Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2015 July 1

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July 1

Les Chants de Maldoror public domain English translation

The title says it all: is there a public domain English translation of Les Chants de Maldoror (The Songs of Maldoror) by the Comte de Lautréamont?--The Theosophist (talk) 12:34, 1 July 2015 (UTC)

The article lists one published in 1924 - which will be public domain in the U.S. in 2019 (without further changes in the laws). Rmhermen (talk) 14:36, 1 July 2015 (UTC)

Showing skin

Women's clothing in the west has developed so that more and more skin is shown, i.e. cleavage legs etc. How did this development occur? 84.13.27.150 (talk) 13:58, 1 July 2015 (UTC)

History of Western Fashion is the general article, but all these are also relevant: mores, hemline, dress code, Shorts#Sociology, Neckline, Cleavage_(breasts), Buttock_cleavage. SemanticMantis (talk) 15:10, 1 July 2015 (UTC)

Also Modesty has some nice historical context, both worldwide, and in western countries. These trends go in cycles. 10 years ago the young women on large university campuses in the USA were often exposing the tops of their butts - whale tail. Today, that is much less uncommon, but instead it seems ((WP:OR)) more acceptable to show expose a bit of the bottom of the buttocks - underbun (redlink, plenty of google hits. I'd think it's notable enough for an article if whale tail and buttock cleavage are, but that's another discussion). SemanticMantis (talk) 18:15, 1 July 2015 (UTC)

Double negative alert: "less uncommon" = "more common". StuRat (talk) 01:11, 2 July 2015 (UTC)

Oops, totally opposite meaning of that I intended. Corrected now, thanks, SemanticMantis (talk) 13:20, 2 July 2015 (UTC)

Part of the trend may be due to women working in more fields today, some of which require less clothing, due to heat, or specific cases, like a lifeguard, who can't get dragged down due to the weight of heavy, wet clothes. However, working women in other fields may need less revealing clothes, like pants. But, once you establish that women could wear different clothes in different circumstances, personal preference starts to play into their selection, too.

Another factor may be that tans became fashionable for women, where previously pale white skin was desirable. However, more recently, the link of tans to wrinkles and skin cancer may reverse that trend, leading women to wear more clothes, at least outside. StuRat (talk) 01:16, 2 July 2015 (UTC)

This sounds plausible enough (though needs confirmation). I think more relevant though is the question of what effect (if any) veiling has on visible aging. Has someone gone through and measured wrinkling in women of a fixed age in a Muslim country depending on whether they'd worn the veil throughout their lives or not? Wnt (talk) 12:20, 6 July 2015 (UTC)

Also: "The West" is wide and contains cultural variances and differences. Latin culture, Anglo-Saxon culture, Nordic culture, Japanese culture, American culture, etc etc, tend to handle women's clothing fashion in various and different and opposite ways. Akseli9 (talk) 10:12, 2 July 2015 (UTC)

It's interesting to see what "fashion in -" articles we have. We have Fashion in the United States and Fashion in India but no Fashion in Japan or Fashion in France or Fashion in England. This situation probably reflects some of our bias in coverage. We do have Japanese street fashion. SemanticMantis (talk) 13:24, 2 July 2015 (UTC)