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 Women retreated into their own culture - a culture that was created for them and by them. They became influenced by the ambition of the men in their family but channeled this ambition into their domestic role - the only role allowed.
THE CULT OF THE HOME
The home became an elaborate occupation for women and redefined women's work. As a result the nonproductive American woman was created. "Cult of the home" is the name given this sociological phenomenon.
THE STEEL ENGRAVED WOMAN
This new model of woman soon had a name to perpetuate her influence - the Steel Engraved Lady. The popular image of woman in the early 1800s was known as the Steel Engraved Lady. The name referred to the lithographic process by which her image was printed in newspapers and magazines. The name also drew its symbolism from the element of moral rectitude exemplified by Victorian woman's character.
Adjectives used to describe this image of woman were "sylphlike, etherealized, fragile, frail, and slight." Such descriptions reflect the physical features of women in the steel engravings of the fashion magazines that were flourishing at the time. One journalist wrote his description in detail "Her face was oval or heart-shaped, eyes gaze downward or off into the distance. Her chin soft and retreating while the mouth is tiny, resembling a "beestung cupid bow" or a "rosebud," as contemporaries described it. Her body is short and slight, rounded and curved. Her shoulders slope, her arms are rounded, a small waist lies between a rounded bosom and a bell shaped lower torso, covered by voluminous clothing. Her hands are small, her fingers tapering. Her feet, when they protrude, are tiny and delicate. Her complexion is white, with a blush of pink in her cheeks." (Girls, don't try this without your mommy present!)
This portrait became a proscription for who and what womanhood was. The current debate about woman's place in society was being determined by a marketing tool of the new advertisers. The standardizing of woman's beauty was now taking shape with the Steel Engraved Lady and along with it came the grim reapers of culturally enforced attitudes and social mores shaped by this distorted image of woman. The American woman was being reduced to her parts and from this point on how those parts added up equaled the new definition of woman.
"FEMININE FRAILTY"
The Steel Engraved Lady was not a new ideal of beauty, her archetype had been set in the early middle ages, but she was back now in full force and influencing the ideal of feminine frailty with great popularity.
Woman now became impotent, vulnerable and in need of men's strength. This belief was reinforced not only through fashion but posture and stance. How women walked, stood, and generally held themselves was crucial to their new reality. She would pose curved or move slowly and gracefully. In magazine illustrations, she posed in such a way as to produce what was known as the "hogarth" curve of beauty. This stance was head to one side and arms and body slightly bent so the line of the figure was curved. Careful attention was given to every gesture and movement so that the ideals of gentility, frailty could be reinforced.
The pale face was an essential part of the image. The paler one's face, the better. To achieve the palest of looks women believed that there were certain things they could do to create this light complexion. Some of the notions at the time were to eat chalk and drink arsenic. The inference was that these mixtures would help them achieve just the right appearance of pale. Perhaps arsenic was perceived as a bleach of some sort, one can only speculate. Others took the lest painful route and painted their faces white, using enamels made from egg whites. All women wore bonnets or hats to shield their face from the sun.
Since small, thin, and frail were the fashion, dieting became an obsession and women corseted themselves to be even thinner. Thinness was arduous in its demands - the 18 inch waist was the rule. The only way a woman was going to achieve an 18 inch waist was with a corset. As a result, the corset became a fashionable woman's painful companion and the worst instrument of torture ever invented to hide the fashionable woman's "flaws."
Contiued Page 3 The Corset
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