General:

Fashion trends...

I really don't like the trend I've noticed in fashion where the styles of two decades ago somehow become current again. Recall how the 70s rediscovered the 50s, the 80s recalled the 60s, and the 90s brought back the horrid bell bottoms of the 70s? Well, here is a fashon that I wouldn't object one bit to being revived...

If you think we're living in racy times now, think again. Janet Jackson's Super Bowl escapade wouldn't have raised an eyebrow in the 17th century. Based on an in-depth study of fashion, portraits, prints, and thousands of woodcuts from ballad sheets of that era, researchers from the University of Warwick in Coventry, England report that women of the 1600s--from queens to prostitutes--commonly exposed one or both breasts in public and in the popular media of the day, reports Discovery News.

Here's the real kicker: They did it to show off their virtue.

Particularly in England and the Netherlands, breast exposure was common and accepted behavior in the 17th century. History researcher Angela McShane Jones became interested in the subject when she examined woodcut ballad sheets that were housed at Cambridge University, the British Library, the National Library of Scotland, and Harvard University. In the 1600s, these ballad sheets were the pop music and pulp fiction of the day, featuring a woodcut that illustrated 10 to 14 verses of song, notes the Discovery News. Costing just a half-penny or a penny each, they were purchased from street vendors at fairs and markets.

What caught Jones' attention is that many of the woodcuts depicted women with bared breasts. Sometimes the bared breast was no accident. Dresses were so low-cut they purposely exposed a woman's bosom.

Jones explained to Discovery News that in paintings, breast exposure could have symbolic meaning, especially when just one breast was shown. Ladies of the high court were often painted in allegories as classical figures or as female saints, whose martyrdom usually involved breast removal.

But most of all when a woman exposed her breast, it was a sign of her virtue. "The exposure of the breast was a display of the classical and youthful beauty of the woman. She was showing her 'apple like' unused Venus breasts," Jones told Discovery News. "This was a display of her virtue, her beauty, and her youth. Upper class women maintained the quality of their breasts by not breastfeeding their children and passing them on to wet nurses." It was actually part of a woman's honor to display her virtue by exposing her breasts. Even her husband would have been proud to have this classical beauty on display, insists Jones.

The trend began in the 1400s in the French court and was later popularized in England by Queen Mary II and Henrietta Maria, the wife of King Charles I. This unusual fashion trend had a comeback in the 18th and 19th centuries when it was scandalous for a woman to show her shoulders or legs, but quite acceptable to bare her bosom.

All of which just begs for us to ask this question: Is breast baring making a comeback now?