F

In the late 1700s, Beau Brummell helped change British fashion by promoting a more natural look, reverting to the bodily ideal of the ancient Greeks (Hollander 1999: 137-8). Around 1815, tailors created standard measurements, based on standard proportions, in order to mass produce ready-to-wear clothing (Hollander 1999: 139-40). As a result, people could compare their bodies to the soldiers’ bodies from which the norm was established. In the Victorian era, the Western world believed that women needed corsets in order to support their frame because their waists and spines were not strong enough. Tightly lacing their corsets also allowed women to attain the ideal body, which, from the 1820s, had a waist circumference of 18 inches and forced an upright posture. These corsets, despite inducing fainting, uterine and spinal disorders, muscle wasting, and crushed

ribs, helped women achieve large hips and breasts. According to Germaine Greer’s highly influential The Female Eunuch (1970) “Nineteenth-century belles even went to the extremity of having their lowest ribs removed so that they could lace their corsets tighter” (Greer 1970: 40). By the 1830s, padding was also used to enhance one’s hips and breasts and was even used for one’s arms and thighs (Banner 1983: 48, 60-1; see also Ogden 2003: 35). Meanwhile, New York couture toyed with the “willowy look, with a hint of frailty, as standards of appearance began to be more important for respectable women” (Stearns 1997: 7).