Speaker 1: Ridiculous Histories, a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to the show,
Speaker 1: fellow Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so much for
Speaker 1: tuning in. Let's hear it for the man, the myth
Speaker 1: Legend super producer, mister Max Williams. Look, guys, this is
Speaker 1: in media arrests. We're coming to you right at the
Speaker 1: halfway point of a fascinating conversation with none other than
Speaker 1: our goodpal aj Bahamas Jacobs.
Speaker 2: Indeed, why don't we just join the conversation already in progress.
Speaker 1: We're building out this concept, this ancient idea of headdress,
Speaker 1: right visual signification of something like success or authority, what
Speaker 1: we would call a modern parlance, a flex, and that
Speaker 1: leads us to one thing we have to get to
Speaker 1: before we travel further down the body of ridiculous fashion trends.
Speaker 1: Toll wigs like big big old wigs big old.
Speaker 3: In fact, the phrase big wig is derived from the
Speaker 3: fact that people who had who were higher on the
Speaker 3: socioeconomic scale, had the big the bigger the wig, the
Speaker 3: bigger the bank account. I guess so yes. But the
Speaker 3: wigs were also incredibly vertical and reached heights of four feet.
Speaker 3: And this I'd say, the height of yeah, this is
Speaker 3: I mean, it was especially crazy during the lead up
Speaker 3: to the French Revolution. The famous Marie Antoinette, she was
Speaker 3: kind of the They would have these wigs that were
Speaker 3: made of wire. You needed wire because they were so big,
Speaker 3: but you needed horse hair and human hair, beef fat
Speaker 3: to keep it all in play, hollows maybe a little talely, yeah, delicious.
Speaker 3: You had powder like powder from wheat and white rice.
Speaker 3: And this, by the way, was when the peasants were starving,
Speaker 3: so this was not very beloved when uh, you know,
Speaker 3: she's using food in her wig instead of in their stomach.
Speaker 3: But these they became crazy tall. It was sort of
Speaker 3: like a you know, like the arms race, who can
Speaker 3: get the highest who? And they were so tall they
Speaker 3: would have to stick their heads out the window of
Speaker 3: the carriage. They would have to be very careful chandeliers.
Speaker 3: People's head caught on fire. And they had not just
Speaker 3: the hair, but they had all sorts of things in them.
Speaker 3: They had feathers, flowers, taxidermied birds. To go back to
Speaker 3: our first hat shop. Nothing a battleship, a replica replica
Speaker 3: of a French battleship. Marie Antoinette was famous for that.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 3: And of course a lot of insects because you had
Speaker 3: the beef tallow and it was just the delicious.
Speaker 1: So the insects a non consensual ornamentation.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 3: They were meant to be there, but they added to
Speaker 3: the fun.
Speaker 1: And gosh, I love your locust contessa. Yeah, I love you.
Speaker 1: I love your cat.
Speaker 3: Your hair is moving around so interesting, so active.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: But yes, so this literally was one of the complaints
Speaker 3: that led to the French Revolution. People didn't have anything
Speaker 3: to eat. I mean, this is I guess the Lady
Speaker 3: Gaga and her meat dress really would have pissed them off.
Speaker 4: Oh gosh, this idea.
Speaker 3: Of these ridiculously tall wigs were just such an obvious
Speaker 3: status marker that would enrage the lower class. And they
Speaker 3: paid for it. They paid for it, they sure did.
Speaker 1: Yeah, someone took something off the top.
Speaker 3: Right, exactly more than just.
Speaker 1: A wig, more than just a wig, right. And this
Speaker 1: leads us to I think another another important trend that
Speaker 1: we have to talk about. I was speaking years ago
Speaker 1: with a friend of ours, good friend of the show
Speaker 1: Holly Fry from Stuff You Missed in History class, and
Speaker 1: in our conversation we noted that quite a few of
Speaker 1: the fashion trends, regardless where they lay on the spectrum,
Speaker 1: Quite a few of the fashion trend for women and
Speaker 1: female identifying people were incredibly painful and inconvenient and literally
Speaker 1: bad for you. Like a far example of that would
Speaker 1: be footbinding. But there's a lot more to that.
