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October 19, 2004
Falsies as Weapons
Long before suffragettes shackled themselves to railings and women's libbers burned their bras, female freedom fighters were waging a more covert war, using lipstick, mascara and false bosoms as weapons. Far from being instruments of oppression in a vast male conspiracy, such "beauty devices" were used by women to manipulate the judgmental masculine eye in an effort to control the uncontrollable, says feminist author Teresa Riordan.
Science, technology and commerce enabled all women in western society regardless of financial status to have access to gadgets and potions that improved their appearance. The tightly cinched Victorian corset, the rubber "Flapper Flattener" of the 1920s and the voluptuousness of the push-up bra and cone-shaped falsies of the 1940s and 50s are all ancestors of the modern bra. And, according to Riordan, the first false bosom was patented by New Yorker Anne McLean in 1858 -- a pair of sharply pointed wire cones inserted into the top half of a corset. Wire falsies were replaced by rubber ones but fell out of favor quickly. "They tended to distend and deflate, rendering the bust uneven or, worse, leaving the putative breasts pointing in improbable directions," Riordan writes. - Reuters
Cindy
Comments
What women will do in the name of beauty never surprises me, however, I am not at all surprised that this was a function of power. A sexy woman walks into a room, and she could ask every man there to jump off a bridge.
Half of them would do it, and the other half would ask her which bridge.
Brain matter deposited by: Paul on October 19, 2004 7:22 PM