Camgirl Uniforms - How Complicated Lingerie Became Synonymous With Sex
Maybe I'll lose some members after this damning admission, but it must be made: In my personal life, I don't always wear sexy lingerie, and lingerie isn't necessarily a precursor to sex.
I'm sure most women would agree with me, and if you're a camgirl reading this, are you wearing a risque negligee right now, or the most atrocious pair of pajamas you found lying around?
Yep, probably the latter. Actually, I'm wearing the same outfit I cammed in earlier today, and no it's not lingerie.
One of the more intruiging concepts I've come across in evolutionary psychology is the idea of "honest signals". According to evolutionary biologists, a lot of animal traits that seem incomprehensible at first, may be explained through the concept of honest signals. For example, a peacock's feathers seem counterintuitive at first glance - - they make the peacock more vulnerable, and maintaining those feathers requires the peacock to have a very nutrient-rich diet.
So why would a peacock have colourful plumage at all? The answer lies not in practicality but in sexual selection. A peaock that has an impressive plumage signals to the peahen that despite the environmental pressures brought on by having a target painted on its back, it has managed to stay alive and prosper. So the attractiveness of the peacock occurs despite its utility, not because of it.
This is an unproven hypothesis, but I feel that a lot of womens' fashion can also be explained by honest signals. For example, women once wore extremely constraining corsets, so tight that they would have trouble breathing. The popular narrative is that corsets were a form of male patriarchal oppression, and whilst there may be some truth to that, it's also the case that a woman who wore such a corset was implicitly signaling that she had no need to take care of herself, no need to work i.e someone belonging to the upper classes. The Chinese practice of foot-binding is another extreme (and ghastly) example of social status signals.
Lingerie may have had the same functional logic, which is to say, it's logic lay in its lack of function. In fact, in historic treatises, a common thread in the philosophy of aesthetics is the assertion that the value of a work of art is in inverse proportionality to its usefulness. Both Kant and Theophile Gautier have mentioned something to that effect - "a work of art has to transcend utility".
This also explains a lot of contemporary fashion. A common criticism of contemporary Parisian avante-garde fashion designers is that the collections they design would never be worn by any sane person in polite society. The fact is, that is the very reason those clothes are made that way, their value lies beyond the realm of functional utility, and they instead function as elaborate honest signals of social and economic status.
Social and economic status has always been corelated with attractiveness, primarily because historically higher status meant better changes of infant survival and lineage. So both men and women who could signal their social status as being higher than average would qualify to find better partners. Uselessness, as strange as it sounds, had a particular utility in the realm of status signaling, and consequently, the perception of beauty.
A lot of these attitudes began to change in the 20th century, when the concept of "form follows function" or aestheticization of function itself became popular. Of course, the reason it became popular (primarily in continental Europe) was because the ravages of war had stripped away the excesses of aristrocratic society.
These days, of course, luxury is back and here to stay. And correspondingly, we unconciously assign sexual value to anything that seems in excess of its functional requirement. In a sense, we use our clothing and accessories as a way to socially signal our desirability - - despite, and indeed because of the uselessness of many of these items.
And that's why I think lingerie, despite being a hassle in every way, is so desirable. In fact, it's desirable enough that there is a transference of desire and when I'm wearing it, I feel sexier and more confident, and end up forgetting how annoying it is to put it on.