Speaker 2: Store, just corsets and all of that stuff just constricting
Speaker 2: your movements and just like the idea of suffering for fashion,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, Court, let's dive into corsets. And I will say,
Speaker 3: for my year of living constitutionally, I tried to dress
Speaker 3: the part, so I had to wear the hat, which
Speaker 3: was not so bad. Socks were kind of a pain
Speaker 3: in the ass or painted like because they didn't have elastic,
Speaker 3: so you had to wear these little sock belts. And
Speaker 3: so the amount of time I spent putting on sock belts,
Speaker 3: I'll never get that back. But I had it easy
Speaker 3: because my wife was nice enough that she occasionally dressed
Speaker 3: up and she had to put on these stays, which
Speaker 3: were sort of proto corsets, and she hated them. I mean,
Speaker 3: who wouldn't. They are, like, you know, they're constricting, They're
Speaker 3: like boa constrictors around your waist and some of these corsets,
Speaker 3: it was a trend that was around in the seventeen
Speaker 3: hundreds eighteen hundreds, and they just got more and more
Speaker 3: constricting and unpleasant. They were made from all sorts of
Speaker 3: horrible things like whalebone and metal, and by the end
Speaker 3: they would squeeze the woman's waist to thirteen inches around.
Speaker 3: That is crazy, Like I'm doing my fing It's like
Speaker 3: an eggo waffle and yea, it is just disturbing. Now. Thankfully,
Speaker 3: not everyone was like, oh, this is wonderful. You had
Speaker 3: a lot of backlash from sort of proto feminists, early feminists,
Speaker 3: and also doctors who said it was dangerous and newspaper people.
Speaker 3: Eighteen ninety one, the Chicago Tribune said the tight lacing
Speaker 3: has produced generations of invalids and bequeathed to posterity suffering
Speaker 3: that will not vanish for many decades. Generational suffering.
Speaker 4: That's what I'll not pass from the earth exactly.
Speaker 1: It could impede just basic day to day function when
Speaker 1: you get down to thirteen inches in diameter, that's just
Speaker 1: people don't walk away from that, you know it now,
Speaker 1: even after you take off the corset.
Speaker 3: Super painful and you would have to wear increasingly small
Speaker 3: coursets until you got to that size, and you'd have
Speaker 3: people pulling. You've seen in the old movies, people pulling
Speaker 3: on the.
Speaker 1: Store, the foot of the lower back of the second
Speaker 1: person helping you strap it up.
Speaker 3: I mean that was real. That was real, and I
Speaker 3: one of the there were all these dress reform movements.
Speaker 3: One in the French Revolution, rational dress, they called it.
Speaker 3: Another in Victorian times you might have heard of bloomers bloomers,
Speaker 3: so bloomers were part of the rational dress movement where
Speaker 3: women were trying to find and bloomers were original. Is
Speaker 3: sort of like hammer pants for women, like the parachute pants,
Speaker 3: parachute pants basically, and they were mocked relentlessly by the press,
Speaker 3: so they never really caught on. But that was just
Speaker 3: one of the ways that they were trying to fight
Speaker 3: this this corporal punishment that women were like, and not
Speaker 3: just during the day, they'd have to wear them at
Speaker 3: night so that they would train their waste.
Speaker 4: That's just it's okay.
Speaker 1: It sounds crazy and intensely disturbing for a lot of
Speaker 1: us listening along in twenty twenty five. We do know, however,
Speaker 1: that again this was not the only painful thing people
Speaker 1: subjected themselves to in the in the chase of being
Speaker 1: the most fashionable one. Look, I don't know how painful
Speaker 1: these are, ag but one thing a lot lot of
Speaker 1: people in the US remember from their grade school history
Speaker 1: days is that whatever you saw a picture of a
Speaker 1: fancy or important person in Elizabethan times, unless they were
Speaker 1: a member of a church or like a religious official,
Speaker 1: they had an inexplicable rough like a white collar. They
Speaker 1: just like went around like somebody took a pin a
Speaker 1: cupcake wrapper and just pop them in so that their
Speaker 1: head looked like the cupcake.
Speaker 3: I love that description. Yeah, I often think they remind
Speaker 3: me of what my dog had to wear after getting
Speaker 3: Now I will say, I just want to make one
Speaker 3: note in general, which is that from our point of view,
Speaker 3: a lot of these fashion trends are ridiculous, and some
Speaker 3: are genuinely harmful, like the corset. But I do want
Speaker 3: like to do a mental experiment. Imagine someone in the
Speaker 3: future is like in school if they still have those
Speaker 3: reading about twentieth or twenty first century American fashion, and
Speaker 3: they would read about how these men would spend hundreds
Speaker 3: of dollars a year on this thin strip of colored
Speaker 3: cloth that hung around the neck and required elaborate loops,
Speaker 3: serve no purpose.
