The codpiece was a popular male fashion statement in Renaissance Europe; attached with string ties to the front of the crotch, its purpose was to accentuate the genital area rather than conceal or afford protection.
For despite often being riddled with syphilis, the men of the 15th and 16th centuries were proud and confident in their manhood and these colourful cocksure dandies would compete to have the best shaped, most padded and most decorative codpiece.
This outlandish game of one-upmanship came to a climax in the 1540s; after this date, the codpiece increasingly became an object of derision and fell out of favour amongst the more stylish and sophisticated of men.
Indeed, the word coddy would eventually become a disparaging slang term for those who were governed by their pricks rather than their minds; characters such as the young tram inspector, John Thomas, for example, in Lawrence's short story 'Tickets, Please' (1919).
And today, who wears a codpiece other than the odd leather fetishist or heavy metal musician - and even then it's worn ironically as a theatrical item of macho-camp, rather than as a symbol of phallic pride and undaunted masculinity.
Thus, in the absence of men who might carry off wearing a codpiece with conviction whilst gaily strolling along Piccadilly, it's left to our young women to step up and make an immodest display of their genitalia - and with the creation of camel toe knickers they can do just that ...
These padded pants, offering the illusion of a perfectly shaped pudendum, have been popular in Asia for some years. Now they've finally arrived for sale in the UK, affording British women the opportunity to turn heads by unashamedly directing attention to their labia.
Available from Amazon in a variety of skin tones, the pants cost just £28 - which is certainly cheaper than paying a plastic surgeon to design your vagina with a knife ...
As Desmond Morris and others have pointed out, women send out (consciously - or unconsciously) sexual signals galore. They show their legs, accentuate their cleavage so their breasts resemble buttocks, their eyes, lashes and brows are enlarged and enhanced - as during coitus, lipstick is employed to resemble engorged labia during arousal, rouge simulates the sexual flush, high-heels exaggerate the attractive movement of the buttocks (this regardless of sometimes acute discomfort. . .as well as sometimes hilarious effect!), earrings attract attention to the lobes, not to mention nail-varnish, tight, shapely clothing etc. etc. Poor John Thomas and the Little Wowser! What are they to do?!
ReplyDeleteFurthermore, along with the matter of so many grotesquely, artificially augmented breasts, the wholly excessive use of perfumes and hairsprays (which obscure and mask the body's own important odours and pheremones - essential to discovering an entirely compatible mate), the shaving away of that major sexual signal - the pubic hair, the extravagant over-use of under-arm and even more intimate deoderants (in response to multi-million pound marketing campaigns), which, again, block crucially attractive scents, as well as interfering - most probably carcinogenically - with the proper function of sweat glands and lymph nodes etc., this is a serious philosophical and Lawrentian issue requiring deep consideration and analysis, and at a popular level.
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