Just the opposite, in fact: They are an extension of the desire to place the body front and center, a way to use the shoulder to force a reckoning with what is underneath.

They are a way of “being feminist and feminine at the same time,” said Richard Thompson Ford, the author of “Dress Codes: How the Laws of Fashion Made History” and a professor at Stanford Law School.

By that stage, they had also become a uniform of sorts for women entering the work force during World War II. They were “a way of asserting a certain kind of authority and power that had traditionally been associated with masculine tailoring,” Mr. Ford said.