Speaker 4: A crevass.
Speaker 3: You say it is a cravas. We're a necktie, right,
Speaker 3: So yeah, we shouldn't be two cock I mean our
Speaker 3: or crocs. Can you imagine what people will say about crocs.
Speaker 3: I love crocs. I know that that's a functional shoe.
Speaker 2: It's it.
Speaker 3: I wear it. I wear Camo ones, so I look
Speaker 3: really cool and military.
Speaker 1: I love this point because a little while back, fascinated
Speaker 1: by the same thing that you're mentioning there, we did
Speaker 1: a ridiculous history episode on the evolution of the necktie.
Speaker 4: Oh and like so.
Speaker 1: Many things, it began with function, basic function. Yeah it
Speaker 1: was it was military dress, right, But then aristocrats of
Speaker 1: well to do people may have seen some of that
Speaker 1: military dress. That boy is like a functional scarf, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean, right, And then they said let's
Speaker 1: all start doing that, and it just accelerated. And now
Speaker 1: in certain I love that you mentioned this. In certain
Speaker 1: aspects of us or Western society. Even today, if you
Speaker 1: go to a place above a certain social echalon, you
Speaker 1: have to not only practice this weird conspiracy of neckties,
Speaker 1: but you have to have specific ones like Noel saying
Speaker 1: a cravat or you know, a tuxedo party, a black
Speaker 1: and white party, and if you don't participate in the silliness,
Speaker 1: then you're not at the top.
Speaker 3: Now, wait, what is a cravat versus a necktie? I'm
Speaker 3: not sure. I know.
Speaker 1: Well, it's really good. I would say it goes down
Speaker 1: more to the knot like a cravat is going to
Speaker 1: be a little more loosely nodded.
Speaker 3: Interesting, Oh yeah, that makes sense.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then you got the you know, the windsor
Speaker 1: and whatnot for your typical day trader tie.
Speaker 3: Right, And one other tie question was was there any
Speaker 3: truth to that it was a napkin?
Speaker 4: At one point I would say.
Speaker 1: I would say there is, from what we found in
Speaker 1: our research, there is robbable partial truth to that because
Speaker 1: the military members that were wearing these as scarves when
Speaker 1: they're in the field, they're using it as a catch
Speaker 1: all things sort of like the the towel in Douglas
Speaker 1: Adams works, you know what I mean, So they always
Speaker 1: have you know, they have a washcloth. Now they can
Speaker 1: maybe try to strain water, stop wounds, and then if
Speaker 1: they're eating, you know, clean their faces up because they
Speaker 1: were probably they were probably beardy, right, who has time
Speaker 1: to shave?
Speaker 3: Well, I love that. I mean now I think it's
Speaker 3: actually very useful because it's you can't lose it. You
Speaker 3: can't lose the tie. So if we go back to
Speaker 3: using it as a napkin and a towel, then maybe
Speaker 3: that would make sense. But anyway, you did bring up
Speaker 3: these crazy white collars that they had in Elizabethan times.
Speaker 1: Which were not napkins.
Speaker 3: They were not napkins. They were purely ornamental, although I
Speaker 3: imagine they did catch food so you could like save
Speaker 3: them for later. But they were like they were called ruffs,
Speaker 3: and the biggest ones where they made of six yards
Speaker 3: of cloth, that's a lot of cloth, and they would
Speaker 3: they would fold them in these little pleats up to
Speaker 3: six hundred pleats. They would go out like eight inches
Speaker 3: from your neck and they were just absolutely absurd and
Speaker 3: even people at the time thought that they were absurd,
Speaker 3: and including religious people. Preachers called them the tools of Satan.
Speaker 3: One preacher, one preacher said, the devil, in the fullness
Speaker 3: of his malice first and invented ruffs. So yeah, and
Speaker 3: they were sort of again a class distinguisher. The richer
Speaker 3: you were, the bigger, you're rough, and they were banned.
Speaker 3: The Puritans hated them, of course, but they were also
Speaker 3: banned by King Philip of Spain, who was trying to
Speaker 3: reduce the power of the nobles. There were colored ruffs
Speaker 3: that were very controversial. There was a famous woman who
Speaker 3: was convicted of murder in sixteen thirteen and she was
Speaker 3: alleged to have invented the yellow ruff, which was like
Speaker 3: even more offensive than the white ruff.
