Popular Culture Review Vol. 14, No. 1, February 2003 | Page 36

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Popular Culture Review

Many historians have offered a “trickle-down” theory of fashion movement,
whereby fashions are dictated by the elite and then work their way down to the
lower classes. While the traditional “trickle-down” theory held true for the outer
fashion silhouette for many years into the twentieth century, I propose that a new
ideal body image “bubbled up” from what could be considered a model of work
ing class youth in the Teens. This resulted in liberating changes to the foundation
garment.
Harper's Bazaar magazine - fashion advisor to the urban elite and their imi
tative disciples - ran a cartoon in the summer of 1912 that poked fun at its elegant
readers. The drawing shows a foursome of ladies seated at a card game, their eyes
cast down from excruciatingly erect postures to the ace of spades that has appar
ently fallen to the floor. “The maid is out, girls,” the dealer informs her friends.
“We simply cannot stoop over, so we’ll have to finish without that card.”
Clearly the cartoonist is commenting on class distinctions. Less clear, how
ever, is the underlying truth of the dealer’s statement. The speaker is not merely
unwilling to compromise her dignity by stooping to retrieve the card. She is physi
cally unable to bend over, restricted as she is by a heavily-steel-boned corset which
encases her body from just under the bust down nearly to her knees. We are given
to understand, however, that the maid, had she been present, would have been able
to retrieve the fallen card. In order to perform her subservient role, the workingclass woman must have been free from the bodily restraints that constricted her
employer. We may assume she did not wear a corset to work.
Born into a hierarchical society, these members of the fashion elite suggested
by the figures in the cartoon were unwilling to discard the symbol of their social
superiority, despite an often inconvenient dependence on a servant class. Not only
were these women unable to bend over once they were dressed, but they were
unable to dress themselves in the morning without the assistance of a maid or
family member because the corset laced up the back. Old-guard unwillingness to
relinquish a class marker kept the corset industry in business long after the straightlaced morality it had come to represent had begun to seem a bit dowdy. The status
of the women in the cartoon is defined in opposition to that of the absent maid. Her
employer’s fashionably upright posture, achieved though it was at the expense of
bodily comfort and mobility, signals her compliance with the moral codes of be
havior suitable for women of her class.
As early as 1912 then, the artificial restriction that created upper-class de
meanor had begun to look ridiculous. The appearance of this cartoon in a maga
zine that catered to middle- and upper-class women shows that the readers were
expected to recognize and laugh at themselves. Chances are good that ladies like
those in the cartoon were familiar with the diversions that engaged the maid on her
day off, and it is tempting to speculate whether they might have wondered if the