This weekend, let's move away from future technologies and explore our past. A few weeks ago, Janet Jackson's right breast was seen during the Super Bowl TV broadcast. Big media companies and the FCC were outraged. But according to an historian from the University of Warwick, bared breasts were the height of fashion in the 1600s. In this study, Angela McShane Jones says that women showing their bared breasts in public were commonplace, from the Queen to prostitutes. She adds that bared breasts were used to illustrate ballad sheets to lure potential buyers. It's interesting to note that selling tricks haven't changed in the last 400 years.
New research from the University of Warwick reveals that Queens and prostitutes bared their breasts in the media of the 1600s to titillate the public, and that the exposure of a single breast in portraits and prints was common in portrayals of court ladies. While Janet Jackson's action of baring her right breast at the Super Bowl earlier this year was considered outrageous, such exposure in 17th century media wouldn't have raised so much as an eyebrow.
Further, court ladies and 'town misses' actually wore extremely low cut décolleté fashions that revealed breasts and, sometimes, nipples. While royal breasts were not usually depicted in high art, they may well have been shown. A dress designed by Inigo Jones to be worn by Charles I's wife Henrietta Maria would have fully revealed the Queen's breasts, if worn.
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Here is an example of a typical 1600s decollete dress style (Credit: Unknown, via the University of Warwick). |
The study by Angela McShane Jones reveals fashions of women displaying their breasts were commonplace and breast baring was a style followed by many, from Queens to common prostitutes. High fashion was led by the court, and copied by all classes.
The paper "Revealing Mary" analyses 17th woodcuts used to illustrate over 10,000 ballads. These were the cheapest, most popular and politically charged media of the day.
Woodcuts were deliberately chosen to target buyers and to complement the context of the ballad. Just as today's magazines often depict scantily clad women on their covers, pictures of buxom women displaying their boobs on ballads were a selling point for a male audience, and a female one, if the pictures described the latest fashions.
The morale of this study: while technology evolves fast, human nature doesn't change much.
For more information, you can read the "Revealing Mary" research paper, which was published in March 2004 by History Today.
Source: University of Warwick news release, May 5, 2004, via EurekAlert!
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