Speaker 2: Can I just say that I'm a little bit of
Speaker 2: a conundrum. I am afraid of birds, but I have
Speaker 2: in the last year or two become very fond of
Speaker 2: the board game Wingspan, which is a bird based strategy
Speaker 2: game and it's a lot of fun. Highly recommend it.
Speaker 2: But there are these cards that are different birds and
Speaker 2: tells you little details about them. And there is a
Speaker 2: bird called a rouff. And the question occurred to me
Speaker 2: that has this plumy thing around its neck. What came first,
Speaker 2: the rough the bird or the rough the fashion trend?
Speaker 2: And I'm trying to figure that out. And the Internet
Speaker 2: is very confused about this, and the one Guardian article
Speaker 2: that seems to fully go into it is behind a
Speaker 2: paywall and I can't get to it, so we'll just
Speaker 2: have to chicken or the egg that for now.
Speaker 3: So to speak, to use a bird metaphor. Indeed, nicely done. Well,
Speaker 3: that is fast, and I have heard great things about
Speaker 3: that game. I actually bought it and I spent like
Speaker 3: two hours reading the instructions and I still don't know
Speaker 3: how to play.
Speaker 1: One is just when you get down, when you get
Speaker 1: over this way, or when we're up that way, let's
Speaker 1: just make it night, all right.
Speaker 3: Absolutely.
Speaker 2: I have the expansion, the Eastern European Expansion with the
Speaker 2: nectar and everything. It is one of those games AJ
Speaker 2: where it has quite the learning curve, but once you
Speaker 2: push yourself over it, it is so rewarding in such
Speaker 2: a zen lovely game. And it's a less of a
Speaker 2: competitive game and more of like a kind of let's
Speaker 2: all just hang out and be part of this ecosystem
Speaker 2: together kind of game.
Speaker 3: Love it. Yeah, I've heard you. I've heard it from many,
Speaker 3: including people who actually do like birds.
Speaker 1: Imagine how much they like it as Yeah, yeah, all
Speaker 1: about it. We Also, I have one question, going back
Speaker 1: to what we were saying AJ about ruffs. Does it
Speaker 1: not a question for the group. Am I a dummy
Speaker 1: for Like the first time I saw a rouff, I
Speaker 1: assumed it looked like there was a connecting piece that
Speaker 1: would go over it. I didn't think it would be
Speaker 1: possible for people to wear just this gaudy circle of
Speaker 1: fabric without you know, some other like.
Speaker 3: Attachment, like like a space helmet.
Speaker 1: Like a space helmet. Yes, just so anachronisms society. That's
Speaker 1: kind of what I was thinking. I was like, maybe
Speaker 1: a plague helmet or something. You know, maybe they just
Speaker 1: want to look ready. But as we have learned, and
Speaker 1: as your research shows, this was entirely to end Kate's status.
Speaker 3: This was not functional, and you did you did need wires,
Speaker 3: like it couldn't just maybe that's the prob It couldn't
Speaker 3: just hold its shape by itself like the wigs, like
Speaker 3: some of the huge crazy dresses. They needed metal support.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, okay, all right, And I love the tools of Satan.
Speaker 1: I love how it sounds like one Satan is real
Speaker 1: and then two was having like a slow week. It
Speaker 1: was kind of just sort of out of ideas at
Speaker 1: four point thirty on a Friday, and said no silly collars.
Speaker 1: That's why silly collars is the new malice, torture.
Speaker 3: You've got murder and these big collars. I do love
Speaker 3: what they condemned as satanic. I remember doing a history
Speaker 3: of utensils, like eating utensils and the forks. I remember
Speaker 3: where the Puritans they hated the forks as the tool
Speaker 3: of the devil. Again, the devil.
Speaker 1: So it's just like knife, spoon, hand.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like God gave you hands for a reason. That
Speaker 3: was his argument in the sermon, God gave you hands.
Speaker 3: I guess he liked Ethiopian food.
Speaker 4: There we go, Yeah, I get.
Speaker 1: Some TIBs and so what's that amazing bread in Jira?
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I don't remember the name.
Speaker 1: That's the you know, like the yeah, oh man, we
Speaker 1: should go to an Ethiopian restaurant and then play wingspan.
Speaker 3: That's what God wants us to do.
