Bodyscapes

She Dec 2001 Cosmopolitan USA November 2001

A large part of fashion

is about what is hidden, and what is exposed.

Dungarees with buttons open at the hips, and no underwear...

we reveal a strip of hip normally covered,

and in erotically exposing it,

we expose not the treasure itself,

but an unexpected, and partly hidden pathway to it.

And shirts or blouses that don’t quite reach the jeans…

Cosmopolitan USA November 2001

As Barthes says in ‘The Fashion System’ (ISBN 0-520-07177-8) p137:

…to the extent that the garment is erotic, it must be allowed to persist here

and disintegrate there, to be partially absent, to play with the body’s nudity.”

She December 2001

This is most effective where the meaning is ambiguous -

the garment is semi-transparent, or divided at a point where, if it were open,

it would reveal a taboo part of the body.

Cosmopolitan USA November 2001 She Dec 2001 .

‘Closing’ the division says

‘decent, legal, playing by the rules, my intention is not erotic’…

it may not be true, but that’s what it says…

She Dec 2001

‘Opening’ the division says ‘come and get me if you dare’.

Close the division so the front part overlaps what is behind, and it is closed.

Joining it not quite edge to edge suggests the meaning ‘I tried to close it and abide by the rules’

but the reality is that it is exposing something taboo.

Arrange the division so that it is closed

while the body is at rest, but open when it moves, and you create another version of the ambiguity.

You are getting to see something, briefly, fleetingly, in passing,

that according to the rules you were not supposed to see,

or which at least you did not expect to…

Or were you ‘not supposed to see it’?

Was it deliberate, or accidental?

Cosmopolitan USA November 2001 Cosmopolitan USA November 2001 .

Two unresolved contradictory meanings

hover around a portal to a hidden world of excitement

and pleasure - and human exploratory behaviour has been turned on - with a vengeance.

And what is the nature of this desired exploratory behaviour?

In the physical world, if one is presented with something concave,

the urge is to explore it with something convex.

A finger, a hand, a tongue…

anything with lots of nerve endings…

In a landscape, even the whole body.

Or if it is convex,

then exploring it with something concave.

Young children instinctively explore small objects by putting them

in their mouths. Adults don’t. Except of course, when they do.

Such as with pen tops, pencil ends, Cadbury’s Flakes

and Bounty Bars,

absent mindedly perhaps, a thumb.

A conservative cabinet minister was even caught doing it with toes.

And of course, the mouth is not the only

concavity one can use,

as any hospital casualty department will tell you.

(The golden rule is, if there’s a danger you can’t get it out,

don’t put it in.) But alas, this is a powerful primordial urge, and sometimes

hard to deal with sensibly. Not that I would know.

Baroque drapery - hides a bodyscape like snow hides a landscape.

The stripper like the fashion designer,

knows all about fabrics that tease and surprise.

Fabrics that briefly mould themselves to the contour of secret parts of the body beneath,

fabrics which part unexpectedly to give a forbidden glimpse.

Fabrics which come off faster than expected, and show more than expected.

Fabrics being used to move bodyparts,

or to explore cleavages

and valleys.

The ambiguity?

The trousers look like ordinary trousers

which have to be unbuttoned or unzipped,

lowered, stepped out of.

A protracted and often undignified process of revelation.

But these pants are not ordinary at all.

Poppers or velcro hold them together until the key moment,

when a single jerk removes them altogether, in half a second, and you are - surprise - in a new world.

Pants as Portals.

Surprise is the key,

and it turns on ambiguity...

situations where there are at least two possible outcomes,

and the audience has been led to expect

the wrong one.

And while most of our analysis above has related to

landscapes, of course, essentic forms are recognised equally in bodyscapes.

Rounded shapes that say ‘touch me’. Pathways that say ‘explore me’. Focal points

that say ‘this is the spot’. Concavities that invite convexities, and vice versa.

Boobs and buns, cleavages, nipples and orifices –

these are the shapes that direct attention and movement in a bodyscape.

She Dec 2001

And of course in making love - where orgasm, and all the intervening highlights

and treasures are both delayed, and encountered in unexpected ways.

Lead the loved one to expect one thing, but give something different.

Tease with secrets, misdirect with ambiguities,

and then surprise

with excess.