What is a farthingale?

I was thinking about strange women's fashion today - not that I follow fashion, but I do think men should have to wear the women's fashions they create - my current pet peeve being 5 inch stilettos,  that make every women who wears them walk like a constipated fool - but I digress....

And so, the farthingale.  I couldn't remember which end of the woman the farthingale was to cover up - at first I thought it was the ruff around the neck seen in Elizabethan fashion - but no, it's part of the large hoop skirt favoured by women at the time. Clearly I was born in the wrong era - now the fashion is for "stick insects" (a term I first learned from Bridget Jones Diary) and I am not a stick insect. If only I'd lived in Elizabethan times--not only would I get to wear a farthingale to disguise my thunder thighs, I'd get to wrap a bumroll around my waist to make me look larger. sigh...those were the days...

http://www.elizabethancostume.net/farthingale/history.html