Speaker 1: It's what God wants us to do. And as we
Speaker 1: are further exploring ridiculous clothing trends of yesteryear, we're moving
Speaker 1: down the body and then we're going to something that
Speaker 1: remains a hot button issue for a lot of people today.
Speaker 1: Shoes like hats can wax and wane in the world
Speaker 1: of fashion rights. As you noted and anybody, any cinophile
Speaker 1: can see in you know, like the Golden Age of
Speaker 1: Hollywood and you know, other earlier iterations of fashion. It
Speaker 1: was common for guys to wear hats. It was considered
Speaker 1: kind of low and working class if you didn't have
Speaker 1: a hat. But no matter how ephemeral fashion can seem,
Speaker 1: people always need shoes, right, most of the time.
Speaker 3: You need shoes, absolutely, and those shoes can become ridiculous.
Speaker 3: To use an appropriate word, they can get they can.
Speaker 4: We invented that word. We coined it.
Speaker 3: Can you believe it nicely done? I've I've been found
Speaker 3: it very useful. Yeah, either in height or in length,
Speaker 3: these shoes seem to have grown in different ways. Height Wise,
Speaker 3: there were the probably the height no pun intended of
Speaker 3: the he was the chopines. I believe I'm prodicing that correctly.
Speaker 3: So this was around Shakespeare's time, sixteenth century. It was
Speaker 3: in Europe, especially Italy, and these were women's shoes that
Speaker 3: were elevated. And if you go and google the images,
Speaker 3: they're hilarious because they grew and grew and grew. Originally
Speaker 3: it was to keep the shoes out of the mud,
Speaker 3: and they would have these little platforms of wood, but
Speaker 3: they grew to be like almost two feet tall, like
Speaker 3: twenty inches. They were like stilts. They were wood and
Speaker 3: cork and velvet, and these women were walking on stilts
Speaker 3: and they needed a cane or they needed a servant,
Speaker 3: because you can't just walk around on two foot tall
Speaker 3: stilts unless you're a circus performer. And they led to
Speaker 3: a lot of of course, injuries and spills. They were
Speaker 3: mocked by Shakespeare himself who said in Hamlet, he said
Speaker 3: that the shopine was near made women near to heaven
Speaker 3: altitude of the chopine, which is sort of like the
Speaker 3: higher the hair, the closer to God, sort of that.
Speaker 3: And eventually they caused a backlash as well. The Puritans,
Speaker 3: of course, hated them tools of the devil.
Speaker 1: Think, hang, I'm going to stop us here real quick,
Speaker 1: because from what you're describing about these Puritan folks, they.
Speaker 4: Seem kind of uncool, not great.
Speaker 1: Or like very strict.
Speaker 3: They are tough, Yes, they have their pros and cons.
Speaker 3: I probably wouldn't want to be a Puritan, but uh.
Speaker 1: Because you're so you're super into forks, right, it's just
Speaker 1: love it.
Speaker 3: And I love high heels and ruffs. But yeah, I
Speaker 3: mean the good part is they were very against the
Speaker 3: corruption of the Church of England and all of that,
Speaker 3: so they had that going for them. They didn't like, uh,
Speaker 3: or at least some of them hated monarchy. I'm not
Speaker 3: a big fan of manarchy, so you know, everyone has
Speaker 3: their pros and cons, but I probably would not want
Speaker 3: to party with them on a Saturday night.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I think they probably also would find parties
Speaker 1: as a concept ungodly and evil.
Speaker 4: But then you know, yeah, there are.
Speaker 1: Strong reasons to object to monarchies. We're with you on
Speaker 1: that one. Just as a concept, it's a weird idea.
Speaker 1: And this leads us to one of the most glamorous,
Speaker 1: one of the most diva esque, one of the most
Speaker 1: extra monarchs in European history, a guy humbly called Louis, Yes.
Speaker 3: King Louis the fourteenth. He was the Sun King, right,
Speaker 3: wasn't that him? He was self.
Speaker 1: Proclaimed super humble dude, super right.
Speaker 3: Super humble, and one example of his humility is that
Speaker 3: he didn't want anyone taller than him. He didn't want
Speaker 3: no one could wear heels that were higher than his heels,
Speaker 3: and also red heels. He was banned those for some reason.
Speaker 3: It reminds me of Actually there was a friend of mine.
