At this point in the narrative, however, that meeting remains in the hidden and unpredictable future. I was currently more concerned with the present season, the one of short days and goodwill. Christmas was sweeping into the world with all its customary ebullience.
19
Waisted Flight
“The Game of Travel”: Montgomery Ward, 1895.
We had decided some time previously to spend the holiday with Gabriel’s relatives in New Jersey. There was some last-minute scrambling to make schedules mesh as we planned our itinerary, but once we had our plane tickets, Gabriel breathed a sigh of relief. I, on the other hand, did not: flight schedules had me far less concerned than the idea of confronting airport security with three pounds of steel strapped around my ribs. Some modern corset-wearers leave their stays off for air travel, but aside from an obstinate disinclination to let a corporation’s security policies dictate my choice of underwear, I had few clothes left that would have fit me without my corset. I needn’t have worried quite as much as I did: there was one element of the corset upon which I hadn’t counted, one which worked in my favor.
As a globe-trotting student years before, I had grown sufficiently accustomed to the invasive, rough procedures of airport security to absolutely detest them. Were trains a bit faster or ships more economical, I might have renounced air travel long ago, despite the fact that I enjoy flying. As a hassled student clad in denim and T-shirts, I had been legally groped and my luggage torn apart for nothing more threatening than coins and solid-stick deodorant. With a metal body binding my torso, I feared nothing less than a cavity search. I had neglected to take into account the psychological impact of the corseted form and the perfectly tailored garments with which I had clothed that figure.
Among social species, alpha creatures never question their right to travel unmolested amongst their kind. Subordinate animals know themselves as such, and show their submission—their susceptibility to harassment—by every statement that their body language communicates. As a stoop-shouldered student, my whole posture had been that of a cowering animal. I had hoped that by showing the world how nonthreatening I was, my fellow Homo sapiens would ignore me as too weak to bother. In actual fact, the truth was quite the opposite. I should have learned it years before when I’d kept chickens: the lowest animal in a pecking order is the one most likely to suffer ill-treatment. The superior animals are never bothered: they are known to be too ready to retaliate.
Through centuries of culture, clothing ourselves has become an ingrained method of asserting dominance structure within the human pack. Social standing has become inseparably tied to money, family, and education, and we show all these things by our manner of dress. A wealthy, high-class woman with a university education can wear a ten-dollar T-shirt from Walmart, but she seldom will. Similarly, if a modern, uneducated, low-class person happens into fifty dollars in disposable income, they are more likely to spend it on an electronic gadget than on a garment.39 We mark our social class by our clothes, alpha through omega. Well-tailored garments in quality fabrics declare their wearer to be someone with the means for legal defense when they find themselves offended.
However, there was also something more primitive to it. Deeper than the social cues of dress, this stretches back into the animal forebrain. We are biologically hardwired to recognize certain signs of genetic superiority, and a favorable hips-to-waist-to-breasts ratio in females ranks very highly in the sphere of genetic politics. Good hair is mostly a clue to good diet and nice hygiene, sound teeth and eyes aren’t seen clearly except at close proximity; but a well-formed figure marks out an alpha animal from a vast distance.
At the airport, I was experiencing how these hardwired responses still dominate social interactions. When I passed through the metal detector the airport’s security guards apologized profusely for the inconvenience of the beeping alarm, and treated me with courtesy bordering on deference as they very politely requested that I have a seat nearby. A portion of my mind wondered if the bullies I remembered from prior encounters had since been dismissed—but, no. Nearby the same officials who treated me with such respect were demolishing other passengers’ luggage with gleeful deliberateness.
Gabriel had gone on ahead of me, his belt buckle being the only element of his respectable, although modern, clothing that had set off the metal detector. He took charge of our small pile of carry-on items and waited for me a few paces away, watching to see what would occur. I was not kept waiting long before a plump airport matron bustled over to me, a smile on her face. “Do you think it might have been any jewelry you might be wearing that set it off, dear?” she inquired most politely.
I shook my head.
“It was my corset.”
The likelihood of several pounds of steel triggering a ferrous-metal detector before a few fractions of an ounce of gold and silver did so did not have a difficult time passing Occam’s razor.
Her round face took on a sheepish look.
“I’m very sorry.” She added her own apology to the vast quantity of unexpected contrition I had already received from her fellow guards. “But, since it beeped, the rules say I have to wand you.”
She asked me to stand upon two painted footprints on the floor, and as she watched my graceful movements, she inquired very sincerely as to whether I was a dancer.
I laughed involuntarily at the question. Me, a dancer? Me, who had been “the fat girl” and “the klutz”? She thinks that I am a ballerina?. I had no idea the corset had taught me that much poise.
When I answered that I wasn’t, disappointment vied with surprise on her face. She took another look at my upright posture, my thrown-back shoulders, and tried again.
“Are you a singer?”
I shook my head, further amused, and she gave me an apologetic smile as she waved the wand over me.
Regulations required security guards to pat any area that causes their equipment to indicate metal. Naturally, this encompassed an area around my entire torso. The pleasant old matron accomplished this with broad swiping motions downward, as though dusting away any invisible contaminants that might have been left by the wand.
