Did cancan dancers at the Moulin Rouge wear underwear?

[Darryl_Lict]

OK, I’ve got a beer riding on this, and I say the cancan dancers covered their privates. Granted, maybe occasionally, some gal forgot to wear her underwear but in general, were their genitals exposed or not?

[Darth_Nader]

No, but they had some great panties to show off. And those legs. And boobies.

[samclem]

@Darth Nader

No, but they had some great panties to show off. And those legs. And boobies.

Darth Nader. This is General Questions. Can you give any factual basis for your assertion?

Please don’t do this.

samclem GQ moderator

[Johnny_L.A]

From Wiki (emphasis mine):

The can-can had existed for many years as a respectable, working-class party dance, but it was in the early days of the Moulin Rouge that courtesans first adapted the dance to entertain the male clientele. It was usually performed individually, with the courtesan moving in an increasingly energetic and provocative way in an attempt to seduce a potential client. It was very common for them to lift their skirts and reveal their legs, underwear and occasionally the genitals.

[phouka]

The underwear most women wore in those days had an open crotch, so one didn’t have to remove one’s underwear to use the chamber pot.

So, while dancing the can-can, one would certainly show one’s undies, and if the fabric pulled or folded, a glimpse of the naughties.

[Darryl_Lict]

@phouka

The underwear most women wore in those days had an open crotch, so one didn’t have to remove one’s underwear to use the chamber pot.

So, while dancing the can-can, one would certainly show one’s undies, and if the fabric pulled or folded, a glimpse of the naughties.

Fascinating! I’ll have to reconfigure my bet to ensure that I win it. I’m sort of wondering though, if ones genitals and anus are exposed, what was the purpose of underwear, unless ones buttocks were somehow more unseemly than the orifices.

[R.P.McMurphy]

I think a better (or additional) question is whether cancan dancers in the Old West (U.S.) wore panties. Somewhere I heard that they didn’t except in the TV episodes of Rawhide and Gunsmoke.

[Darth_Nader]

@samclem

Darth Nader. This is General Questions. Can you give any factual basis for your assertion?

I was thinking about Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, but fuck it…if you are just going to get pissy…

[rock_party]

except in the TV episodes of Rawhide and Gunsmoke

Could that be how it got the name Rawhide?

[Don_t_fight_the_hypothetical]

@phouka

The underwear most women wore in those days had an open crotch, so one didn’t have to remove one’s underwear to use the chamber pot.

Then what was the point of wearing them?

[silenus]

Same reason you wear them now: to protect your more expensive outer garments from sweat and grime. Open crotch doesn’t mean no crotch. there was still material there, it just wasn’t sewn together.

[panache45]

@rock party

Could that be how it got the name Rawhide?

And consequently, Gunsmoke.

[aldiboronti]

David Price authored a history of the cancan. It appears that the raised skirts were a later addition, specifically connected with the fashion for frilly underwear in the 1890s.

The cancan developed from the galop, a popular dance in the public dancing gardens and dance-halls of Paris in the early part of the nineteenth century. When it first appeared in 1830, the cancan was really an exaggerated form of the galop, with high kicks and other gestures with arms and legs, mostly initially performed by men, and later also by their female partners. It was viewed as shocking by “respectable” people because it implied a lack of self-control and involved more bodily contact between participants than was thought acceptable.

…

The element of skirt manipulation, essential to the cancan today, only really became part of the cancan in the 1890s, with the appearance of the elaborate erotic underwear characteristic of the turn of the century.