Speaker 3: I've never been to this party, but apparently a friend
Speaker 3: of mine threw a party where everyone was required to
Speaker 3: be the same height, so you sent in your height
Speaker 3: before the party, and he would provide these little platform
Speaker 3: stilt shoes so that everyone was the same eye level
Speaker 3: with the tallest person. I love that idea. I think
Speaker 3: that's really interesting. How would that change social dynamics? But
Speaker 3: King Louis the fourteenth would not throw or attend that party.
Speaker 3: That's my point. That's why I brought it up. It
Speaker 3: just seems so.
Speaker 1: It seems so unnecessarily weird to say, Like, imagine if
Speaker 1: you were the president of a country and you say,
Speaker 1: I like Air Jordan's and no one else can have them,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean? Like, that's bad for the
Speaker 1: Nike company, This is weird for the folks making the cobblers,
Speaker 1: making King Louis shoes. And it sounds like, again, as
Speaker 1: you maintained earlier, there are some reasons that the French revolted.
Speaker 3: Right, And there's a hole that actually is a phrase
Speaker 3: called sumptuary laws, which you've probably heard of. Yeah, the
Speaker 3: laws that ban certain clothes and sometimes there because they
Speaker 3: it's a religious band, so that you don't look to
Speaker 3: you don't look you're not too much like a peacock,
Speaker 3: you have humility. But sometimes it's the powerful people saying
Speaker 3: only we can wear these clothes and that you had
Speaker 3: a lot with the color purple actually was banned in Rome,
Speaker 3: and I think in England only the nobles were allowed
Speaker 3: to wear the color purple because yeah, don't want these
Speaker 3: peasants to upstage you with their colorful fashion.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and there is I hate the devil's advocate here,
Speaker 1: but we could argue in sumptuary laws back in that time,
Speaker 1: we could argue that there was a serious state concern
Speaker 1: that people dressed a certain way might be able to
Speaker 1: impersonate an authority figure.
Speaker 3: Right there you go.
Speaker 1: So there's a feels so weird to defend what I
Speaker 1: think is just a cartoonish policy. But maybe maybe that
Speaker 1: was it because not everybody had the internet, right okay, sorry,
Speaker 1: fact check us. Before the email, no one had the
Speaker 1: internet technically the truth, they just had the town crier.
Speaker 1: They had the town crier. That's an excellent point. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they had the guy who would run out and say, some.
Speaker 4: People are wearing purple.
Speaker 1: I picture I picture the town crier always, you know,
Speaker 1: I I know we all have this this trope of
Speaker 1: some guy going here, ye hear ye, But I always
Speaker 1: like to think of the town crier as just like
Speaker 1: a grizzled early nineteen eighties comedian.
Speaker 4: You know, he's in the South Square. He's like, stand up,
Speaker 4: that's it's really true.
Speaker 1: Be here, Max. He's like, USh, what else? Okay? Check
Speaker 1: this scroll? And he's like, yeah, the plague.
Speaker 4: Huh?
Speaker 3: You ever noticed that the play? You haven't noticed. That's
Speaker 3: a great point. They were the first stand up comedians.
Speaker 4: Love it.
Speaker 1: I mean, they probably had a high turnover rate depending
Speaker 1: on their material.
Speaker 4: But we do know.
Speaker 1: These sumptuary laws are are things that can be found
Speaker 1: continuing in some places today. Sometimes there might be a
Speaker 1: hard law against it, but then I would argue often
Speaker 1: we talked Nolan, I talked about this a little bit
Speaker 1: a while a while ago. Often they're these sort of
Speaker 1: social agreements that are not legally enforceable on what is
Speaker 1: or is not considered a costume versus regular clothing, Like
Speaker 1: we're wearing tricorn hats now, and if we got together
Speaker 1: and we walked out to you know, just go hang
Speaker 1: out in a public park, people would assume that we
Speaker 1: are having a party with a theme, or that we
Speaker 1: are like filming a music video or something. So do
Speaker 1: you see sumptuary laws continuing into the future.
Speaker 3: Well, first of all, that's a great point. I am
Speaker 3: very grateful for my tricorn hat because as part of
Speaker 3: my year of living constitutionally, I also bore a musket.
Speaker 3: And if I had borne a musket without my hat,
Speaker 3: I think I would have been arrested and throwned. But
Speaker 3: people were like, oh, he's just dressing up. Well I think, however,
Speaker 3: you define saw.
Speaker 1: The gun and then they saw the hat, and the
Speaker 1: cops said, ah.
