Kent State University Museum lingerie show a telling display of women’s body …

REVIEW

Undress: Shaping Fashion and Private Life

What: Exhibit of how undergarments shaped fashion and life from 1760 to 2012.

Where: Kent State University Museum, 515 Hill top Drive, Kent.

When: Through Sept. 1, 2013. Museum hours are 10 a.m.-4:45 p.m. Wednesday, Friday and Saturday; 10 a.m.-8:45 p.m. Thursday; noon-4:45 p.m. Sunday.

Admission: $5, general; $4, seniors; $3, children ages 7-18; free, under 7. Admission is free on Sundays. Go to www.kent.edu/museum or call 330-672-3450.

Let’s talk about an area of fashion that, not so very long ago, wasn’t mentioned in polite society. People considered this clothing so private, so potentially scandalous, it didn’t even have a name. They called the clothes “unmentionables,” which, right there, is a bit of a conversation killer. No wonder they didn’t talk about it.

Those lacy, frilly delicates and men’s silk bikini briefs (which are totally masculine, needless to say) are, of course, completely mentionable now. Underwear is everywhere you look, on billboards and in magazines, in entertainment and on the street, worn for everyone to see and barely covering the naughty bits.

We talk openly, in polite company, about push-up bras and Spanx and thongs, the latter of which even made an appearance in the evidence for the impeachment of a president. The Supreme Court heard a case in 2009 that required the esteemed justices to use the word “panties” over and over again. On the Internet, we debate whether the word “panties” should be eliminated from the English language. (No debate necessary: All women vote yes.)

It’s all enough to give Queen Victoria an alarming case of the vapors, even before she sees a Victoria’s Secret catalog.

Well, ladies (and you few gents still hanging around, no doubt out of keen interest in news from the Supreme Court): Grab the smelling salts and follow me to the Kent State University Museum’s Broadbent Gallery for its latest exhibit, “Undress: Shaping Fashion and Private Life.” There you will see something that might require a lot more than smelling salts to revive dear old Vickie from her shock.

We will get to that soon. But first, let us pause on our way in to consider the first item: a corset made of steel.

Are you kidding me? Steel?

Yes, steel. With leather laces.

“We don’t think it was actually worn as a corset,” says our guide, museum curator and assistant professor Sara Hume. Hume is showing us around because museum director Jean Druesedow, who put this exhibit together, is out of the country.

“Jean thinks it might have been a shop sign,” Hume says. “But we don’t know.”

The notation with the corset asks visitors to guess what it is. All right, I will play along. My guess: It was, in fact, made to be worn. A 15-year-old girl at King Arthur’s Court had a mad crush on a knight of the Round Table and had the shining-armor-maker make her a matching corset. Like, you know, prom, when guys wear vests to match their dates’ dresses. When the corset was ready, the 15-year-old girl tried it on.

“Eeewwww,” she said. “I HATE my thighs! OK, now tell me the truth: Does this thing make me look fat?”

As we begin looking at the exhibit, which starts with undergarments from 1760 to 1820, the corsets on display make me feel unutterably sad. And not because the last time they might have fit my waist, I was 7 years old.

No, the corsets plunge me into despair because their tiny, boned, wasp-waisted, lung-emptying forms reveal a truth so pitiful I want to cry: We women have been at war with our own bodies for centuries upon centuries.

In the name of fashion and somebody’s fleeting idea of beauty, we have squeezed and twisted our flesh and crushed our muscles — not to mention our tender hearts — with devices that should be outlawed by the Geneva Accords.

It’s cruel. It’s self-loathing. It’s . . . unmentionable.

As we go farther along in the exhibit, however, I brighten. Hume guides me to a section called “Victorian Sentiments,” which covers the years 1830 to 1895. The first thing we come upon is a man’s undershirt and drawers, made of linen. They are light and airy and they fit, I must point out, quite loosely on the mannequin. They belonged to the Duke of Wellington, the hero of the Napoleonic Wars.

Next comes . . . wait for it . . . a display of a pair of ginormous bloomers, chemise and stockings worn by none other than Queen Victoria.

“She was plus-size,” Hume whispers, in something of an understatement. Yes, Her Majesty was a Big Beautiful Woman, indeed. Not to mention lucky to be queen: No corsets for her! At least not here.

“I feel really bad for her,” Hume says, gazing at the bloomers. “I’m sure this is not what she would want done with her underpants.”

Corsets did not fade away until the 20th century, when the French began showing un-corseted fashions and the brassiere came along.

And not long after the bra came the girdle.

Oh, my sisters! My sisters! Woman is born free, and everywhere she is in chains. Or steel. Or whalebone. Or latex.

Some excellent flapper fashions follow, including an exquisite dress that, Hume and I agree, is cut so that it had to have been worn without a bra. (Go, flappers!)

A bit farther on, we come to a section devoted to a member of the American royalty, Katharine Hepburn. Lingerie was included in the collection of 700 pieces that Hepburn’s estate donated to the Kent State Museum. (The museum’s first exhibit from the collection, “Katharine Hepburn: Dressed for Stage and Screen,” just opened to acclaim in New York, where it is on loan to the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center.)

Alas, this section leaves poor Queen Victoria all alone in her blushing embarrassment: We see Hepburn’s lovely nightgowns, robes and peignoirs. But no underpants.

The exhibit winds up with the years 1960 to 2012, with girdles and Spanx and other “shapewear” that will be all too familiar to most women from our long struggle with our bodies, ourselves.

But this section does contain one unusual item, and I am not sure if it is a positive sign of equality or a negative sign of the escalation of the body wars. It is a piece that looks almost like a short slip made of spandex and was clearly designed to put a very tight squeeze on bulges.

But on closer examination, it has a rather, um, unusual bulge at the front. A quick glance at the exhibit catalog explains it all: It is “Men’s Spanx, American, 2011.” On loan from: Anonymous.

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