Why Do You Think That the Bayonet Became an Old-fashioned Weapon During This War?

Did yous ever observe that the buttons on a shirt are on opposite sides for men and women? Curious to discover out how World State of war 2 changed women's shaving habits? Ever thought about why men stopped wearing high heels? And what makes the fourth finger on our left hand the "ring finger"?

These aren't just random happenings or frivolous decisions by mode magazines. Sometimes, war or other serious considerations influenced how nosotros dress. In fact, there is a fascinating history backside many modern mode trends. Read on to get the scoop behind some of our more puzzling mode choices.

10 Why Women Shave Their Legs

Women accept not always shaved their legs. Indeed, under the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, who was a trendsetter of her fourth dimension, women weren't expected to remove body hair. Instead, the fashion police of that era dictated that women ought to remove eyebrows and hair from their foreheads to make their faces appear longer. Simply leg hair? No need to shave.

So why did that modify?

The simple reply is World War 2. During the war, the US experienced a stockings shortage equally the regime redirected the utilize of nylon from stockings to state of war parachutes. For women, the nylon shortage meant having to bare their legs in public. To exist deemed socially acceptable, women began to shave their legs. After the war, as skirts became shorter, the tendency stuck around.^[1]

nine Why Girls Article of clothing Pink And Boys Clothing Blue

We have all been there. At a baby shower, the color of everything—from the tablecloths to the napkins—corresponds to the gender of the baby. Blue is for boys, and pinkish is for girls. But things were not always this way.

For centuries, children younger than six generally wore flowing white dresses according to University of Maryland historian Jo B. Paoletti, who wrote Pink and Blue: Telling the Girls From the Boys in America. "White cotton wool can be bleached," she says, which made it a practical option.

In the 1900s, colors began to be used as gender signifiers. But the colors did not mean what they do at present. For case, a June 1918 article from a popular fashion magazine alleged:

"The generally accepted dominion is pink for the boys and bluish for the girls. The reason is that pink, beingness a more decided and stronger color, is more than suitable for the boy, while blueish, which is more frail and dainty, is prettier for the girl."^[2]

Still, Paoletti says that these trends weren't particularly widespread.

Around 1985, that all changed with the ascent of prenatal testing, which immune parents to make up one's mind the gender of the child. Equally expectant parents learned the sexual practice of their babies, they began to shop for "girl" or "boy" merchandise. Retailers noticed and individualized vesture to increase their sales.

For the most part, this trend appears to have stuck. But Paoletti warns that it presents challenges for children who do non conform to the colors assigned to their gender.

8 Why Women's And Men's Buttons Are On Opposite Sides

Odds are yous own a button-up shirt. Take a look at which side the buttons are on. If y'all're a man, chances are the buttons are on the right. If you're a woman, you'll probable find your buttons on the left.

At that place's an interesting historical reason for this. Melanie M. Moore, who created women's blouse brand Elizabeth & Clarke, explains: "When buttons were invented in the 13th century, they were, like most new technology, very expensive. [ . . . ] Wealthy women back so did not clothes themselves—their lady'southward maid did. Since most people were correct-handed, this made it easier for someone standing across from you to button your apparel."^[three]

Equally for men'south shirts, style historian Chloe Chapin traces the fashion quirk to the military. "Access to a weapon . . . practically trumped everything," she says, noting that a firearm tucked inside a shirt would be easier to accomplish from the dominant side.

7 Why Men Stopped Wearing High Heels

For generations, a pair of high heels has signaled feminine beauty. Only before and so, high heels were a staple in men'southward closets.

Elizabeth Semmelhack of the Bata Shoe Museum in Toronto says, "The high heel was worn for centuries throughout the Near East equally a form of riding footwear. [ . . . ] When the soldier stood upwardly in his stirrups, the heel helped him to secure his stance and then that he could shoot his bow and pointer more effectively."^[iv]

Nigh the 15th century, when Farsi-European cultural commutation heightened, European aristocrats adopted loftier-heeled shoes as a symbol of their wealth. According to Semmelhack, elites have always used impractical clothing to showcase their privileged status.

Fast-forward to the Enlightenment era, which ostensibly brought with it an appreciation for the practical, and men began to renounce the impractical high heel. Merely sexism prohibited women from existence viewed as rational beings. Semmelhack suggests that the desirability of women was then seen in terms of irrational way choices like the high heel.

six Why We Pigment Our Nails

If yous thought the manicure was a new miracle, you would be wrong. Did you lot know that the globe's oldest manicure gear up, made from solid gold dating to 3200 BC, is over 5,000 years one-time? The ancient Babylonians, who created that set, were known to have loved caring for their nails.

