Body abuse in fashion

In the 18th C they stuffed their stockings with sawdust to make bigger, more manly calf muscles!

In article , Kate Dicey of Customer of PlusNet plc

And at various times have worn strange shoes. Not quite the same in terms of having your innards permanently rearranged though.

They wear neckties. Now, whatever would it take to get you to put a noose around your neck every working day? The necktie is the most bizarre article of clothing ever invented, even more bizarre than the codpiece. Or the strapless bra.

They wear suits. With shirts, often an undershirt under that shirt. Sometimes a vest over it. Men, who do not tend to get cold, wear many layers of clothing, even during hot weather. Women wear sleeveless tops, sundresses, even tube tops, but suffer from every change in temperature, so that cold air conditioning blasting on them tends to turn their lips blue. Meanwhile, the men in their 3-piece suits, shirts, undershirts, and the imfamous necktie, are just barely comfortable.

The most amazing part of all of this is that we think that we are intelligent and superior to the "lower" animals. Hmmmmph. You wouldn't catch a chimpanzee dressing like we do!

One of my favorite sites:

-------------- You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough.=20

--Mae West=20

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During the Regency period men wore corsets and also strapped their shoulders down with a harness arrangement to make them look narrow and slopped. It was fashionable for the upper classes to look as if they had never done manual labor so the "hunk" look was supposedly out. The also starched stiff pointed shirt collars worn UP, not folded down over their ties, ascots, or whatever you called them, so that they actually jabbed into the soft under jaw unless the head was held up at all times "nose in the air" so to speak. The ultra dandy wore his collar points so high that they actually acted like blinders and they couldn't move their head but had to turn their entire body to look to the side. From some of the research I've done they also bound their feet somewhat to keep them quite narrow, another sign of the 'upper classes' not doing manual labor. It was not uncommon to put corsets on infants (both male and female) and have them wear them at all times other than when bathing, which wasn't all that often, to narrow the rib cage and little harnesses to keep shape the shoulders in a downward slope. These people were in corsets practically from birth to death. That practice was fazed out during the beginning of the Victorian period for males and at the mid part for infant and juvenile females as unhygienic, at that time meaning 'not healthy'. DUH!

I was thinking about a suit of armor, was that fashion or necessity? Perhaps both in some circumstances. Rather interesting to do a little Googling on this as sit in my sweats and bare feet LOL

Val

Men (18th-19th C) did use corsetry to this extent, just not so commonly. Only the dedicated follower of fashion went to these extremes, not the average debutante.

Western European men haven't gone for body modification to anything like the same extent as women. IMHO, this is largely because of the cold climate and prevailing standards of modesty regarding bare skin. It's largely unacceptable to flaunt anything bare, so fashion depended instead on silhouette. The aesthetic of women is about curves - whether they should or shouldn't be there, and pushing them up or binding them flat according to fashion. Men just don't have such curves - we're boring rectangles or triangular at most. Although you can make a man as wasp-waisted as any woman (e.g. Mr. Sebastian), this isn't seen as accentuating the "attractive" aspects of that season's idealised male form. Nor can you squeeze a man into having broader shoulders, bigger calves or a protuberant codpiece -- you have to pad it. Not that padding, as bustles, panniers or bumrolls, aren't something that women haven't also used through the ages.

A lard squeezer corset is a different thing, and as applicable to fat men as it is to fat women. This isn't body-modification, it's just fat old mutton squeezing itself vaguely lamb-shaped, no matter what your gender.

If you want to see men practicing extremes of body re-shaping for decoration, go somewhere warmer where the _surface_ of the skin was the primary attractant, not the body shape.

This is a myth (counter-examples welcome). Abdominal surgery of this seriousness in Victorian times wasn't a reliably survival process, let alone cosmetically viable.

I've never heard of intestine resection for this purpose. It's pointless anyway (intestines are small and squishy - just keeping them less full will have the same effect).

What's usually reported is removal of the lower floating ribs. Apart from the recent tabloid reports of Cher / Pamela Anderson / Marilyn Manson having had them removed, this is the usual "corset surgery myth". It appears that it began in 1900 with Anna Held, actress and wife of Flo Ziegfeld - theatrical promoter and all-round charlatan publicist. It's no more likely that she had any ribs removed than she bathed in asses' milk (as Ziegfeld also reported for publicity purposes).

Of course ribs are sometimes removed. It's a rare operation, but it is done today - almost entirely for male-female transexuals. In the absence of the right pelvis to give feminine hips, removing the ribs is the next option.

In Victorian times, bodies were certainly re-shaped by corsetry. But this was corsetry, not surgery. Ribs weren't removed, but they culd be displaced so as to overlap the lower ribs.

I work in Bath, where the costume museum has one of the finest collections of such corsetry. Looking at historical corsets we find that the waist goes down to 24" and only in the rarest of case do they go below this. I have friends today who wear corsets smaller than this.

If you want a really detailed and accurate history of the corset, read Valerie Steele's "The Corset: A Cultural History"

men made the rules in times past-cause they brought home the money...

now that women are self-supporting they don't wear bras much-just camisoles to keep them from jiggling.....

men are starting to mold their bodies now-i order to attract a woman w/big paycheck.

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What a load of twaddle!