The hidden center

I love the 18th-century, and set many of my stories there. Rococo ladies wear a gorgeous feminine armor of stays and stockings and hoops and underskirts, and are bedecked in buckets of lace and ribbon and silk. Yet beneath all that, from the knee up, they are naked. Underwear, panties, drawers, etc., did not exist as such, for men or women. I find that tension between clothed and naked, hidden and exposed, hot skin and cool fashion, wildly sexy––and judging from the erotica of the times, so did they.

Painting after François Boucher (1703–1770), source Taschen's Erotica Universalis

Here a lady is trying out an assortment of dildos, offered to her by the cute local dildo purveyor. Note her pretty little shoes and stockings tied under the knees. From there up, it's open country. Knowing that (well, and knowing she's trying out dildos) makes that tantalizing glimpse of her left thigh as highly charged as a more explicit image.

Charles Monnet( 1732-1808), engraved by d'Ambrun, source Taschen's Erotica Universalis

This strapping priest accesses his lovely penitent's rear as easily as he accesses the dark secrets of her soul. And of course, he's not wearing any underwear either! O temptation!





Knowing all this, one realizes that The Swing, also by Boucher, while pretending to innocence is actually rather naughty. Though I believe the gentleman's glimpse into paradise will be short lived, for there is a flying kitten heel heading straight at his forehead.