I think a lot about the fact that biological anthropology really should be taught in fashion courses because the idea that one can make universal assessments about what bodies do is so laughably, obviously false AND YET

& I don't just mean "there are different body types so you can't assume that every garment will lay the same on every person if sized up or down from the pattern base correctly". Despite the fact that many designers don't bother to use that info, they do at lease usually know it.

No, in this case I'm talking about things like the way that when broad clothing expectations change, our bodies literally change functioning to match.

Corsets vs bras are a great place to see this. Not because corsets change rib shape or organ location (they do not, this is a myth), but because of things like weight distribution and breathing patterns.

If you wear a bra, then it is highly difficult to breathe into your upper chest, forcing your body to develop breathing habits that expand down into your navel as opposed to allowing your upper ribcage to flex and expand with breath.

If you're wondering what I mean, ask anyone who wears underwire bras daily what it feels like to try and take a deep breath that expands your ribcage right under the weight of your wire and band which is supporting the full weight of their breast tissue. It can hurt.

Conversely, if you're in corsets then breathing that same way will be restricted, causing shallower breaths and risking hyperventilation. Instead you might develop a breathing habit that expands through the very top of your breast - upwards instead of outwards.

What impact does this have on actions you might take? Do you run more or less? Does it weaken or restrict your diaphragm? Does it change make speech more nasal or guttural?

Weight bearing is another topic. Bras bear all the weight of breast tissue through the straps and bra band, which means that you're carrying the full weight of your breast tissue through your shoulders and middle rib cage.

In corsets, you bear that weight from below, through your hips and waist, leaving shoulders and upper rib cage unburdened. How many more headaches do bra wearers experience today from oxygen constriction at the shoulders and neck vs their corseted counterparts?

What about the different impacts of belts vs suspenders? Does wearing a tight waist band rather than using cross-shoulder light weight bearing change the way our bodies prefer to move or the way they distribute fat content?

Do we know if the transition from drawers to panties impacted the frequency of UTIs or the development of body odor?

What about the transition from environmental fabric dyes to chemical ones? How many people used to have allergic reactions to their clothes who no longer do?

(That last of course is completely aside from things like Arsenic Green where people were slowly poisoning themselves with their clothes.)

I also wonder about things like coats versus cloaks. How did we change our day to day lives because we decided to wear bulky, close fitted

coats as opposed to relying on the insulation of air pockets that cloaks provide? How does the change in the standard wintery silhouette alter the way we do our work, what types of actions are easier than others?

And then even if we drift away from all those questions and just ask about the socio-political impact of clothes being something most of us pick up off the rack when needed rather than something we buy from a tailor or make ourselves and maintain over a lifetime?

Think of how how much labor was no longer necessary within a single household when off-the-rack clothing became commonplace and how the industry had to pivot to a larger initial demand rather than the labor of wives and servants to preserve smaller wardrobes?

To that end: how has the idea of style or being in fashion changed now that we're not slow-fading our silhouettes on the basis of what last decades fashion sense could be turned into? Have we lost the drive to significantly alter our silhouettes at all when it's so simple to

create the appearance of a whole new style with only colors and patterns? Aside from the bootcut vs skinny jean contention, when was the last time that a shift in what was fashionable made a noticeable change in the outline of our bodies that you remember?

I love thinking about this stuff. The ways in which clothing trends influence our embodied existence. How we walk, how we breathe, the way we carry ourselves, the work we do, the way we spend our time, the signatures of our shapes.

I love it in part because since I was 8 I've been very heavy set, so I noticed early on that we had allowed our clothing to stagnate in a place where body type determined silhouette more than cut of cloth.

We have somehow decided that "natural" body type is more fashionable than constructed & deliberate cut of cloth during a period of history where we are also convinced that our ability to dictate the world around us is superior to allowing ourselves to be dictated by environment.

I think it's interesting that during the prime of human innovation, we have reduced the importance of human creativity in constructing our own physical imprint on the spaces we occupy.

What functions have we creating in doing this? What are the ways in which our bodies are mirroring that decision that people in the future will be unable to recreate because their bodies no longer implicitly meet the demands of our historic choices?

What body sculpting myths will we develop about moto jackets, skinny jeans, and spaghetti strap tops? What medical challenges will appear to explode in frequency of appearance when our clothes no longer tamp down their occurence?

In the same way, what are the ways in which we subtly resist this popularization of the natural body line? What clever tricks have we developed to craft a silhouette in the age of silhouette-skepticism?

Cam girls are my favorite anthropological study for this question. When all you have to alter the look of your body is panties, a bra, and your body itself, you have to get REAL creative. The tricks of the trade in changing your body line are fascinatingly precise.

The tilt of a hip, the hike of a waist line, a shade more background lighting at this angle, a color match here and a contrast there, saturation effects on a photograph.

And the fucking make up.

When you can't rely on cut of cloth and manipulation of shading by cloth cover to change your look, make up steps up to take its place. How has our stalled silhouette influenced the rise of a make up culture that borders on mysticism and scientific experimentation?

Before my breasts developed, I learned how to use blush to create cleavage where there was none in almost exactly the same way that I used corsetry cuts to create a swell of bosom that I didn't have when I started working in recreationist museums as a young teen.

Today, people use bronzer and matte finish powders to craft the skin tones and shadings they want just as hats and bonnets used to manipulate the way sunlight landed on the face to control tone and definition.

As humans, we have always used fashion/style to craft ourselves, even those of us who choose to shun the current trends. It's such a delightful bit of autonomy that often gets overlooked when we ask ourselves what defines us.

In other words, fashion is an underrated science, and I strongly suspect that it is one that is....well, it isn't fading, but it's changing in ways we don't have nearly as much control over as we might like to believe.

I suspect a lot of people might find themselves playing with this more soon. Many of us are going to be getting out of the habit of dressing for our routines as they existed previously, and we'll be rethinking why we dressed that way in the past and how we could dress in future.