This is the sort of corset my mother wore in the 1930s and 40s. It’s not as tight or as structured as Queen Victoria’s would have been but it nevertheless imposed a certain amount of control. A woman’s body was not intended to roam around unfettered inside her clothing in earlier times; it had to be held in check. So as I tried to figure out how to lace this thing up, I began to wonder- just what did that control do to women over the  last 100 years, say, both physically and psychologically?

That’s how The Unmentionable History of the West started. I began to interview older women, asking them how they had managed their unmentionable lives. What did they remember of girdles, garters, bullet bras, slips and  other female unmentionables? How did they learn about the birds and bees, eg? Did they know anything about birth control? Could they do anything about it if they did? Did they think there was a relationship between underwear and the women’s movement? For instance, if we women had worn pants sooner, would the women’s movement have come along sooner?   

Some women remembered they couldn’t even hang their underwear on the clothesline on a prairie farm in case the hired man might catch a glimpse of milady’s unmentionables. No, a proper housewife had to hang her bras and panties inside a pillowcase on laundry day so that no one could see them. It’s hard to believe the silences and secrets that enclosed women’s lives in years past.

Speaking of silences and secrets, my mother never once used the word “pregnant.” She might have admitted to me that a neighbor was “expecting” but that was the extent of it. Nothing more was said about how that might have happened. I had to figure it out myself. So in this book, I asked all those questions I couldn’t ask when I was younger, and you wouldn’t believe the answers. Did the women that I talked to mind my snoopy personal questions? No, it seemed as if they were glad to finally tell someone about the way they managed their terribly personal and often very difficult lives. 

So, it is the stories that could not be told that I tell in The Unmentionable History of the West,  including stories of men’s long johns. They too had an impact on western history. It turns out that the trap door, eg,  may just have been a Canadian first! Of course, the Canadian firm who came up with the idea didn’t want to brag so an American firm got the credit (and the patent!) Still, the trapdoor may have built the west as much as railways and huge ranches and Sir John A. MacDonald. There’s more than one way to build a country. 

Did underwear matter in the history of the west? Corset did!