In the history of women’s fashion the cleavage has hardly ever been entirely out of sight, yet when a corseted evening dress was depicted with one strap astray, it created quite a furore. The portrait of Virginie Gautreau (1883–4), the young American wife of a French banker, shows her wearing a dark satin dress, her body facing but her head twisting away from the viewer. One jeweled strap appears to have fallen negligently onto her bare white shoulder. The sense of sexy disregard stirred up considerable moral disapproval. The American artist, John Singer Sargent, was forced to withdraw the painting from the Paris Salon in 1884, and repainted the strap firmly in place, where it should in all decency have been all along. He also changed the painting’s title to Madame X, ostensibly to protect the subject’s privacy, but ironically endowing it with an added sense of dangerous suggestiveness.
As recently as 1984 the American athlete Joan Benoit Samuelson caused a stir in the media simply because she was pictured, after winning the marathon at the Olympic Games, with a plain white bra strap exposed, albeit safely on the shoulder. It is only recently that showing a bra strap has not been seen as sluttish. Footballer Brandi Chastain received press coverage not so much for scoring the deciding penalty in the finals of the 1999 World Cup, but because in her jubilation she copied what men often do in such circumstances: she ripped off her shirt and swung it in the air. She exposed an impeccably modest black sports bra, and yet it set off “a firestorm of debate.” It was as if she had flaunted her breasts, even though the actual flesh was completely hidden from view. In comparison, when a male rugby player accidentally loses his shorts on the pitch and exposes his jockstrapped buttocks, he is unlikely to face disapproval. Such reproof remains directed towards the female.