Why do they continue to touch our asses without permission if it is a crime punishable by jail or fine?
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I was looking for a scientific way (actually I settled for a 'fine' way) to call the deep abyss that separates both buttocks when I came across this phrase: "The crack of your ass corresponds to the division of your two cerebral hemispheres."
Difficult (ok?) to return to the Google search without stopping to investigate a little about the origin of such a
freak statement.
Especially when you find out that the person who sentenced this was
Sylvester Stallone
's (now missing) mother ,
Jackie Stallone,
who is considered one of the mothers of
rumpology
or
anomancy,
a pseudoscience that aims to read the cracks, dimples, stains and folds of the buttocks like the lines on the hand are read (if believing in palmistry is practically impossible, what can we say about reading the future through the ass). Jackie Stallone even claimed to have predicted the outcome of the
US elections
and the
Oscar winners
by reading the asses of her two Dobermans.
'Reading the ass' is what we intend to do here, but with a very different perspective. Because in a matter of months, the
intergluteal cleft
(which is the scientific name of what, in his article in the latest issue of YO DONA, Antonio Lucas calls the "watershed" of the ass in an architectural metaphor that we love), has been seen every more frequently on the 'red carpets' of the planet.
Katy Perry in an Ellie Misner dress at the Billboard.GTRES awards
Commotion on the red carpet
Although of all the appearances of these 'watersheds' the most high profile was that of
Katy Perry
on March 6 at the Billboard Awards, with a red two-piece signed by the Londoner
Ellie Misner
under which she only wore a thong, others have also been truly impactful. In the national chapter, the television influencer
Madame de Rosa
far surpassed
Katy Perry
in the recent Idol awards, with a red evening dress designed by
Claro Couture
that left all the furrows exposed. Just the same day, the singer
Chloe Bailey
stood on the red carpet at the GLAAD Media Awards, in Los Angeles, wearing a black dress from the
Pressiat
brand that showed off an identical back 'cleavage'.
Madame de Rosa, dressed by Claro Couture at the Ídolo.GTRES awards
But if anyone can say here that 'I saw it first' it is
Hari Nef,
who in July 2023 attended the premiere of 'Barbie' wearing a dress by the Turkish-British
Dilara Findikoglu
that had as much spectacle ahead as it did behind. In front of her, her black dress down to her feet was
covered with cutlery.
Knives and fish paddles strategically placed a kind of silver armor. The back of the dress, free of cutlery, showed a central opening along its entire length that, as in the cases mentioned previously, revealed the
thong
(on this occasion black). It is not the only piece that Findikoglu, one of the most rising values on the current fashion scene, has designed with this formula. In fact, we can say that she is the strongest voice in defense of that type of corsetry closure on the back of the dress. In her
last show,
where she presented her proposals for autumn-winter 2024-2025, she took out a model in red leather where she reproduced it again.
Hari Nef, dressed by Dilara Findikoglu at the 'Barbie' premiere in 2023.
But someone had seen it before...
In a world, that of 'show business', where it is increasingly difficult to 'hit the ground', to be seen and to be talked about, teaching more has become in recent years a truly significant career, which began for showing the politicized female breasts (it is not new to anyone that showing them in public - today also called
- has been and continues to be a reason for conflict between different ways of conceiving the freedom of the female body), she continued by showing her panties, and it seems having crossed the
penultimate taboo by 'liberating' the crack of the ass (the last frontier is obviously the pubis, which only
John Galliano
has dared to cross so far,
who showed, veiled, fake pubic hair in his last haute couture show for Maison Margiela).
Mireille Darc in 'The Big Blonde with a Black Shoe'. The dress was designed for the occasion by Guy Laroche.
It is not the first attempt, however. For the legend of fashion, courtesy of
Guy Laroche,
the 1972 appearance of the stylized
Mireille Darc
in the film 'The Big Blonde with a Black Shoe' with a dress as
transgressive
for its time... as it would be today , everything must be said. As is known, the actress asked the designer for "something
memorable
" for the scene in question. And yes, so memorable was it that it is considered a milestone in the history of fashion design.
Absolutely sober in front, the black dress descended in back to the middle of her ass. The
eroticism
of the outfit was definitely underlined by a
little golden chain
that crossed the back from side to side at waist level. Because just as the
corsetry laces
add eroticism to the meaning of the ass in the Findikoglu or Misner models, that
golden chain
reinforces the
sensual intention
of the dress that Darc wore. This is the same mechanism that separates in the erotic imagination a naked body from a body barely dressed in sophisticated lingerie.
