Underneath It All

This week, looking to do something indoors and away from the snow and cold weather, we checked out the Missouri History Museum.

Yes, I know we live in Illinois.  Yes, I know we are always doing fun stuff in St Louis, Missouri, and I hardly ever write about fun stuff in Illinois.  

When I find something interesting here, I'll let you know.

 The Missouri History Museum is free which makes it totally awesome and worth the cost of admission.

There are actually a couple of exhibits which you can pay for if you want to see them, but as it was our first visit, we opted to just see the free exhibits and we'll go back another time to see the pay-per-view rooms.

When I use the word "we", I really mean that Kerry and I will go back and see the other exhibits.  While I was able to get the girls to go on this excursion, Ben declined to join us entirely.

Apparently it's more fun to stay home alone all day than go to a history museum with your family, because you know, it's not about spending time with them after your parents have given their youth and energy rearing you and making sure you have a great education and get into college with a fabulous scholarship after they helped you buy a computer and pay for your phone service and bought you a ticket to fly across the country and see your girlfriend, not to mention the fact that your mother has to cross her legs every time she sneezes because of your gigantic ninety-fifth percentile noggin, it's about not going to a history museum because that's just not your area of interest!  

Wait.....what was I talking about?

Oh yeah, the museum.

Anyway, the girls went with us because one of the current exhibits features the history of women's undergarments!

We got to see what Marie Antoinette had up under her dress.

I want to know what was up under that thing.

She could have had a couple of armed soldiers up under there too.

  The evolution of the hoop skirt.

 And then we moved into the slinky, sexy era.

Behind these corsets is a drawing showing the displacement of women's organs due to the wearing of the corset.  Ouch.

 The bustle.

I was totally born in the wrong era.

 They even had some hoop skirts and corsets for kids to try on.  

Katie is no longer a kid, but I was able to wrestle her into a corset for a photo op.

Yes, I know it's on backwards.

There was some more modern underwear on display also, including some Victoria's Secret and a thong!  I don't know who invented the thong, but I just know it was a man.  No woman would do that to other women.

Can you believe Ben didn't want to see that?

 Then we headed off into the other free exhibits.

Emily and a large kettle or something.

 Kerry and I both really enjoyed the museum. 

The girls enjoyed areas of it.

There is a lot to interest both young kids and adults, but there's this weird teen phase where it's very difficult to find things that interest them in a museum.  They actually like looking at the exhibits, but they don't want to actually read about anything (which is mine and Kerry's favorite part).   They could scoot through an entire museum in about thirty minutes. That's why I say Kerry and I will go back and take the time to actually read about history instead of just looking at the pretty pictures.  We'll have to take the kids kickboxing or something.  Museums are just too calm for them.  But if you want to get away from loud children and ringing bells and whistles and you actually want to learn about the past to avoid mistakes in the future, you will have a very pleasant visit.