Popular Culture Review Vol. 14, No. 1, February 2003 | Page 43

Class Comfort—from Corset to Brassiere

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in post-war society, their choice was probably determined less frequently by the
impulse to impede sexual activity than by new ideals of feminine beauty.
While corsets served as class symbols of moral uprightness in the 191.0s, by
the mid-twenties, women of all classes who encased their flesh in the new tube
shaped corselet were trying to conform to the changed ideal. The buxom matron of
the Belle Epoch had been superceded by the flapper. (As Progressive impositions
of morality began to be regarded as outdated, so the fashionable ideal of the up
right, maternal figure was replaced by that of a carefree, more sophisticated, young
woman. Twentieth century emphasis on sexual freedom and companionate mar
riage inspired new standards by which to measure successful womanhood. By the
1920s proponents of the new beauty culture implied that physical beauty, rather
than irreproachable character, was a woman’s most valuable asset. Any woman
who expected to remain socially and economically dependent on a husband was
advised to dedicate herself to “the business of being beautiful.” (The Delineator,
January 1926, 22).
A burgeoning cosmetics industry offered women from all social strata the
means to artfully supplement “natural” beauty. Accustomed by now to glamorous
movie-star models, women enthusiastically applied powder and paint despite ear
lier associations of make up with prostitution. Artificial enhancement of the fe
male face had become not only permissible in the 1920s but often expected as a
mark of the modern woman. But at the same time that the natural face was hidden
increasingly by make-up, the natural variety of female bodies was becoming more
visible, and less-frequently disguised by old-fashioned corsets. While the art of
masking facial “flaws” required only a bit of practice with a make-up brush in
front of a mirror, achieving the new fashion silhouette — without the aid of under
garments that contradicted the whole ideal of physical freedom — required more
vigorous dedication.
“A beautiful body,” Celia Caroline Cole, beauty editor of The Delineator maga
zine, told her middle-class readers in 1926, must be “keen as the blade of a rapier,
lithe as a flame.” As this “beautiful body” incorporated not only slenderness but
youth, it perhaps represented stages beyond which many of her readers had al
ready advanced. (Unfortunately, only a small percentage of the population has
been able to claim both attributes in any age.) Cole, however, cheerfully addressed
her readers with the encouraging news that perfection could be achieved through
exercise of any offending body part.
Perhaps a body “lithe as a flame” was attainable by vigorous exercise, but
approximating the youthful slenderness of a “rapier” required a different kind of
self-discipline. Even more than exercise, women in the 1920s employed dieting to
force their bodies to conform to the ideal (Brumberg 231). As early as 1918 Vogue
had announced “one crime against the modern ethics of beauty which is unpardon-