So apparently pre-colonial Indian women just… wore saris without a blouse?? Midriff out, tiddies vibing, nobody cared?? Meanwhile our temples have 10% pure porn on the OUTSIDE WALLS where KIDS could see because kama was a legit life goal???
Then the Victorians showed up, saw all this, had a collective aneurysm, and said “obscene” is now a crime. Let the temples rot. Invented the blouse. Made us feel ashamed of our own ancestors.
“They did not simply colonize our country; they colonized the nipple.”
Anyway 90% of “modest Indian culture” is just Victorian missionaries gaslighting us for 200 years.
Full essay here if u wanna get mad: https://medium.com/@sayyida-noor/khajuraho-erotic-temples-victorian-blouse-colonial-shame-a93ef910c539
now go stare at a khajuraho carving and rethink everything 🗿
Let me just express an opinion that corsets are fucking sexy
One of the things that I love about corsets is that they have a long history, where the shape and style of them changed over time. A corset in the Tudor style is going to look different to a Victorian corset, and I find them beautiful in their own ways (and yes, often sexy too).
Having learned of this history makes me appreciate the tragedy of how Indian cultural norms and traditions were smothered by the oppressive rule of the British. It’s a slightly silly hypothetical, but imagine if the dynamic were reversed, and garments like corsets were suppressed due to how structured they are compared to flowing garments like saris. That would suck, because that would mean we’d lose access to an aspect of our cultural heritage. Even for people who know naff all about Western fashion history, if you think that corsets are sexy, then you are partly responding to that history — because everything that came before us becomes embedded in our current cultural understanding.
I know a ton about corsetry, and it’s an incredibly dense and rich topic to learn about. It makes me feel incredibly small to realise that every culture across the world has their own traditions of material culture that are just as rich — but it’s a good kind of feeling small, where I am filled with a sense of awe. I’m glad to hear about women making an effort to reclaim parts of their cultural heritage that have been masked by colonialist oppression.
since you’re into corsets — let me introduce you to the ultimate power move: Jnanadanandini Devi.
yes, that Jnanadanandini. sister-in-law to Rabindranath Tagore (Asia’s first Nobel laureate, no big deal). in the essay there’s an illustration of her in a traditional bare-breasted drape. buxom. unapologetic. regal.
so what did the British do when they saw her like that? banned her from their fancy club. because her tiddies were too powerful for their establishment 💀
imagine being told “cover up, we have rules” while they’re out here lacing themselves into rib-crushers just to achieve the illusion of a wasp waist.
and then? she folded. started wearing a blouse. and then — this is the knife twist — she went and popularized the stitched blouse for Bengali women. became the vector. the patient zero of Victorian chest modesty.
so the woman who could’ve been our nipple warrior ended up being the one who strapped us all into the very garment of colonial shame 💀
the brits didn’t just ban her. they converted her. and she converted us.
that’s the real tragedy. not just that they colonized the nipple — but that one of our own handed them the needle and thread ✨
now every blouse we wear is a tiny monument to that club in Bombay that said “your breasts are too much” and she said “okay fine” and we’ve been saying “okay fine” ever since.
bro really said “corsets are sexy” in the nipple reclamation thread 💀
respectfully, a corset is just victorian scaffolding designed to make breathing optional. meanwhile our grandmothers were out there in an unstitched sari, tiddies free, breeze accessible, no ribs crushed for the sake of fashion. that’s sexy.
colonizers really said “bind your torso so we know you’re civilized” and y’all are out here calling it a vibe 😭
reclaim the drape. let the lungs expand. thank u.
All right, I get your point. I meant modern corsets, which do not harm anyone. I see this is not the best place to express such an opinion.