Ming Dynasty elites were also fans of painted nails, using a mixture of egg whites, gelatin, and condom to dye their nails cherry-red and black. In England, Elizabeth I, a fashion icon of her day, was widely admired for her manicured nails and cute hands.^[5]

Suzanne Shapiro, a researcher at The Costume Plant at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, says that long fingernails are impractical for difficult labor, and then they have tended to signal an elite social status.

Simply Shapiro admits that nail trends come and become. During the 1920s and '30s, the French manicure was in. However, during the 1960s, women preferred a more than natural look and rarely painted their nails.

5 Why Long Pilus Became A Thing For Women

While hair trends have fallen in and out of fashion, ane thing across cultures and millennia has remained adequately constant: the expectation that women would have long hair. We've seen information technology from the delineation of a long-haired Aphrodite to St. Paul's letter to the Corinthians, in which he wrote, "If a adult female has long hair, it is a glory to her."

Kurt Stenn, writer of Hair: A Human being History, says that women nearly always accept longer hair than men. But why?

Co-ordinate to Stenn, a sometime professor of pathology and dermatology at Yale, pilus is highly chatty. It sends messages virtually sexuality, religious behavior, and ability. In particular, he believes that long hair can communicate health and wealth.

"To have long hair, y'all have to be salubrious," Stenn says. "You have to consume well, have no diseases, no infectious organisms, you have to accept good residuum and do." He adds, "To have long hair, you accept to have your needs in life taken intendance of, which implies you lot take the wealth to exercise it."^[6]

4 Why Some People Sag Their Pants

In 2014, the Ocala, Florida, city council passed an ordinance banning the do of sagging (wearing one'southward pants below the waistline or, in some cases, the buttocks) on city-owned belongings. An offender would receive a $500 fine or half dozen months in jail.

Similar bans have surfaced from New Jersey to Tennessee. The rationale backside this sort of legislation unremarkably goes something similar this: Sagging represents a dangerous lack of self-respect and an embrace of gang culture. It is a symbol of moral decline.

But how did sagging originate?

Co-ordinate to Academy of Massachusetts historian Tanisha C. Ford, the origins of sagging tin't exist definitively traced. But there are 2 leading theories. The kickoff is that inmates, prohibited from wearing belts in prison house, frequently sagged their uniforms. Then they continued the fashion subsequently returning habitation. The 2d theory is that convicts wore their pants low as a ways of letting other prisoners know they were sexually available.^[vii]

3 Why We Wearable Wedding ceremony Bands On The 'Ring Finger'

"With this ring, I thee midweek." The band is slipped onto the fourth finger of the left hand, and there you lot accept it—a bride and groom! Only have you ever asked yourself why we sideslip our wedding ceremony bands onto the "band finger"?

The tradition can be traced dorsum to Roman times. The Romans believed that a vein ran directly from the heart to the ring finger. They named it the vena amoris ("vein of love"). Naturally, they thought it'd exist fitting to identify ane's wedding band on that finger. Quite romantic!

By the manner, modern science has proven that all fingers accept a vein connection to our hearts.^[8]

ii Why Men Wear Ties

Ties. They don't go on us warm, aren't practical, and are often uncomfortable. So why practice men wear them?

Near neckwear historians agree that the necktie grew in prominence around the time of the Thirty Years' War in the 1600s. To fight the war, King Louis Xiii employed Croation mercenaries who wore a piece of cloth around their necks.

While these early on neckties were largely functional—they tied the tops of their jackets—King Louis XIII liked them as sartorial adornments. Indeed, he fabricated these early neckties mandatory dress for formal gatherings and named them later on the Croatian mercenaries: cravate. To this mean solar day, that ways necktie in France.

Curiously, Croatia celebrates national Cravat Day every October 18. In 2003, they commemorated the vacation by tying an 808-meter (2,650 ft) tie around the historic Roman amphitheater in Pula.^[ix]

1 Why Women Shave Their Armpits

Women and men have had armpit hair for millennia. Then why do roughly 95 percent of women shave or wax their underarms? Who woke up ane mean solar day and decided that women with armpit hair are unsightly?

Well, we can thank a 1915 Harper's Boutique advertisement for that. Earlier then, women with bushy pits were the norm. Simply the ad told women that modernistic dancing and sleeveless dresses were the next large thing and that "objectionable pilus" was out. The advertisement featured a photograph of a immature woman in a sleeveless wearing apparel. Her artillery were arched over her head, revealing perfectly clear armpits.

Within a few years and after an onslaught of advertisements promoting the tendency, hairless armpits were a thing and natural hair was something embarrassing. Indeed, a 2013 Arizona Country Academy study measured disgust triggered by women with armpit hair. It yielded responses like: "I think women who don't shave are a piffling gross."^[x]

Simply natural, hairy pits might exist making a comeback. Ane recent report found that 1 in four millennial women practise not shave or wax their pits.

Oscar is a Master of Public Policy student at the University of Oxford. He is originally from Los Angeles, California.

Share this post