Chapter Four describes Dupont’s efforts to invent the perfect stretch fiber for girdles. Why girdles? © 2011 Taylor and Francis

‘To Serve a market, fill a need’ is the way Dupont Magazine in 1980 described the long standing aims of the company generally. This had been the model set by explosives, a commodity that was always in steady demand, perceived as a need rather than a want, a product that was so taken for granted that it’s presence in everyday life was unquestioned. Nylon stockings were another product seen as a social necessity – no woman would dream of going out of the house without wearing stockings. In the 1930’s, Dupont became interested in another product that fulfilled a social ‘need’ – the girdle. © 2011 Taylor and Francis

Girdles were elasticated ‘foundation garments’ worn under clothes to give women the ’right’ shape. There is no parallel in modern textiles to the stiffness of early girdle fabric, which compressed the body in a way that would now be considered intolerable. Once in a girdle, normal body movements like bending were awkward, eating was often uncomfortable, and sitting for any length of time could become painful. Yet, despite the discomfort, women always wore girdles when they went out, and put their daughters into girdles when they were still in school. In mid-Twentieth century America, all woman were expected to wear girdles. © 2011 Taylor and Francis

Why did women wear girdles? During ethnography among women who were old enough to have worn girdles on a regular basis, the three most common explanations were these: An unwritten rule: ‘I don’t remember anyone saying anything, it was understood that you wore a girdle, you just did it. For ‘health’: Expressed in vague terms as a ’need for support’ or a fear that without a girdle, one would somehow ‘just flop over’. To ‘look good’. It was considered impossible to look ‘good’ in clothes without the aid of girdles – but what did ‘good’ mean? © 2011 Taylor and Francis

Clothing as a ‘moral system’ In discussing the Victorian corset, the forerunner of the girdle, Bernard Rudofsky argued that clothes and underclothes are instruments of moral philosophy, the materialisation of norms and values, a ‘moral system’ in wearable form. According to Rudofsky, in Victorian times the corset was seen as ‘the hallmark of virtue, while the ‘lack of a corset was the visible sign of depravity.(Rudofsky 1974:110-1)’. In mid-twentieth century America, the girdle was seen in the same way. Recommended reading. Rudofsky, Bernard 1974.The Unfashionable Human Body. New York, Anchor Books. © 2011 Taylor and Francis

Perspectives on the girdle In anthropological terms the girdle was above all else a symbol, a statement in commodity form. But what exactly was it saying? There are several ways to approach this. From a political/economic perspective, you can place the girdle within the broad narratives of American business and political history, and show it to be the outcome of a confluence of factors that include phenomenal economic growth, unprecedented levels of mass production and consumption, sweeping social change and new chemical manufacturing processes. © 2011 Taylor and Francis

Social control and conformity Social change is always balanced by increased social control to maintain overall stability, and in the United States in the 1950’s this was exacerbated as the confidence of the immediate post-war years gave way to the Cold War and the perceived threat of Communism. In 1950’s America, these factors were reflected in a strict unwritten dress code, and garments designed to reinforce the mass values of capitalism and the image of a society in control of itself. These were epitomized by the grey flannel suit and other forms of prescriptive clothing for men, and a strict dress code for women – including the girdle Taylor and Francis

As Mary Douglas showed in Natural Symbols (1996:xxxv), the more value people set on social constraints, the more value they set on symbols of bodily control. © Taylor and Francis

Adding gender to this model, the ritualisation of dress in 1950’s America can be seen as a materialization of the desire to reinforce polarised gender roles, as an aspect of control in the face of change, and in support of the cult of family and ‘normality’ which always arises in postwar periods. ©2011 Taylor and Francis

Feminist anthropology and the girdle Feminist anthropology and women’s studies, which promote female autonomy, tend to see the girdle primarily as an instrument of patriarchal oppression. Thorsten Veblen in The Theory of the Leisure Class (1953) was an exponent of this view, describing the corset as a mutilation that transformed women into chattels, economically dependent on men. There is also the question of sexuality, how and by whom it is constructed, and its relationship to social control, issues raised originally by Michel Foucault. In this paradigm, the girdle can be seen as the ultimate instrument of social, physical and sexual control, the garment that defined domination and the dominated. ©2011 Taylor and Francis

In addition, there is an extensive critical literature on how women’s bodies have been commodified, standardized and controlled in various ways, how women became alienated from their own bodies and bodily processes, how ideologies of ‘health’ and ‘beauty’ enforce social control, and how images and expectations of women’s bodies are inextricably entangled with economic and social processes. © 2011 Taylor and Francis

The cultural biography of Lycra presented in Lycra: How a Fiber Shaped America touches on these approaches and provides material for future analyses within them and in other fields, but it takes a broader, less explicitly political perspective. Instead, the study focuses on how one of America’s largest and most powerful corporations once saw women, how that changed over time, and how these changes influenced the stuff they produced or didn’t produce for women. Lycra offers unique insights into the process because it came to the market on the cusp of a major social transformation with which it became entangled, and because the fiber came to have a defining relationship with the women of the baby boomer birth cohort. © 2011 Taylor and Francis

Discussion questions – Chapter Four 1) Discuss Bernard Rudofsky’s assertion that clothing is a moral system. 2) Dress codes: describe the dress code or ‘look’ of an identifiable group – for example the ‘Preppy Look’. What are it’s elements, what do they say about the people who wear the clothes, walk the walk and talk the talk? © 2011 Taylor and Francis

3) Describe the clothing worn by men and women in 1950’s America – how did they promote conformity? How do you think clothes act as instruments of social control? 4) Do you agree or disagree with the interpretation made by some feminist historians and anthropologists that girdles were an instrument of patriarchal oppression? 5) How were clothes ‘gendered’ in the 1950’s, and how is that different to the way we dress today? ©2011 Taylor and Francis