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Look up hemline in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

The hemline is the line formed by the lower edge of a garment, such as a skirt, dress or coat, measured from the floor.

The hemline is perhaps the most variable style line in fashion, changing shape and ranging in height from hip-high to floor-length. What is a fashionable style and height of hemline has varied considerably throughout the years, and has also depended on a number of factors such as the age of the wearer, the occasion for which the garment is worn and the choice of the individual.

Types[link]

Similar to necklines and waistlines, hemlines can be grouped by their height and shape:

• floor-length hemlines
• ankle hemlines
• midcalf hemlines
• below-knee hemlines
• above-knee hemlines
• mid-thigh hemlines
• hip-high hemlines
• handkerchief hemlines
• diagonal hemlines
• other hemlines, such as modern-cut hemlines

Dresses and skirts are also classified in terms of their length:

• mini
• ballerina length
• tea length
• full length
• maxi
• Intermission length

History[link]

Overview chart of changes in hemline height (skirt length), 1805-2005

In the history of Western fashion, the ordinary public clothes of upper- and middle-class women varied only between floor-length and slightly above ankle-length for many centuries before World War I. Skirts of lower-calf or mid-calf length were associated with the practical working garments of lower-class or pioneer women, while even shorter skirt lengths were seen only in certain specialized and restricted contexts (e.g. sea-bathing costumes, or outfits worn by ballerinas on stage). It was not until the mid-1910s that hemlines began to rise significantly (with many variations in height thereafter). Skirts rose all the way from floor-length to near knee-length in little more than fifteen years (from late in the decade of the 1900s to the mid-1920s). From World War I to roughly 1970, a woman had to wear skirts near their currently-fashionable length or be considered almost hopelessly unstylish, but since the 1970s, women's options have widened, and there is no longer really only one single fashionable skirt-length at a time.

Another influence on the length of a woman's skirt is the Hemline index, which, oversimplified, states that hemlines rise and fall in sync with the stock market.

Gallery[link]

• 

  Mini dress

• 

  Above-knee cocktail dress

• 

  Below-knee hemlines

• 

  Ankle length evening dress

• 

  Prom dresses, varying from above-the-ankle to floor length

See also[link]

• Waistline
• Neckline
• Hemline index

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A black sheep stands out from the flock

The Black Sheep, from a 1901 edition of Mother Goose by William Wallace Denslow.

A black sheep (Hebridean)

In the English language, black sheep is an idiom used to describe an odd or disreputable member of a group, especially within a family. The term has typically been given negative implications, implying waywardness.^[1] It derived from the atypical and unwanted presence of other black individuals in flocks of white sheep.

In psychology, the black sheep effect refers to the tendency of group members to judge likeable ingroup members more positively and deviant ingroup member more negatively than comparable outgroup members.^[2]

Idiomatic usage[link]

The term originated from the occasional black sheep which are born into a flock of white sheep due to a genetic process of recessive traits. Black wool was considered commercially undesirable because it could not be dyed.^[1] In 18th and 19th century England, the black color of the sheep was seen as the mark of the devil.^[3] In modern usage, the expression has lost some of its negative connotations, though the term is usually given to the member of a group who has certain characteristics or lack thereof deemed undesirable by that group.^[4]

The idiom is also found in other languages, e.g., French, Serbian, Bulgarian, Hebrew, Portuguese, Bosnian, Greek, Turkish, Dutch, Afrikaans, Swedish, Danish, Spanish, Czech, Slovak, Romanian and Polish. The same concept is illustrated in some other languages by the phrase "white crow": for example belaya vorona (белая ворона) in Russian and kalag-e sefid (کلاغ سفید) in Persian. A variant form of black sheep, "the red sheep of the family", was used by Jessica Mitford to describe herself, a communist in a family of aristocratic fascists.^[5]

Biological origin[link]

In sheep, a white fleece is not albinism but a dominant gene that actively switches color production off, thus obscuring any other color that may be present.^{[citation needed]} As a result, a black fleece in most sheep is recessive, so if a white ram and a white ewe are each heterozygous for black, in about 25% of cases they will produce a black lamb. In fact in most white sheep breeds only a few white sheep are heterozygous for black, so black lambs are usually much rarer than this. Some breeds of sheep (such as the Hebridean, Ouessant, Black Welsh Mountain and Karakul) are normally black.

Black sheep effect (Psychology)[link]

Overview[link]

In 1988, Marques, Yzerbyt and Leyens^[2] conducted an experiment where Belgian students rated the following groups according to trait-descriptors (e.g., sociable, polite, violent, cold): unlikeable Belgian students, unlikeable North African students, likeable Belgian students, and likeable North African students. The results provided support that the favourability is the highest for likeable ingroup members and the lowest for unlikeable ingroup members, whereas the favourability of unlikeable and likeable outgroup members is between the both former ones. These extreme judgements of likeable and unlikeable (i.e., deviant) ingroup members, relatively to comparable outgroup members is called “black sheep effect”. This effect has been shown in various intergroup contexts and under a variety of conditions, and in many experiments manipulating likeability and norm deviance (e.g., Branscombe, Wann, Noel, & Coleman, 1993;^[6] Coull, Yzerbyt, Castano, Paladino, & Leemans, 2001;^[7] Khan & Lambert, 1998;^[8] Pinto, Marques, Levine, & Abrams, 2010).^[9]

Explanations[link]

A prominent explanation of the black sheep effect derives from the social identity approach (see social identity theory, Tajfel & Turner, 1979;^[10] and self-categorization theory, Turner, Hogg, Oakes, Reicher, & Wetherell, 1987).^[11] Group members are motivated to sustain a positive and distinctice social identity and, as a consequence, group members emphasize likeable members and evaluate them more positve than outgroup members, bolstering the positive image of their ingroup (see ingroup bias). Furthermore, the positive social identity may be threatened by group members who deviate from a relevant group norm. To protect the positive group image, ingroup members derogate ingroup deviants more harshly than deviants of an outgroup (Marques, Abrams, Páez, & Hogg, 2001).^[12] In addition, Eidelman and Biernat (2003)^[13] have shown that personal identities are also threatened through deviant ingroup members. They argue that devaluation of deviant members is an individual response of interpersonal differentiation. Khan and Lambert (1998)^[8] suggest that cognitive processes like assimilation and contrast, which may underline the effect, should be examined.

Limitations[link]

Even though there is widely support for the black sheep effect, the opposite pattern has been found, for example, that White participants judge unqualified Black targets more negative than comparable White targets (e.g., Feldman, 1972;^[14] Linville & Jones, 1980).^[15] Consequentely, there are several factors which influence the black sheep effect. For instance, the higher the identification with the ingroup, and the higher the entitativity of the ingroup, the more the black sheep effect emerges (e.g., Castano, Paladino, Coull, & Yzerbyt, 2002;^[16] Lewis & Sherman, 2010).^[17] Even situational factors explaining the deviance have an influence whether the black sheep effect occurs (De Cremer & Vanbeselaere, 1999).^[18]

See also[link]

Look up black sheep in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• Black swan theory
• Glossary of sheep husbandry: see entry for "black wool".
• Scapegoat
• The Ugly Duckling

References[link]

External links[link]

• Exploration of the etymology of the phrase "black sheep of the family"
• "The black sheep effect: Judgmental extremity towards ingroup members in inter-and intra-group situations". European Journal of Social Psychology (Science Direct) 18 (3): 287–292. DOI:10.1002/ejsp.2420180308. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/00221031. Retrieved 2008-01-04.