Scatter Brained

06
  A Very “Brief” Secret History of 
 Underwear
1323 BCE:
 Egypt’s King Tut is entombed alongside a wealth 
of  jewelry,  furniture,  lamps,  jars—and  145  loincloths.  He’s 
also entombed with over 400 statues of servants meant to 
clean said undies, just in case heaven doesn’t have washing 
machines.
634 CE:
 Th
  e loincloth begins to fall out of fashion in Europe. 
It’s replaced by looser-fi tting braies, which are basically cloth 
hose for men. Luckily, they come with easy-access openings 
at the crotch for convenience—if not modesty.
1390:
 Geoff rey Chaucer kvetches about the tunic’s scandal-
ous rise to midthigh level (for which undergarments neglect 
to compensate) in “Th
  e Parson’s Tale” of 
Th
 e Canterbury Tales:
 
“Alas! Some of them show the very boss of their penis and the 
horrible pushed-out testicles that look like the malady of her-
nia in the wrapping of their hose; and the buttocks of such 
persons look like the hinder parts of a she-ape in the full of 
the moon.”
KISS
At  48  minutes,  Andy  Warhol’s 
experimental fi lm is easily the 
longest picture about kissing: It 
consists of one static shot, twelve 
real-life couples, four minutes 
each. And while Warhol’s 
weird, obsessive focus is almost 
unwatchable, we’re still waiting 
for his sequel, 
Second Base.

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71
1482:
 King Edward IV forbids persons below the rank of 
Lord to expose their genitals with short tunics, sparking an 
outcry among fashion-forward Englishmen. Th
  ey respond by 
inventing the codpiece, a simple piece of cloth covering their 
naughty bits.
1525:
 Henry VIII—perhaps insecure about his inability to 
produce a male heir—stuff s his codpiece, starting a trend 
that transforms its formerly fl at, utilitarian shape into a con-
spicuous bulge, then an exaggerated, protruding loaf.
1793:
 Th
  e cotton gin is invented, simultaneously increasing 
demand for slave labor and cotton underwear, which could 
now be mass-produced. Th
  e union suit, an early version of 
long  johns,  became  the  standard  19th-century  undergar-
ment. Rural men often wore the same union suit all winter, 
washing it only when spring arrived.
19TH CENTURY:
 Scholars speculate that one of the reasons 
women constantly faint in Victorian novels is that Victorian 
women really 
did
 constantly faint—because uber-tight cor-
sets so restricted their lung capacity.
1880:
 Rear today, gone tomorrow: Th
 e bustle, a padded 
frame that enhances the shape of a woman’s derrière, reaches 
the height of its popularity after 200 years of on-and-off  use. 
Ten years later it disappears entirely.
1909:
 Horace Greeley Johnson invents the Kenosha Klosed-
Krotch union suit, essentially long johns as we know them 
today. For his contribution, he was dubbed “the Edison of 
Underwear.”
1919:
 Women’s enthusiasm for athletic pursuits like bicy-
cling and tennis make restrictive corsets impractical; trou-
serlike “bloomers” become popular instead.