“What are you doing to yourself, girl?” She giggled with embarrassment as she felt the stays underneath my clothes. The pat-down completed, she handed me my shoes from the X-ray machine’s conveyor belt and sent me on my way with another apology and a friendly wave. Behind her, a small child’s soda pop was being confiscated as a security risk.
20
Straight-Laced Security
“Across the Continent”: Montgomery Ward, 1895.
Since New Jersey lies so close to New York and I had never been there, Gabriel and I had decided beforehand that we would spend a few days of our trip exploring the largest city in the United States. I had grown used to second glances and being stopped by complete strangers in my own town of Seattle, but I had expected that in a metropolis of over eight million people, a city that a number of celebrities have chosen to make their home specifically so that they could blend into the crowds, I would merit not a second glance. Gabriel disagreed—and he had been there before.
Our New Jersey relatives had warned us of the bitterly cold wind that roars in off the Hudson, so we bundled up in our warmest winter layers. When we faced that howling wind and I finally understood why it is called bitter, I was glad of my antique mink coat, even if it hid my waist. I was equally as glad of the very steampunk, polar-fleece petticoat hidden beneath my wool skirt insulating my long legs. (A real wool petticoat would come later, but such things must be budgeted. For now, the primitive underskirt Gabriel had made for me out of an old blanket kept me warm. Knowing it was my dear husband who had made it for me kept me warmer.)
Gabriel had been right about me standing out, even in New York. People kept stopping me to compliment my skirt and to ask if I was a model. People believing I was a model surprised me even more than the inquiry as to whether I was a dancer had done. A model? Me? Gabriel kept encouraging me to
show my “blouse” (an excuse to show my waist) to people, and my vanity was petted enough by all these compliments to do so, despite the glacial buffets of Boreas.
We skipped the most clichéd of the tourist attractions and instead visited locales more appropriate to our quietly geeky personalities: the public library, guarded by its twin marble lions of Patience and Fortitude, was first; then a smaller library where I pored over yellowed news clippings about Camille Clifford, the gorgeous Gibson Girl whom I so admired. I was flattered beyond words when an elderly gentleman, who knew nothing at all of my research, approached me when I left my table momentarily and told me I looked like a Gibson Girl myself.
After the libraries came a much-anticipated visit to a very special collection: the museum attached to the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT). At the FIT museum, the questions as to whether I was a model were repeated by yet more passersby, and as we inspected the nineteenth-century garments on display, more than one person told me that I should be in the exhibit, not just a spectator of it. One elderly man told me that I looked just like the girls who used to ice skate on the lake in Central Park years ago. “They dressed just like you!” he told me, smiling at old memories.
Camille Clifford.
The rest of the New York trip passed in a whirl as fast as the Hudson wind, and we returned to New Jersey rosy-cheeked and fortified with French sweets. We had a lovely time with Gabriel’s relatives, cozy in a warm exchange of holiday cheer, while outside piles of snow created a symbolically white Christmas, although they were not quite new-fallen and the holiday was a bit greener than we might have preferred. The only blemish on this Rockwellian idyll was a breaking news story the day before we were scheduled to depart: one that chilled the New Jersey relatives, panicked Gabriel’s mom, left my husband unfazed, and made me very nervous.
There had been a bomb scare on a plane flying from the Newark airport—the exact airport from which we were to depart. Eight years on from the decade’s most notorious September 11, its events were still strong in the cultural subconscious of the area surrounding New York. It was understandable that a family that was New Jersey born and bred would grow pessimistically melancholy upon hearing of another alleged attack near their home. My mother-in-law feared greatly for our safety on the trip home, but Gabriel and I had no worries on that account. We knew that whatever minute danger might exist from terrorists on a normal trip dwindled to a practically negative figure after a scare, owing to the ridiculously hyperactive fever that turns all security manic after such events. I had no concerns about suicidal lunatics. The security worried me.
Newark is a far less congenial airport than our home base of Sea-Tac. There were no strolling tourists taking in new surroundings with blissful expressions, only grim-faced passengers who seemed to regard air travel not as a marvel, but as a rough business that must be forged through as quickly as possible. Despite being the hub of the Garden State, it somehow managed to seem more gray and forbidding than anything rainy Seattle ever created.
There were fewer apologies about the security this time, as passengers’ bags were being dismantled at complete random. (I’m sure that a certain portion of the population applauds the idea of such harassment being entirely random rather than targeted where it might have cause, but really, does it make sense to rip apart diaper bags?) I was ordered into a small glass cubicle, then from there taken to a windowless back room where I was ordered to remove my clothes.
I wonder how far they’re going to take this, I thought. My outer skirt came off first, followed by my petticoat. I happened to be menstruating at the time, and had on modern panties to hold my sanitary pad in place. Not exactly my finest hour, but at least I’m not in pantalets with my rear in the open air, my internal monologue continued. Next, the two women guarding me wanted my blouse off, so I was down to corset, panties, and socks, with my skirts pooled around my ankles. I tried putting my skirts on a nearby table, but the security guard stopped me. Great . . . After all that time spent making sure I don’t get my skirt dirty, and now it’s lying on a grimy Newark floor. Wonderful.
