(47:39):
uh for you know, appearing pregnant and dressed with clothes
on on camera pop up like every six weeks. It's constant.
It's crazy making um because in a in a society
that is so pro natal and so pro family, I

(47:59):
don't under stand the yelling at at women for just
being out of the house in public while pregnant. I mean,
this is something. This is the contradictory message that goes
back to the freaking seventeenth century when it's like, we
want women to be fruitful and reproduce and carry a
child in their womb, but the womb is a site
of disease and dirtiness and filth and possible like monstrous

(48:24):
reproductions of whatever superstition they had. And now we see
we're in the twenty first century and people are still like,
you are a woman, so you need to go home
and have a baby, But we're yelling at women who
are having babies just while being out in public. Yeah,
this all reflects that fine line that that maternal public presentation,

(48:48):
uh presents that we talked about a lot in our
celebrity baby Bump two part or earlier this year, in
people simultaneously wanting you to stay a pretty lady but
also stay modest, and I mean, there's there's just very
little room to deviate from what the so called appropriate

(49:09):
maternity look is because on the one hand, you do
have tabloids praising celebrities who are very fit and they're
very pregnant and they're in bikinis. But then on the
other hand, you have you know, Joe Schmo emailing meteorologist
Christie Gordon and calling her a whale who's showing off

(49:31):
showing off what I'm not entirely sure, but there definitely
does not seem to be any kind of consensus on
what is okay for women to look like across the board,
because everybody has an opinion. Everyone does have an opinion.
I mean, if anything, I personally, speaking of opinions, I

(49:51):
got a little opinion. I think that it's it's great
that women have more freedom and flexibility than ever before
to shop their own closets and have their personal style
still reflected throughout their pregnancy. Um if they also have
the financial resources to do that too. Um, but it's

(50:13):
not a one size fits all issue, Caroline, Oh No.
And it seems like over the course of the history
that we've just covered, it's been nothing but a push
and pull between that like modest mother who stays at
home and is nurturing in a sexual and like the

(50:33):
the expectation, like you said, of still remaining pretty and
sexy and feminine with your choice of clothes, because you
would think that for that nine month window, pregnant people
could get a break, but that is not the case.
Now we're still we're still looking at uh pregnancy as

(50:55):
a time when it's okay to tell people what to
do with their bodies. And I'm also really curious to
hear from listeners who have been pregnant and had to
do the whole what am I going to wear from
my maternity look thing about the the experience of dressing yourself,

(51:16):
because anecdotally, I know that looking cute on the outside
is a pregnant person isn't necessarily what it feels like
on the inside. That you might be wearing a really
cute outfit but still feel detached from your body and
from your non pregnant sense of style. Yes, doesn't help

(51:37):
that you've got like the entire world looking at you
and forming opinions on you based on what you look.
Well in your body just feeling different than it ever
has before. Thanks a lot, baby, So with that though,
so curious to hear everyone's thoughts and experiences with this

(51:57):
mom stuff at house stuffworks dot Com is the place
you can send all your maternity where letters. You can
also tweet us at mom Stuff podcast or messages on Facebook.
And we've got a couple of messages to share with
you right now. I have a letter here from Laura

(52:18):
about our anthropology episodes. She says, I'm a student at
Columbia University studying biological anthropology. I found the discussions of
anthropology often do not include biological anthropology and their discussions
in part, I think because it has a very different
feel to it compared to cultural or historical anthropology and
even archaeology. Columbia University takes a lot of pride in

(52:40):
its famous cultural anthropologists, particularly Margaret Meade herself, so I'm
unsure if this distinct separation of biological anthropology from the
others is a result of Columbia's own bent or also
from this tonal difference. However, biological anthropology is filled with
its own well known women, including paleo anthropologist Mary Leaky,
famed prime pathologist Jane Goodall, and Diane Fossey, and even

(53:02):
the Hamdan Fossil Lucy. My major does consist mostly of women,
but also I've noticed that there are quite a few
gay men as well. In fact, a friend of mine
often jokes that there's no one in my major who
isn't attracted to men. Gay men may be attracted to
anthropology because there isn't a lot of masculine posturing, and
because the feminist aspects of anthropology also touch upon queerness

(53:23):
across cultures and history. I love the podcast. It's definitely
kept me saying on my long commute and during my
busy work this summer, and I always jump at the
chance to listen to your new episodes. Well, thank you, Laura,
We're glad to have you, and I have a feminist
anthropology letter to read from Jennifer, who writes, I love
your podcast, and I was so excited for the Anthropology podcast.

(53:46):
I was especially pleased that you brought up a net
Wiener's research on the troe Brianders, the importance of women
and women's soft wealth, the yam gardens and banana leaf skirts,
and what is considered a patriarchal society was one of
my favorite things I studied in anthropology classes. I had
to laugh though, because of the joking you were doing
about it all being tied to menstruation, because the importance

(54:09):
of women and their matrilineal lines in the Trobriand culture
is tied to that lovely crimson wave. According to their
cultural beliefs, women become pregnant when the spirit of her
ancestors enters her and mixes with her menstrual blood. Men
merely help open the pathway into her. So see, it

(54:30):
does all come back to the same thing. Thanks for
the excellent podcasting, and thank you Jennifer for that insight,
and thank you everyone who's written into us. Mom Stuff
at how Stuffworks dot Com is our email address and
for links to all of our social media as well
as all of our blogs, videos, and podcast including this
one with links to all of our sources so you

(54:51):
can learn more about the history of maternity wear. Head
on over to stuff Mom Never Told You dot com
for more on this and thousands of other topics. Does it,
how stuff works, dot com