POP CULTURE FROM A SPIRITUAL POINT OF VIEW

BY Anonymous
Page 6

Page 1 What's Wrong With Me?       Page 2 The Steel Engraved Lady
Page 3 The Corset      Page 4 Illness as Fashion
Page 5 The Voluptuous Woman 1     
YOU ARE HERE>Page 6 The Voluptuous Woman 2
Page 7 The Gibson Girl, The Flapper, and Today

THE VOLUPTUOUS WOMAN
Part 2

The Grecian Bend was the most erotic style of the century. To effect the look of the Bend women had to be corseted. The corset had to be laced as tightly as possible. Shoes had to have the highest possible heels in order to achieve the stride that attended the posture. Sauntering down the street required complicated mechanics. The body was thrust both backward and forward so that bosoms and buttocks would protrude as much as possible. The style was often so exaggerated, and the corseting so restrictive, that women could not sit upright in carriages. They were compelled to lean forward and rest their hands on cushions on the floor to support themselves. Extrication from the carriage took the helping hand of a friend.

Enameling also became popular. Introduced in 1868, in New York for actresses, enameling involved the coating of the face and neck with plastic enamel. The ingredients included an arsenic or lead base to achieve a smooth, light complexion. Generally it was lightly applied, so the subject could move her facial muscles. If the coating was too heavy, however, the slightest movement was likely to produce cracks in the surface.

This new voluptuous model of beauty, molded by the Grecian Bend, and characterized for the fist time by cosmetics, was known as the Dolly Varden look.

The Steel Engraved Lady was an ethereal creature, a little girl who needed protection. In contrast, the Voluptuous Woman was a more mature, maternal figure. Her maturity was emphasized by her over exaggerated posture, walk and restrictive corsting. This was the advent of the advertising's world method of reducing woman to parts.

The way women moved, dressed, sat, stood, poised, and ate were all part of a highly artificial presentation to make her marketable. Venus, goddess of love, attracted the man. The over-emphasized bosom, hips,and buttocks assured that procreation and motherhood would soon follow. Since women could only become productive or influential by the men they married, it was important that the voluptuousness emphasized not just sensuality but maternal possibilities.

The Voluptuous Woman extended a latitude to women to explore and even flaunt their sexuality but certainly did nothing to restore her dignity, humanity, or productivity in society.

By the 1870s voluptuousness dominated the standard of beauty for women. The Steel Engraved Lady was a distant memory.

A well worn phrase of the day, "a woman is a nobody, a wife is everything," was as much a valid appraisal of the social attitudes that accompanied the Voluptuous Woman as it was for the Steel Engraved Lady who went before her. To be a wife was still the only vocation open to women.

The Cult of the Home was as much in vogue with the Voluptuous Woman as with the Steel Engraved Lady. Indeed the Cult of the Home mentality increased its hold over women's lives in the late 1870s.

The Social Impact of the Voluptuous Woman
The Voluptuous Woman was symbolically constricted by dress and fashion as she was in her place in society. Tight corseting, high heels, elaborate dresses that were changed sometimes four and five times a day to suit each activity, walking restricted without a chaperon, face enameling; all these habits interpreted women's restrictive place in society. Woman was reduced to the realm of the Home. It was the only world she was allowed. The Voluptuous Woman intensely reinforced the cultural beliefs that woman's arena was the very private life of home and family.

The molding and shaping of woman media and advertising informs public opinion about who and what woman should be, dictates woman's role in society, and influences woman's attitudes about herself as a human. The Voluptuous Woman contributed as much to the constriction of woman's role in society as did her predecessor, the Steel Engraved lady.

There was another woman on the horizon who rejected the constricted image and role that the Voluptuous Woman imposed upon all women. This woman was the evangelical reformer who wanted place in society to change her world. She saw the Voluptuous Woman as an enemy to her mission.

This new merging woman was an image of strength and character. She believed that she could change her world and wanted the right to do so. The women of the various evangelical movements wanted to be part of the public dialogue and solution on such issues as abolition, temperance, suffrage and meeting the growing social needs of impoverished urban dwellers.  These women reformers were a hearty bunch who realized instinctively that to be taken seriously as a human being the trappings of fashion had to go.  When they called for dress reform they were kicking the "monster" where it hurt.  The fashionable and elaborate dresses, corsets, petticoats, high heels, and elaborate hats had to go. Dress was the symbol of woman's restriction. To liberate women from the constraints of dress and fashion was to emancipate them from their social restrictions.  It was their "Magna Carta" statement.

As a result, dress reform became the rallying cry of evangelical reformers against the self-indulgent image of woman. The evangelical women understood that if they could reform the fashion industry they could win the battle that would decide the war. Fashion was at the heart of the contest for women's souls.

For women, dress reform was in indispensable necessity of all the great reform movements of the nineteenth century. It was the one reform movement that wove its way like a thread throughout all the other crusades. The success of the dress reform movement was significant to the success of evangelical women's activities and work.

Evangelical reformers began to view fashion as the great arch enemy of woman's productivity. For the next forty years, until the dawn of the new century, women in ministry, reform, and education would chip away at the anchors of fashion and dress to finally win their liberty from their oppressor with the Gibson Girl model in the early 1900s.

Continued Page 7 The Gibson Girl, The Flapper, and Today

Page 1 What's Wrong With Me?
Page 2 The Steel Engraved Lady
Page 3 The Corset
Page 4 Illness as Fashion
Page 5 The Voluptuous Woman
YOU ARE HERE>Page 6 The Voluptuous Woman
Page 7 The Gibson Girl, The Flapper, and Today