Summer is winding down, which makes it a good time to revisit a series of explorations of some of the summer clothing habits that help define the era, including their symbolic ramifications, ecological implications, and political stakes. Third stop in the Summer Furies series: the belly sweater.
Sexuality is always political, and Britney Spears’ navel has thus found itself at the center of fierce ideological struggles. At the turn of the century, the young American star was accused, if not of being partly responsible for the hypersexualization of teenage girls, at least of embodying one of its worst versions and perversions with her low-waisted schoolgirl skirts and belly-baring sweaters.
Hypersexualization, a catch-all concept, can refer to the adoption by young people—young women in particular—of sexual behaviors and attitudes that are considered inappropriate and even harmful to their development. The term has been and still is used to denounce the valorization of appearance and seduction linked to sexual precocity and other effects deemed harmful to physical and psychological health.
Quebec comics The Belly Buttons by Dubuc and Delaf rode the wave. The series telling the life of three teenage girls appeared just 20 years ago in the defunct humor magazine Safari. “It was the beginning of Britney Spears, belly shirts and the hypersexualization of girls,” the creative couple said a decade and several mega-hit albums later. “We figured the best way to get readers’ attention [gars] of Safariit was to offer them girls sexy who are “bitching”.
Hypersexualization has also generated very serious reactions. A 2009 university conference was widely followed by the media. Quebec was in fact so concerned by the trend that the government saw fit to organize regional forums on the subject in 2014. Sexuality is always political…
Another world?
Sociologist and fashion historian Mariette Julien participated in the debates of the time by publishing Hypersexualized fashion (Sisyphus) in 2010. The book dissects the visual markers and roots of this aesthetic of appearance emphasizing sexuality — including the crop top, obviously.
“We were concerned about it 20 years ago, but the belly sweater has been around for a long time,” the UQAM associate professor corrects in an interview. She says that her mother, a seamstress, would copy the clothes of her favourite singers seen on TV. At the age of nine, in the 1960s, she asked for a copy of a crop top by Jenny Rock singing Douliou douliou Saint-Tropez.
“The hypersexual fashion of two decades ago, relayed by Madonna, for example, was something else. The pants were worn really low and you could see the strings exceed. Clothes exposed a lot, a lot of the woman’s body — and some parts that were more or less hidden until then. Sports fashion was also in this trend, showing muscular and flat stomachs. It was a way for women to say: “I dress how I want. I show what I want. I can choose my sexual partners too.”
It was also, according to second-wave feminist critics, yet another way in which patriarchy reified women’s bodies. In the long run, the discourse on sexuality and hypersexualization was analyzed as an enterprise of heteronormalization and moralization.
The crop top’s comeback in 2024 is therefore happening in another world, so to speak. Third-wave feminism, the #MeToo revolution, the proliferation of gender expressions such as the revaluation of body diversity and the body positivity movement (body positive) mark the choice to wear a very different crop top or not. “Overweight women used to avoid wearing this type of clothing in the 1990s,” notes the fashion expert. “Today, there is pride in accepting one’s body in an uninhibited way.”
Older people are getting into it too. Mme Julien, who practices high-level competitive dancing, now sees dancers in their sixties wearing the crop top. “There has been a liberation of bodies regardless of age or shape. That’s what strikes me the most. It must also be said: the belly vest has the ability to rejuvenate a body that is not perfect according to standards, and our society still revalues youth.”
The whole-navel
Some promotional merchandise vendors now offer t-shirt cutting services that are immediately paid for and adapted to the customer’s belly. New York Times published a report last month on these ” crop stations » recently installed at a book fair, at the launch of the City Dike March, in bars and even at bat mitzvahs and children’s parties. “Mothers are pushing their kids around to get their belly sweaters. They want them too!” said one of the specialist cutters.
Men are also asking for them, and finding them. In June, at American Men’s Fashion Week, several houses, from Loewe to Prada, offered crop tops of all kinds, including shirts cut off at the penultimate button at the bottom.
This navel-gazing is linked to other strong ways of assuming one’s body envelope. The widespread tattooing and the acceptance of body hair display the same desire for authenticity and freedom. “We hear a lot of people claiming authenticity,” notes the keen observer of trends. “Advertising also only talks about this idea of being natural, and true, and transparent. I would say that a pure human being does not exist. We become human through culture. However, our culture now demands that we expose ourselves, make ourselves accessible to others, show our intimacy and undress.”
Professor Julien reiterates that hypersexualization is not dying: it is changing. She cites the popularity of cosmetic surgeries to plump up lips, breasts, buttocks or to reshape the navel, precisely. The recent Olympic Games have clearly shown how athletes expose and transform their bodies, including by wearing oversized nails, false eyelashes, elaborate hairstyles and crop tops all the time.
“If you showed one of my grandmothers what we wear in public these days, she would be completely scandalized,” M. said in conclusion.me Julien: We have slowly become accustomed to these transformations. Basically, clothes have not changed that much in the last few decades, with jeans, sneakers, t-shirts. What has changed, however, is the transformation of the body and the acceptance of body diversity.