One of Guy Laroche's proposals in his show for the spring-summer 2018 season.LAUNCHMETRICS SPOTLIGHT
It is interesting to add that in 2018, the designer of the Guy Laroche brand
, Richard René,
presented a collection in tribute to the late
Mireille Darc
inspired by that piece. The result, apart from the 'total black' that starred in the parade, was some pieces that exhibited a generous back neckline. Although, of course, nowhere near as generous as the 1972 original.
And then Mugler spoke...
In the 'prehistory' of revealing the buttocks, we cannot ignore the proposal made in 1995 by the always iconoclast
Thierry Mugler,
with a model that he showed in his autumn-winter fashion show for that same year. The model appeared on the catwalk wrapped in a sophisticated evening dress that left her
ass exposed,
framed by a wide
heart-shaped neckline
limited to the south by a huge fabric rose and to the north, by five strings of pearls that fell into catenary on the back. In 2018, the brand's Tumblr account published a photo of the aforementioned look with a phrase in quotes from the designer: "Provocation comes naturally to me."
Proposal by Thierry Mugler in his autumn-winter 1995-1996 fashion show.
Because whether from the
perspective of Mugler
(his women, strongly sexualized, were not, according to him, "sexual objects", but rather "sexual subjects") or that of Dilara Findikoglu (who considers her tight-fitting Victorian-style corsetry garments to be feminist and demanding) , showing your ass is not showing a hand. If it were, certainly no one would talk about it.
She shows her ass to show what has never been seen,
or rather, what has already been seen but like you have never seen it before.
Where the back loses its name and beyond
Since the 1930s, when the laws of fashion (specifically the so-called
changing erogenous zones)
shifted attention from the legs (central in the 1920s) to the back, fashion has returned again and again, every now and then. , to explore how far a back neckline can go. In his 'Brief History of Costume and Fashion', a reference work to understand why we dress the way we dress,
James Laver
says that in the 1930s "the backs had a neckline that reached to the waist, and in fact many of the dresses this period seemed to be made to be seen from behind.
Model at the Dilara Findikoglu fashion show for the next winter season.
Curiously, we are in a very similar situation almost a century later. Because since the culture of the "rear view" has been established in the 'photocall', the rear has taken on a new meaning for the fashion spectacle, a new weight in looks and physical appearance and a renewed interest for the fashion creators.
Thus, we have seen back necklines as striking as
Léna Mahfouf
's in Cannes in 2022 parade on the red carpets. The actress did not show a 'piggy bank' but she did show a thong, and the thong, which is understood to be an ultra-intimate garment because it goes into the most deep intergluteal groove, is almost more disturbing than the groove itself. Because in the end, when it comes to asses, it is not only that we are looking at an
erogenous zone
of the body; It is that when what we emphasize is what remains between the buttocks, the matter becomes a little more
eschatological.
Lena Mahfouf in Cannes in 2022.GETTY IMAGES
Complying - as, in fact, Léna Mahfouf also did - with the old science that if you uncover one side, it completely covers the other,
Zoe Kravitz
chose a white dress for the 'Vanity Fair' post-Oscar party in 2022, absolutely sober from the front that showed the entire back and the beginning of the cleft between the buttocks, in addition to marking with absolute clarity (not transparency) her rear. With this choice of look she perfectly illustrated the idea that "the part of the body that bears the sexual burden owes much of its fascination to that total or partial concealment" to which we subject it, as
Marilyn Yalom
writes in her 'History of the chest'. There is in the image of Kravitz's backside a promise of seeing that is much more interesting than the certainty of having seen.
Zoe Kravitz at the 'Vanity Fair' post-Oscar party in 2022.GETTY IMAGES
But colors are painted to suit tastes, of course. In the end, as
Antonio Lucas
writes in YO DONA regarding Dilara Findikoglu's red leather dress, "freedom is also showing your ass without fear under the subtle texture of leather or fabric that imitates clouds." Like the ones that barely concealed singer
Ciara
's thong
at another post-Oscars party. Here we leave her, with her ass in the air.
Ciara, at the 'Vanity Fair' post-Oscar party in 2023.GETTY IMAGES
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