Speaker 4: Let's keep going.
Speaker 3: Exactly, I would say, I mean there, as you said,
Speaker 3: there's always going to be laws about what people can
Speaker 3: and cannot wear, Like you can't you can't just go
Speaker 3: out and wear you know, nothing, for instance, even in
Speaker 3: modern day America, that's uh, there are laws against that,
Speaker 3: obscenity laws, and they're probably it's sort of like the
Speaker 3: First Amendment. There there's gonna be exceptions. There's always going
Speaker 3: to be exceptions. And although I will say that was
Speaker 3: the final chapter in our history of ridiculous clothing, is
Speaker 3: just that no clothing at all. Yeah, the naturist movement
Speaker 3: to be a little more what they like to call themselves.
Speaker 3: But I was fascinated and I only learned this while
Speaker 3: researching the First Amendment. But one of the big cases
Speaker 3: of First Amendment rights, and this was when the ACLU
Speaker 3: was just starting, was nudism. There were all these people
Speaker 3: in New York City who were nudists, and they weren't
Speaker 3: hippie dippy. They were in fact, they were more Marxists.
Speaker 3: They were socialists, and they believed that clothing was an
Speaker 3: oppressive capitalists conspiracy because.
Speaker 4: I could get behind that agree. You know.
Speaker 3: Well, they said, you know, the rich people can afford
Speaker 3: clothing and differentiate themselves. So the solution is get rid
Speaker 3: of clothes. That's the solution. And the ACLU went all
Speaker 3: in and supported them in there in several court cases
Speaker 3: in favor of nudism. So that is and I think
Speaker 3: that still remains something that they're case built.
Speaker 2: You know. I think that it's such an interesting kind
Speaker 2: of protest because it represents a lot of things, Like,
Speaker 2: on the one hand, it seems to be a strike
Speaker 2: against kind of puritanical ideas and sort of body shaming
Speaker 2: notions and the idea of like, you know, our naked
Speaker 2: human forms being somehow unclean or you know, against God
Speaker 2: or whatever, even though you know God supposedly, if he exists,
Speaker 2: created this, why is this such a horrible thing? So
Speaker 2: I think that's interesting because it's striking out against sort
Speaker 2: of oppressive fashion notions and the idea of only being
Speaker 2: considered an active member or a I guess, upstanding member
Speaker 2: of society if you dress the part. But it also
Speaker 2: strikes out against this idea of like our bodies being
Speaker 2: something to be ashamed of. I mean, maybe I'm overthinking it,
Speaker 2: but I know it's interesting.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's variant, and in fact, this swayed me
Speaker 3: more towards the side of nudism. In the nineteen thirties,
Speaker 3: the Nazis in Germany went on a campaign against nudism
Speaker 3: because it threatened the morality of the voke and it
Speaker 3: deadened women's natural feelings of shame that nice, and destroyed
Speaker 3: men's respect for women. So uh, And they wanted to
Speaker 3: destroy it because it was sort of a socialist Marxist movement.
Speaker 3: But listen, if the Nazis were against it, maybe there's
Speaker 3: something to it.
Speaker 4: I think that's true.
Speaker 1: Nazis are against it in general. I think we should
Speaker 1: be for it. It'll call me bias, but I don't
Speaker 1: think they were great. Uh. This also, this is something
Speaker 1: that we can all learn more about in Aj Bahamas
Speaker 1: Jacob's newest book, The Year of Living Naked.
Speaker 3: Right, that's it exactly, I'm doing it now. Let me
Speaker 3: take off my shirt.
Speaker 4: Constitution Year of Living Naked. Incredible, incredible.
Speaker 1: I hope you do most of your research in the summer, right,
Speaker 1: just for weather purposes.
Speaker 3: That's true. Mann's a lot. Well, that's why I'll be
Speaker 3: visiting Atlanta a lot.
Speaker 4: Yes, please do.
Speaker 1: And in the meantime, Aj, this is likely going to
Speaker 1: be a two part series. We cannot thank you enough
Speaker 1: for joining us on Ridiculous history this week. One of
Speaker 1: the big themes that you taught us this week that
Speaker 1: we can all agree on is that fashion is a conversation,
Speaker 1: and perhaps the most important point is that we must
Speaker 1: be hesitant to dunk on fashion of yesteryear too hard,
Speaker 1: because history proves we're about ten days or ten years
Speaker 1: away from all the stuff we like being made fun
Speaker 1: of on shows like.
