Body and Fashion

Body Image

This page looks at how different societies view the body silhouette, the body image as ugly or beautiful. It examines some of the ways individuals have manipulated their body image, to gain the cultural ideal of an era.

Fashion history shows the most desirable body image of a fashion era is most often achieved by distorting the figure by enlargement or reduction, or by flattening or moving parts into new positions.

The Fashion Silhouette

Fashion is a shape, a changing shape. That shape is mainly formed and controlled by some device which affects part of the body's natural outline. What is considered beautiful in the eyes of one race may be thought horrific in another. Beauty then is in the eye of the beholder, and for centuries beauty has been shape.

Cosmetic Surgery

In the Western world the outlines of women's bodies have been controlled by corsetry and petticoat constructions. But now many consumers have their figure faults corrected by cosmetic surgery with implants or liposuction fat reduction. Plastic surgery was originally developed thousands of years ago in India for treating injuries and birth defects. Then just over a century ago in 1885 when local anaesthetics were invented, surgeons began performing various cosmetic operations.

In 1901 the first face lift was done by Eugene Hollander of Berlin. The wealthy liked face lifts. A face lift meant they could actually buy some youth, even though the body cells were ageing.

Body and Breast Enhancement

Body image can be adapted to accommodate changing fashions. In the 1920s some women endured breast reductions so they could wear the flat boyish fashions. By the 1930s the breast in all its glory was soon back in fashion. The fuller the bosom the better. Expensive surgical enlargement was often done for people such as actresses, but not talked about much. More recently the silhouette from various angles has been manipulated even more by cosmetic surgery.

Nowadays people with ordinary incomes view breast enlargement as their right to satisfy emotional and fashionable needs. People of every age group have become obsessed by their body image. Older teenage girls particularly favour breast implants. Liposuction, tummy tucks, nose jobs, lip manipulation and implants for fuller breasts have all become popular in search of the ideal silhouette.