“Shame has made no change in man as regards his bodily outlines, but shame has played a very important part in the entire province of clothing, and it has acquired such spiritual power that the entire amatory life of the higher human beings is dominated by it. It is, in the first place, in consequence of this sense of shame that man’s amatory life has ultimately and individually separated from that of other animals.”—Wilhelm Bölsche.
CONTENTS OF CHAPTER VII
The individualizing influence of the sentiment of shame — Recent anthropological researches regarding the origin and nature of the erotic sense of shame — The animal and the social factor of shame — Shame as a biological sense of warding off — Coquetry — The fundamental social element of the sense of shame — Lombroso’s theory of shame — The dread of arousing repulsion — Connexion of the sense of shame with clothing — Conditions among the indigens of Central Brazil — Nudity as a natural condition — The coverings of the genital organs among the primitive races have a protective function, and are not portions of clothing — Origin of clothing — The original purpose of decoration and adornment — Relation of clothing to the feeling of love — Tattooing a preliminary stage to clothing — Prehistoric painting of the body — Tattooing as a sexual lure — Tattooing of the genital organs — Sexual effect of colours — Occurrence of tattooing amongst modern civilized nations — Recent anthropological researches regarding this subject — Erotic tattooing — Tattooing in women of the upper classes — The colour element in clothing — Its connexion with sexual charm — With jealousy — With sexual allurement — Sexual influence of concealment — The stimulus of the unknown — The two fundamental elements of fashion — Accentuation and display of portions of the body — Influence of partial concealment, of retroussé — The two principal forms of clothing — Accentuating and enlarging influences of clothing — H. Lotzes’s theory of the nature of clothing — Reciprocal influence between clothing and personality — “Physiognomy” of clothing — Clothing as an expression of the psyche — Denuding of portions of the body as a sexual stimulus — Fashion — Its absence in antiquity — Difference between ancient and modern clothing — Diaphanous raiment of the ancient half-world — Analysis of clothing — Upper and under clothing — The waist — Further differentiation into clothing proper and more intimate articles of dress — Dressing and undressing — Separation of the body-spheres by the waist — Beginnings of fashion in the middle ages — The corset as a witness of Christian teaching — Contest between medieval fashion and asceticism — Victory of fashion — Accentuation of the bosom — Décolleté — Views of the æsthetics on this subject — Harmfulness of the corset — A sin against æsthetics and hygiene — Its deleterious influence upon the thoracic and abdominal organs — The corset and anæmia — Atrophy of the mammary glands — Other serious consequences — Its influence on the female reproductive organs — The corset and “fluor albus” — The corset and sterility — Pre-Raphaelite flat-breastedness — Accentuation of the regions of the hips — Tournure (cul de Paris), the “crinolette” — Indication of the abdominal region and of pregnancy — The farthingale and the crinoline — Waldeyer’s views regarding the cause of the difference between men’s clothing and women’s — Greater simplicity of men’s clothing — Connexion of this with the greater mental differentiation of man — Former anomalies of men’s clothing — The breeches-flap — Feminine men’s clothing — Present predominance of the English style in men’s clothing — Influence of clothing on the skin — Venus im Pelz (Venus in fur) — Sacher-Masoch’s explanation of the sexual influence of furs — The face and clothing — Sexual differentiation of the features — The relation of clothing to the environment — Enlargement of the conception of “fashion” — Theory of fashion — The two functions of fashion — Social equalization and individual differentiation — The demi-monde and fashion — Fashion as a safeguard of personality — Economic theories of fashion — Their connexion with capitalism — The reform of women’s clothing — “Rational dress.”
The relation between the feeling of shame and nudity as a problem of modern civilization — Prudery — Natural and lascivious nakedness — Prudery is concealed lust — Schleiermacher’s talented characterization of the sexual element in prudery — Psychiatric observations — Unnatural increase in the sense of shame — Importance to civilization of the genuine, natural feeling of shame — False fig-leaf morality — Natural views regarding nudity and sexual matters the watchword for the future.
CHAPTER VII
The first step on the road to the individualization of love was effected at the very outset of the grey primeval age by the origination of the sexual sense of shame. Recent researches have for the first time established the fact that the sense of shame is not innate in man, but that it is a specific product of civilization—that is to say, a mental phenomenon arising in the course of progressive evolution, and as such is peculiar to man—present already, indeed, in the naked man, but, above all, characteristic of the clothed man. Clothing and the sense of shame have developed proportionally side by side, and in dependence each on the other; and originally both subserved the same purpose, to develop more strongly, and to bring to expression the individual, personal, peculiar nature of the individual man. They mirror the first individual activities in the amatory life of primitive man.
Georg Simmel has recognized very clearly this individualizing influence of the sense of shame by saying: “The entire sense of shame depends upon the self-uplifting of the individual.”[72]
By means of the recent critical investigations of leading anthropologists and ethnologists, we have obtained most important conclusions regarding the erotic sense of shame. Above all worthy of mention are the clear-sighted investigations of Havelock Ellis, and these have been supplemented by the researches of C. H. Stratz, Karl von den Steinen, etc.