✩9ja stxrgirl

If that laundress actually stood up, her petticoats were likely short enough to, you know, do laundry without tripping over herself. The idea of this painting being sexy was very subtle. It’s based on her being generally unkempt, and that she’s wearing super-casual mules, that are honestly painted so small she almost wouldn’t be able to fit her foot inside (generally a working woman wouldn’t wear mules that tiny; that was something wealthy women did to show off and look sexy-casual). You’re seeing way more of her foot than you should if she was in polite company, and in shoes that are tiny and impractical. The idea that she’s so casual with her footwear that her foot is basically popping out of the thing meant that she might be… so casual with other things, if you catch my drift.

Petticoat/skirt length varied quite a lot more than you’d think back then, and while there were ideas about respectability mixed in there, generally it had to do with how much physical labor you’re performing. You rich and going to be lounging on a couch all day? Sure, go for that floor-length gown. But don’t expect to be able to carry anything up the stairs. 

This Hogarth print from 1741 gives a good idea of your average petticoat length. 

Most of the extant clothing and art we have comes from the elite, who had no need to carry giant things around while also dealing with a half-dozen screaming children at the same time. But if you go digging a little bit, you can find hints of what the lower class sort looked like. Images of street peddlars are especially great; a lot of the images came out in the 1790s but the fashion in them tends to skew earlier in style due to poverty. You’ll see that you can go from mid-calf all the way to ankle length. The difference is that these were generally drawn to represent real people doing real things, and not as titillation for rich perverts.

For a while, it was even a fad for rich folk to have ridiculously short petticoats, as Marie Antoinette had started a fashion trend of wearing a “shepherdess” outfit with a short petticoat - because shepherdesses are working class, and needed their petticoats to be that short.