So, how did black lingerie become an erotic symbol?

Fresno State history professor Jill Fields tackles that question in a just-published book, “An Intimate Affair: Women, Lingerie and Sexuality.”

The 375-page tome explores how women’s undergarments have shaped their bodies while also reflecting social attitudes toward femininity and sexuality during the last two centuries.

Open-crotch drawers. Whalebone corsets. Uplift bras. These and other intimate apparel get scholarly treatment in the book, which has nabbed high-profile reviews while showing that the boundaries of historical inquiry are broad indeed.

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Fields is understanding of people who think lingerie is an unusual topic for a history professor’s research. “Well, they might be right,” she said.

But, the history of glamour has intrigued her for many years, and she said, “I thought the best way to write about glamour was to write about something concrete. The first thing that popped into my head was lingerie.”

As a graduate student at the University of Southern California, Fields wrote her doctoral dissertation on lingerie. And later at California State University, Fresno, where she has taught since 1999, she reworked the dissertation and added to it to produce her first book.
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Fields’ book takes readers on the intimate journey beginning in the 19th century when women wore breezy drawers. Long and loose-fitting underpants, designed with an open crotch, made it easier to answer nature’s call when a woman was padded by pounds of petticoats and bound in a corset stiffened with whalebone.

The book offers similar historical and sociological takes on corsets, girdles, bras and black lingerie.

The latter became an erotic symbol in the 20th century, Fields says, because of three forces: white men’s misperceptions that black women were overly sexual, popular culture linking sex and death, and the power of black clothing, originally a symbol of mourning.

Released in early July by University of California Press in both hardcover and paperback, “An Intimate Affair” already has been reviewed in the Washington Post and other publications. The Post reviewer wrote that the book “offers a rich and nuanced understanding of how pieces of every-day clothing reflect the changing historical context of women’s lives. …”
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- Source: What Lies Beneath, The Fresno Bee, July 30, 2007