What a fascinating topic, Frédérique. It raises so many issues and questions. Having grown up in the 1950s and 60s, I have witnessed the change from a female dress code that, as some contributors have pointed out, could be quite physically imprisoning to today's casual and made-for-comfort styles. I enjoy sampling all the periods and styles from that span of time and enjoy both the restriction of some forms of dress and the freedom and ease of others. I have no difficulty in understanding the relief women felt when stockings, suspenders and girdles were replaced by tights and tee shirts yet I also enjoy experiencing something of what women have experienced in all those different forms of dress.

Imprisonment is, perhaps, too strong a term. Nevertheless, it implies loss of freedom or liberty and that was certainly a factor of the typical woman's dress when I began taking an interest in it in the 1950s. I didn't have any sisters but I had female cousins and neighbours and was intrigued by the small but significant loss of freedom they experienced and accepted as the norm of the day when they began to grow up and started dressing as young adults. Wearing stockings was an important milestone for young teen girls and I remember several instances of such girls learning that they now had to be careful how they sat and moved because they must avoid showing stocking tops. One girl was told she could not play with me and another friend in our garden because she might ladder her nylons - nylons she only wore as Sunday best and of which she was very proud....but they restricted her freedom to run around and enjoy herself.

A little later I had a girlfriend whose younger sister had just started wearing stockings and when she came home into my girlfriend's house the first thing she did was to go upstairs and take off her nylons so that she could relax in the garden in the sun without having to worry about laddering her stockings and could lift the hem of her dress just a few inches above her knees to let the sun get to her legs. I asked my girlfriend why she didn't do likewise and the reason she gave was that we would be going out again after lunch and if she took her stockings off she would have to get out of her girdle as well and it wasn't worth bothering to do all that only to have to put it all on again afterwards. Going bare-legged was not, for that 17-year-old girl, an option on a Sunday afternoon! She wasn't imprisoned, but there was some restriction imposed by her everyday clothes.

Now consider the young woman who likes to show off a good figure by wearing a tight skirt. She'll also put on some heels. That combination - freely chosen - will slow down her walking, prevent her from running, make climbing stairs more difficult and require extra care when sitting. Back in the 1960s and still today, women do exactly that. If they needed help with their figure, back then it was a firm girdle and a good, possibly long-line bra and today it's an underwired push-up bra and a tight Spanx-type shaper. None of those clothes promote freedom.

On the other hand, modern women enjoy the option of minimal clothing - in warm weather just a bra (optional), dress or skirt and top or jeans or shorts, panties and flat, comfortable shoes - no hosiery. Pretty well total freedom.

Those of us who are not women but enjoy the sensations of wearing feminine clothing have the luxury of choosing freedom or restriction, just as real women do. The world of petticoat punishment and forced feminisation is a world away from that but it represents another, perhaps more extreme, facet of the crossdressing genre. I dooon't indulge or have any experience of it but I will confess to sometimes enjoying making myself wear the more restrictive items (firm girdle, long bra, stockings and suspenders, tight knee-length skirt and heels and then try to go about my day's business around the house (not, sadly, furher afield) just to sense what many women would once have felt as they tried to manage despite the limitations imposed by their clothes. Every move and action then needs more consideration and I find myself thinking how much easier it would be to bend down without the tight girdle, to sit comfortably on the sofa without suspenders digging into my legs or to climb on to a chair to reach a high shelf without the skirt trying to stop me..... Then, another day, in a light bra, sheer tights, comfortable shoes and a loose dress I can do the same things so comfortably and easily....and still enjoy every moment.

Its the freedom to choose that is so compelling - and that includes the freedom to choose restriction.