In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, certain styles of breeches gave the illusion of skirted garments. Trunk hose, for instance, covered the upper part of the leg with balloon-like magnitude. Moralists attacked the stuffed trunk hose on the grounds of effeminacy, arguing that they echoed the curves of female hips. Indeed, by the early 1560s, trunk hose were so large that proclamations were passed to reduce their size.

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