That said, this boobies email did make me go listen to your lecture. It was fascinating. You are about 150 years to early for even the earliest part of my work but it’s always useful for me to think about gendering as I work with a highly gendered population.

I’ve loved your book too, which I also picked up because of your blog. So converting modernist one 20th century historian at a time.

It’s an interesting observation from Williamsburg. Their interactive dressup program also shows a woman house slave wearing stays. But I think it’s important to remember that 1) most enslaved women, the vast majority in fact, were field slaves and 2) that many runaways absconded with stays and other clothing items that may have been purloined, not just hand-me-downs.

It’s possible to acknowledge these exceptions while also maintaining my point (and the point of other scholars) that stays were a racialized garment in early America.

What is your reaction to the following statement from the Colonial Williamsburg website?

“Plantation records do not indicate the use of stays in the yearly allotment to field slaves. That some slaves, particularly house slaves, did wear stays is proven by the many descriptions in runaway ads.”

I don’t think it is possible to discuss any topic and use the words “always” or “never”. No two people are going to agree on every issue. That doesn’t mean one is right, therefore, the other has to be labeled as wrong. I hope what your students carry away from the class is a desire to do their own research and form their own opinions which may or may not, echo yours, Bruce’s or mine. Thank you.