If men’s clothing, as we have already said, is, in the gross, far less subject to the dominion of fashion than women’s clothing, still recently efforts have been apparent to simplify women’s clothing also, to make it independent of the caprices of fashion, and, above all, to subordinate it to hygienic principles. It is noteworthy that these efforts proceed more particularly from the leaders of the modern woman’s movement, an interesting proof of the connexion already alluded to between personality and clothing. The more differentiated and the more inwardly rich the personality, the simpler and more monotonous is the clothing. To this extent, therefore, the desire for simplification of feminine clothing is an entirely logical postulate of the emancipation of women. But this demand finds a justification also from the point of view of hygiene. This fact has been discussed especially by Paul Schultze-Naumburg in his book on “The Culture of the Feminine Body as the Basis of Women’s Clothing” (Leipzig, 1901). He insists above all on the complete abandonment of the corset, and of the “small waist,” and on a return of women’s clothing to the free, simple outlines of the antique. He makes, also, very noteworthy observations on the unhygienic footgear of both sexes.
The idea that woman’s clothing should unconstrainedly represent the form of her body has been admirably realized in the different varieties of the so-called “reformed dress.” Not without influence on these deserving attempts has been the recognition of the distinguished simplicity and hygienic purposefulness of the Japanese women’s clothing.
For the present, however, fashion, as of old, remains dominant, and celebrates annually its triumph in respect of new discoveries and refinements of the dress of women of the world, employing for this purpose the familiar means of accentuation and disclosure, and of coloured and ornamental stimuli. The “woman’s movement” has as yet had little ostensible and practical influence in liberating women’s dress from the all-powerful control of fashion.
Now that we have considered clothing and fashion in their relations to the sexual life, and have learned to understand how they combine in action as means of sexual stimulation of a peculiar nature, we are in a position to grasp the relations between the sense of shame and nudity, as it presents itself to us as a problem of modern civilization.
While, as Simmel also maintains, and as we have thoroughly explained above, clothing, through the intermediation of fashion, gives rise to shamelessness as a group manifestation, or, as we are accustomed to say at the present day, seriously impairs the sense of shame in such a manner as would be repelled with disgust if it were adopted by the personal choice of an isolated individual,[132] clothing has, on the other hand, led astray the natural biological sense of shame, since it is the sole cause of the “exaggerated sense of shame” known as prudery. Prudery recognizes the existence of clothed human beings only; it will not recognize the existence of naked man; it refuses to admit the purely moral-æsthetic influence of natural nudity—to prudery this is something immoral and repulsive.
To prudery alone we must ascribe the fact that we modern civilized human beings have completely lost the taste for natural nudity, and also for the natural sense of shame, and thus we show little understanding of the ennobling, civilizing influence of both.
Natural nudity, the state in which every human being is born into this world, not artificial nudity, with its lascivious influence dependent upon clothing, posture, and gesture, is purely an object of simple contemplation for the human being of normal perceptions, who sees in the unclothed human body precisely the same individual natural object as he sees in the bodies of other living beings. People, in other respects extremely prudish, admit this when they have the opportunity—at the present day certainly very rare—of seeing completely naked human beings in natural surroundings, as, for instance, when bathing.
It is only when we introduce intentionally a sensual or, speaking generally, an artificial influence, that nudity has an effect of lascivious stimulation. Prudery is, however, nothing more than such a way of looking at nudity, with concealed lustful feelings. The talented Schleiermacher already recognized this fact. He unmasked prudery as a lack of the sense of shame, and very clearly pointed out the sexual and lascivious element which it conceals. In his “Vertrauten Briefen über die Lucinde” (edition of K. Gutzkow, Hamburg, 1835, pp. 63-65) we find the following beautiful passage:
“What, then, shall we think of those who pretend to be in a condition of quiet thought and activity, and yet are so intolerably sensitive that as a result of the most trivial and most remote impulse, passion arises in them, and who believe themselves to be the more fully equipped with the sense of shame the more readily they find in everything something worthy of suspicion? They do not really find what they pretend to find in every occurrence; it is their own crude lust which lies always on the watch, and springs forward as soon as anything shows itself in the distance akin to themselves, and which therefore they find it possible to condemn; and they will quickly seize an opportunity for blaming anything of which the motives were absolutely blameless. Ordinarily, indeed, blamelessness appears to them a pretence. Youths and maidens are represented as knowing nothing as yet of love, but none the less as full of yearnings which every moment threaten to break out, and which clutch the slightest opportunity in order to grasp the forbidden fruit. But this is absurd. True youths and maidens are, indeed, the ideals of this kind of modesty, but in them it takes another form. Only that which has no other purpose than to arouse desire and passion can do them any harm; but why should they not be allowed to learn love and to understand Nature, both of which they see everywhere round them? Why should they not, without restraint, understand and enjoy what is thought and said about these matters, since in this way so much the less would passion be aroused in them? Such anxious and limited modesty as is at the present day characteristic of society is based only upon the consciousness of a great and widespread perversity, and upon a deep corruption. What will be the end of all this? If matters were left to themselves, they would become worse and worse; when we so persistently hunt out that which in reality is not shameful, we shall at last succeed in finding something immodest in every circle of ideas; and finally all conversation and all society must come to an end; we must separate the sexes so that they may not look at one another; we must introduce monasticism, or even something more severe. But this is not to be borne, and it will happen to our society as it happened to our wives when morality confined them ever more and more strictly, until at last it became improper for them to show the tips of their fingers—and then in despair they suddenly turned round, and they exposed their necks, their shoulders, and their breasts to the rude winds and to lascivious eyes; or, like the caterpillars, they cast off their old skin by a predetermined movement. Thus will it be; when corruption has reached its climax, and the crude impulses become so dominant that it is no longer possible to keep them within bounds, all these false appearances will break down of themselves, and behind them we shall see youthful shamelessness which has long intimately entwined itself round the body of society, so that this has become the true skin in which society naturally and easily moves. Complete corruption and completed culture, by way of which we return to blamelessness—both of these make an end of prudery.”
Fine words from a theologian! This thoroughly just description of the nature of prudery and of its dangers should be laid seriously to heart by our modern theological bigots and moral fanatics. How truly Schleiermacher has depicted the nature of prudery is shown by the observations of the alienist J. L. A. Koch, that it is precisely the women who were formerly prudish and “moral” when they become insane—for example, in mania—who are much more shameless than women who in everyday life had taken a more natural view of sexual relationships.