Allegations

     I hate to whine, and I KNOW this is going to be a revolutionary thought that no one has ever expressed before.  But I am going to be brave and stalwart and come right out with it and take the tidal wave of anger that comes from making such a bold statement.

     This World Wide Web of ours just doesn’t seem to have all the answers.  There.  I said it and I’m glad.

     See, I was looking into the subject of women’s stockings as seen on postcards, as we were considering that subject on Friday last, and I have more postcards to show off.  And everywhere I go on the Interwebs, I am told that ladies’ stockings were simply not considered a matter of erotic interest until the invention of nylons, around 1937.

     I learned from all sorts of websites, not all of which seemed to be stealing from the same source, that in the days of wool and silk stockings, ladies wore their skirts long, and stockings, though occasionally available in fun designs, simply were not considered a matter of great interest by the male viewing public.

     I dunno, cranberry catsup.  I think we could consider the invention of the long-;egged chorus girl (which goes back to a musical called “The Black Crook” from 1869) or even the invention of the upskirt picture, which predates photography by a generation or two, and the scandalous works of Rowlandson or Gillray (though they did their work in Merrie Olde England, when stockings, and even underwear, were optional and a nasty breeze…well, look it up.  Those gentry didn’t do postcards.)

     Mind you, the shorter skirts of the 1920s did offer opportunities for illustration not hitherto available, to the extent that some experts on these matters have decided nylons were available in 1919, since stockings were not worth ogling until the days of nylons, and men were decidedly ogling.  (We could consider the whole history of Rayon and nylon and how they changed the world, but there’s only so much time in the day.)

     What interests me as well is all the discussion of how thigh-high stockings did not become general until the days of nylons.  And yet one of the scandalous things the Flappers of the 1920s did was roll their stockings DOWN.  It was showing actual skin, not the stockings, that mattered.  (I interviewed a lady in her eighties who recalled her college days in the Flapper Era, when she and several other girls liked to sit in the front row in the classroom, and fluster the professors by NOT keeping their knees together.)  Still, you will notice that the cartoonists of the 1920s were able to focus attention with a well-delineated stocking.

     Maybe I’m not seeing the line between staring at women’s legs and staring at their stockings is drawn.  Our postcard cartoonists, though, knew where to draw that line.

     But drawing the line is a whole nother blog.  Class dismissed until Friday…except for you in the front row.  I want to know where you found thigh-high Argyles.