Popular Culture Review Vol. 14, No. 1, February 2003 | Page 35
Class Comfort: The Transition from
the Corset to the Brassiere, 1910-1930
Of all the changes that beleaguered women at the onset of modernity, one of
the most fundamental was the transformation of the ideal female body image. Nine
teenth-century corsets had molded the figure by cinching in the waist and exagger
ating the proportions of bust and hips. This voluptuous model glorified the mature
dignity of the matriarchs who reigned supreme at the Fin de Siecle. But the New
Woman could not stride purposefully through modern life while confined by a
Victorian corset. Before another generation had grown to adulthood this volup
tuous figure looked like a relic, and the foundation garments that had been em
ployed to achieve it were relegated to the unfashionably stout or to the resignedly
middle-aged. Yet as the Teens dissolved into the Twenties, women who had aban
doned the corset found themselves bound by still more insidious constraints.
The decade of the 1920s wore an aura of possibility for all American women.
Full citizenship had finally been granted and national prosperity made the good
life appear to be accessible to every citizen. Freedom was in the air, but it re
mained an elusive siren. Because the willowy figure of the Jazz Age flapper was
no more common in nature than the voluptuous Gibson Girl's had been, women
who had abandoned the corset found themselves bound by more insidious restric
tions. Without corsets to shape them, most women had to resort to diet and exer
cise if they hoped to achieve the ideal figure.
This essay examines the relationship between class and body image as it ex
plores methods women have used to force their bodies to conform to a fashionable
ideal. It also looks at the influence of popular culture - specifically the tango craze
- on class relations as well as on this bodily ideal.
In the early 1900s, the older generation of women - regardless of class probably laced themselves into their corsets to signify compliance with the moral
restrictions dictated by the social elite. But their daughters found freedom of move
ment more attractive than the old-fashioned class markers. In the early Teens young
women from different social strata began, for the first time, to mix freely in a
public culture of leisure. As a new generation of middle- and upper-class women
began to frequent public dance halls and cabarets, amusement parks and movie
houses (originally patronized only by the working class) I suggest that they may
have seen working women’s uncorseted bodies as a new paragon. Rare is the young
woman of any era who neglects to appraise the attributes of her sexual competitors
and to appropriate what she can.