Tattooing leads on to the consideration of many-coloured clothing, which is especially common in primitive conditions of mankind. Such clothing, in such conditions, serves chiefly to accentuate particular portions of the body, in order to stimulate the sexual appetite of members of the opposite sex. According to Moseley, the savage begins by painting and tattooing himself for the sake of adornment. Then he takes a movable appendage, which he throws round his body, and on which he places the ornamentation which he had previously marked on his skin in a more or less ineradicable manner. Now a greater variation is rendered possible than was the case with tattooing and painting. Thus, by means of vari-coloured and bright bands, fringes, girdles, and aprons, which for the most part are attached in the genital region, attention is drawn to this part—and here a contrast of colours is found extremely effective. The Indians of the Admiralty Islands have as their only article of clothing a brilliant white mussel-shell, which exhibits a striking contrast to the dark colour of their skin. The Areois of Tahiti, a class of privileged libertines and voluptuous individuals, manifested this character in public places by wearing a girdle made of “ti-leaves.”[92]
The first and most primitive form of clothing was this pubic ornament, the original purpose of which was adornment, not concealment. The latter significance it acquired only in proportion as the genital organs became the object of a superstitious feeling of fear and respect, and were regarded as the seat of a dangerous magic.[93] The above-mentioned connexion between sexuality and magic here made itself apparent. It was necessary that this wonderful, daimonic region should be concealed, in order to protect an onlooker from its evil and influence, or, contrariwise, to protect the genital region from the evil glance of the observer. Both ideas are ethnologically demonstrable. According to Dürkheim, the genital organs, and especially those of women, were covered in primitive times, in order to prevent the perception of any disagreeable emanations from these regions. Finally, Waitz, Schurz, and Letourneau propounded the theory that the jealousy of primitive man was the primary ground of clothing, and was indirectly also the cause of the sense of shame. This view is supported by the interesting ethnological fact that in many races only the married women are clothed, whilst the fully-grown unmarried girls go completely naked. The married woman is part of the property of the husband; to the latter, clothing appears to be a protection against glances at his property—to unclothe the wife is a dishonour and a shame. When the idea of possession was extended to the relationship between the father and his unmarried daughters, these latter also were clothed; thus the idea of chastity and the feeling of shame were developed.[94]
We can, however, adduce numerous considerations in support of the view that the first covering of the genital organs, in association with the pubic ornament, did not arise out of the feeling of shame, but, on the contrary, that it served as a means of sexual allurement. By all kinds of striking ornaments, such as cat’s tails, mussel-shells, or strips of hide, fastened either in front or behind, every possible attention was attracted to the genital region or the buttocks.[95] Concealment made itself felt as a more powerful sensual stimulus than nudity. This is an old anthropological experience which still possesses great significance in our modern civilized life.
Virey believed that human beings had more intense and manifold sexual enjoyments than the lower animals, because these latter see their wives at all times without any kind of adornment, whereas the half-opened veil with which the human female conceals or partially discloses her charms increases a hundredfold the already boundless lust of mankind. “The less one sees, the more does imagination picture.”[96] That which causes a refined and sensual stimulus is not the entirely naked, but the half-naked or partial nudity. Westermarck remarks:
“We have numerous examples of races who generally go about completely naked, but sometimes employ a covering. In such cases they always wear the latter in circumstances which make it perfectly clear that the covering is used simply as a means of allurement. Thus, Lohmann relates that among the Saliras only prostitutes wear clothing, and they do this in order to stimulate by means of the unknown. Barth informs us that among many heathen races in Central Africa, the married women go entirely naked, whilst the girls ripe for marriage clothe themselves (in order that they may appear worthy of desire). The married women of Tipperah wear no more than a short apron, while the unmarried girls cover the breasts with vari-coloured cloths with fringed edges. Among the Toungta, the breasts of the women remain uncovered after the birth of the first child, but the unmarried women wear a narrow breast-cloth.”[97]
The significance of clothing and partial clothing as a sexual stimulus, proved by K. von den Steinen and Stratz to exist among primitive peoples, can be shown to form an element in the “fashion” of civilized races, which provides the imagination with entirely new sexual stimuli, by means of the two fundamental elements of the accentuation and disclosure of certain parts, and speaks to man of “hidden joys.” Moses made use of this psychical sexual influence of clothing. He wished to increase the numbers of his small people, and therefore he ordered the concealment of the feminine charms, “in order to stimulate the senses of the male members of his community, and thus increase the fertility of his people.”[98] Nudity, rejected by him as unsuitable, came in the Christian teaching to be regarded as “immoral”; for such a change in the point of view, we can find numerous examples in the public life of the present day.
The greatest sensual stimulus is exerted by the half-clothing or partial disclosure of the body, the so-called retroussé—that is, the art of bringing about a refined mutual influence between the charms of clothing and the charms of the body.[99] This plays a very important part in the origination of the so-called “clothes fetichism,” which we shall describe at greater length when we come to the consideration of these sexual anomalies.
There are two fundamental forms of clothing, the tropical (coat and sash) and the arctic (doublet and hose), and these, in addition to their simple function of protecting in the tropics from the powerful rays of the sun, and in the northern climates of protecting from cold, serve also in both sexes as a means of sexual allurement. The changeful phenomena and phases of “fashion in clothing” afford the most certain proofs of this fact; they may, in fact, be regarded as the most valuable sexual psychological documents of the successive epochs of civilization. The celebrated writer on æsthetics Friedrich Theodor Vischer has regarded them especially from this point of view in his original work, distinguished by its pithy style, “Fashion and Cynicism: Contributions to the Knowledge of the Forms of Civilization and of our Moral Ideas” (Stuttgart, 1888). He regards “the rage to excel in man-catching” as “the most powerful of impulses, capable of inflaming to fever-heat the madness of fashion, with its brainless changes, its furious inclinations, its raging distortions.” In a certain sense we may also speak of some of the fashions of men’s clothing as an art of “woman-catching.” Still, on the whole, this feature is much less manifest here than in relation to woman’s clothing.
Clothing has a sexually stimulating influence in a twofold manner: either certain parts are especially accentuated and enlarged by the shape or cut of the clothing and by peculiar kinds of ornamentation, or else particular portions of the body are directly denuded. Both of these have a sexual influence.
The accentuation and enlargement of certain parts of the body by means of clothing takes its origin in man’s belief that by this means he really produces certain enlargements of his personality, as though these portions of clothing were actually a part of himself. This remarkable theory of clothing, according to which the latter represents a strengthening of the body, a kind of outwardly projected emanation of the human personality, a direct continuation of the body, was first enunciated by the celebrated philosopher Hermann Lotze. He writes: