A 17th century French clerical/commercial campaign against décolletage—fashions in which women reveal the cleavage between their breasts—was motivated more by misogyny than moral outrage, according to a University of Kansas scholar.

And it was a huge failure, anyway.

That is the conclusion drawn by Paul Scott, professor of French, in his new article “Décolletage disputes in early modern France” in the latest edition of the journal The Seventeenth Century.

Scott wrote that while some scholars have plucked caustic quotes from the ecclesiastical treatises against décolletage (one prelate called unclothed breasts “pillows for demons”), no one has previously studied the campaign as a whole, and certainly not for its misogynistic import, as he does.