The shorter of the two women guarding me stood in the corner with a slightly bored look, occasionally casting put-upon glances at her taller colleague. The latter, a brunette with an accent I couldn’t identify, kept asking me to do various things, then stopping me as I tried to comply. It seemed clear that she really just wanted to see how the corset worked, but wasn’t allowed to ask me to do something that would bare my breasts, which obviously would have happened if I’d removed the corset. Good. If she doesn’t want to see my breasts, she won’t want a cavity search. That’s really all that worried me: the dreaded cavity search. She kept standing back, looking quizzically at my stays, then moving forward to touch something or ask a question before stepping back and examining my body again. Her coworker kept giving her impatient looks and telling her, “It’s a corset!” This phrase was spoken in much the same tone one might use to state “It’s an hourglass!” or “It’s a statue!” to a simpleton too ignorant to recognize these items.
Finally the curious guard ran a piece of cotton along all the edges of my body, then let me get dressed again after the fluff had triggered a green light on a large machine. She seemed almost as fascinated by the process of my dressing as she had been by the corset itself. Well, at least I’ve added a rather unorthodox history lesson to her day. I didn’t mind her staring at me; I’m not excessively modest, and we had budgeted plenty of extra time to get through security. I was just glad she hadn’t wanted to do a cavity search.
Muslin petticoat.
21
Hatter’s Logic, and Pinned Perils
An 1897 untrimmed hat, “Ladies’ Neapolitan”-style. Price: 98 cents.
After I had made skirts, petticoats, and a blouse, the last item missing from my ensemble was a hat. I had several beautiful antique hats to go with my cherished antique clothing, but my experience in the November rainstorm had made me wary. As I had traveled down to Olympia, I had been full of anxiety about my lovely headpiece, and I shuddered to think of what might happen if I were caught wearing it in an unexpected downpour without an umbrella for protection. My antique hats were utterly lovely—and worryingly fragile. I didn’t want to ruin them in Seattle’s fickle weather. But I did want to wear a hat every day. My Victorian outfit seemed incomplete without one, not to mention I appreciated the solar protection they afforded. (Years after my grandmother’s death, I could still hear her ghostly voice admonishing me at every turn of the elements: “You’re hot? Put a hat on!” Then in winter, “You’re cold? Put a hat on!” The logic of this had somewhat escaped me as a child, but the lesson had become ingrained deep in my psyche.) For years I had been seeking the perfect hat in shops, pursuing some platonic ideal of chapeau that proved perpetually elusive. I simply didn’t care for the modern fashions in headgear, and they seemed only to get worse with each passing season. I wanted a hat, but antique models were too vulnerable for the purpose I had in mind, and I could not rely on modern millinery to provide one suited to my taste.
Gabriel expressed a severe degree of doubt when I announced my intention to make myself a hat for everyday wear. He had never once questioned my ability to sew any other article of clothing, no matter how complicated or exotic, but for some reason hats seemed somehow mysterious to him. He gave me a doubtful look as I studied my velvet Gibson Girl hat.
“How will you make the . . . the brim do . . . that?” He made shapes in the air with his hands.
I smirked sideways at him—very much a Gibson Girl expression. “I just will.”
I couldn’t explain the mechanics, but I could clearly see the way it would work as I inspected the antique buckram and felt the position of the wires within the cloth. I wondered why it was that he couldn’t see it, too.
The creation of the hat caused considerably less frustration than making my blouse. I completed its structure in a matter of a few days, then asked my mom for some of the molted feathers from her co
sseted parrots. I sewed these together onto a form of buckram to create a “wing,” accented it with glass and crystal beads, then sewed this entire accessory onto the hat, backed up by ostrich feathers.
The first time I wore this hat outside on a walk, I was stopped by a lady who asked if I sold them. I was to find this question repeated again and again. It was occasionally varied by the flattering, “Where did you buy that hat?”
I was walking back from the grocery store one day when a shopkeeper rushed out of her store and stopped me on the sidewalk to ask if I would make hats for her to sell. It was not a proposal that required much deliberation.
Broad-brimmed hats are wonderful at keeping sun off the wearer’s face, but they also have a tendency to catch breezes and become upset. The best way of securing one of them in place is with a hatpin, and I was fortunate to already possess some antique examples that had been gifts from Gabriel on previous birthdays and anniversaries. Made for the dual purposes of ornament and of anchoring a hat to a bun of coiled hair, my husband had never had to worry about fit or size when buying these extremely Victorian accessories, which made them an easy choice of present. They seemed to be one of the very few examples of an item from the Victorian era for which one size did fit all: each one of the antique hatpins in my possession was almost exactly nine inches in length. Initially, I assumed that this was simply the most convenient distance from a hat brim to a lady’s bun, reasoning that the head is one of the body parts with the fewest variations between individuals.
Victorian Secrets Page 18
