![Apparently in 1904, this was EXTREMELY RACY — ankles, oh noez!! This stuff fascinates me — both changing ideas of what is and isn’t risqué and the strange associations/double entendres of everyday activities. What’s the deal?
I’ve found lots of these mildly racy, early twentieth-century images of mending, and it isn’t that surprising. Associations between mending and sex are conventional and familiar from centuries of genre painting and portraiture: a woman looking at the work in her lap gives a man an opportunity to look at her; a female servant bent over her darning displays her hands or chest; an idle stitcher clearly has her mind on other things.
[More at Socimages.]](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_l7pxz6URAk1qzsxa3o1_500.jpg)
Apparently in 1904, this was EXTREMELY RACY — ankles, oh noez!! This stuff fascinates me — both changing ideas of what is and isn’t risqué and the strange associations/double entendres of everyday activities. What’s the deal?
I’ve found lots of these mildly racy, early twentieth-century images of mending, and it isn’t that surprising. Associations between mending and sex are conventional and familiar from centuries of genre painting and portraiture: a woman looking at the work in her lap gives a man an opportunity to look at her; a female servant bent over her darning displays her hands or chest; an idle stitcher clearly has her mind on other things.
[More at Socimages.]
