Since the beginning of civilization, women have worn underwear. Justified as protection, or a hygienic necessity, this "second skin" was devised to satisfy perverse erotic instincts. A "trap laid by Venus" to entertain and stimulate the fantasies of both the woman who wears them and the man who discovers them. Corsets, bras and panties are not utilitarian items - they are elements in a mystic ritual linking man and woman. They act as an obsessive focus for fantasy, for the sex they conceal is powerless without the decorations and seductions which separate us from it. Pleasure would perish without censorship.