Speaker 3: This exactly, and maybe not even like crocs. For instance,
Speaker 3: you were. I think people are mocking it even as
Speaker 3: we speak. But yeah, no, listen, I love being on
Speaker 3: your show no matter what I'm wearing, whether it's or
Speaker 3: if I'm wearing nothing at all, you provide such a
Speaker 3: delight full product. Can I call it a product?
Speaker 4: For a podcast product?
Speaker 2: I love that it's a cork and can I just
Speaker 2: say I think I said this off Mike, but you
Speaker 2: make Thursday feel like Friday, A friend.
Speaker 3: My goodness, that is well, thank god it's Thursday. I'm
Speaker 3: sure right t G.
Speaker 1: I t a prodcast uh a j before we before
Speaker 1: you hop out for further adventures. Where can people learn
Speaker 1: more about your work?
Speaker 3: Well, there's the Puddler podcast with guests such as the
Speaker 3: one Michael and Black. Yes he was one, but but
Speaker 3: I was mentioning. I was going to mention Ben Bowen,
Speaker 3: Noel Brown of our favorites.
Speaker 4: Flattery will get you somewhere.
Speaker 3: But yeah, I'm on. I have website a J Jacobs
Speaker 3: dot com. Oh, I have a substack. So that's end
Speaker 3: to me.
Speaker 4: What a substack is?
Speaker 2: It? Is? It just like a like a gussied up
Speaker 2: male lists. There we bringing back the nailing list exactly.
Speaker 3: It's a newsletter, but just called the substack. And you're
Speaker 3: supposed if I were a good substacker, I would make
Speaker 3: people pay for my stuff, and substack doesn't like me
Speaker 3: because I'm I'm not aggressive enough with my sale. I
Speaker 3: give it all away for free.
Speaker 2: On the contrary, well that makes you an excellent substacker.
Speaker 2: You're a substacker for the people.
Speaker 1: Substacker for the people.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like the nudists, I'm a socialist SUBSCT officer.
Speaker 1: I'm naked for the people right now.
Speaker 4: And weirdly, substack is also a euphemism for the penis.
Speaker 3: There you go, There you go.
Speaker 4: That's all I got said.
Speaker 1: Of course, we can't thank you enough for joining us today.
Speaker 1: Also big thanks to our super producer mister Max Williams.
Speaker 1: Big thanks to It's weird because we usually shout you out.
Speaker 4: In the credits.
Speaker 1: Believe that right now we're so thirsty, So big banks.
Speaker 1: Also to our our composer Alex Williams, Jonathan Strickland ak
Speaker 1: the quist or Hey no, it will be interesting to
Speaker 1: get those guys together.
Speaker 4: Can you imagine?
Speaker 2: It would open up a black hole time and space,
Speaker 2: a rifts suck us all into our death. Now I
Speaker 2: think it would be fun and worth testing because as.
Speaker 1: Nice and Jonathan Strickland aka the Quist is.
Speaker 4: He's a real grouch. Do like I had just stopped
Speaker 4: on that. It's okay, it's okay. I'll say it for
Speaker 4: both of them.
Speaker 2: Hughes Taks Chris Frosciotis and he's Jeff Coats, both here
Speaker 2: in spirit as perty usual. Let's see what you got
Speaker 2: your buddy, Rachel big Spinach Lance underwater.
Speaker 4: That's true, that's true. We need to bring her back.
Speaker 4: She's so cool. Have you heard about this person?
Speaker 2: Aj she's an underwater explosions expert what not that she
Speaker 2: makes them, but she studies the history of them, and she,
Speaker 2: I believe wrote a book about the Hunley, the Civil
Speaker 2: War era submarine and the sinking thereof that Clive Custler
Speaker 2: was so fascinated with.
Speaker 3: No, okay, I'm a real class expert. Yeah, but you've
Speaker 3: had her on right.
Speaker 4: I'm gonna listen one once. And yet we thank her
Speaker 4: at the end.
Speaker 1: Of every episode because the fame got you her. No, No,
Speaker 1: we're kidding, and also ridiculous historians joined us. Next week
Speaker 1: we have we have even uh more stuff to check
Speaker 1: out with you in the meantime, tune into the Puzzler
Speaker 1: and Noel.
Speaker 4: Thanks to you Man, Dang you as well, Buddy. We'll
Speaker 4: see you next time, folks.
Speaker 2: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 2: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.