The Female Body In The 1920's

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Conforming to the slim ideal is greater on women than on men in the west due to social pressure (Bordo 1993). In previous centuries women’s idealisation of slimness was regularly viewed as a product of a historical evolution. Over the years, there have been numerous modifications in what is considered healthy and attractive in the size and shape of a woman within western developed cultures. Voluptuous figures were preferred during the Middle Ages, in comparison to the slender figures favoured by fashion magazines today; cultural changes within the ‘ideal body’ are easily traceable (Grogan 1999). Until recently, it was considered fashionable, even sensual, to have a fuller figure. A woman’s body was commonly characterized with full rounded hips …show more content…
It could be said that this slim ideal is due to the fashion industries result of ‘successful marketing’, becoming the industrialised affluent societies standard of cultural beauty in the 1920’s. Up until this point clothing fashions were shown using hand-drawn illustrations, which then began to be distributed in mass-market fashion magazines. The standard of what women should have looked like showed a fictional representation of the female body in these magazines; the styles alone required a moulding of the female body, as each ‘look’ was specific to a certain body shape (Grogan 1999).

Still in the middle ages, women started flattening their silhouette using the process of breast binding with foundation garments, which was popular for the middle and upper class. The pre-adolescent shape was considered an ideal, breastless, hipless etc. and to achieve this women exercised vigorously and performed starvation diets (Silverstein et al 1986). The body ideal during the 1930s and 1940s evolved in the direction of a shapelier form, having breasts was fashionable and clothes were made to emphasise them, represented by actresses Mae West, Jean Harlow, and Jane
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