A Mae West Chest

The Star says: "Hooray for Mae West"

What started out as an undergarment worn for hygiene purposes has evolved over the past 100 years. From simply loose clothing, to corsets, and finally to garments that enhance a woman’s body, lingerie has come a long way.
It not only reflects the fashion of the times, but also says a lot about how women have come to accept their bodies and their sexuality.
In the 16th to 18th centuries, the corset was all that women knew. A corset kept their waists small and pushed up the breasts. The smaller the waist, the more beautiful the women were considered.
It was a time when the images of a man unlacing a woman’s corset was taken as a metaphor for “deflowering”.
It was only in 1904 that French corset-maker Charles de Bevoise invented a lightweight undergarment in silk and lace called the “brassiere”.
In the Roaring 20s, it was no longer fashionable to show off your curves. It was a time of straight cut dresses, bobbed hair and the Charleston. What did women wear then? Slips, camisoles, suspenders and bras that flattened the breasts!
Ten years later, the breasts were liberated . . . thanks to buxom moviestars who wore dresses and sweaters that clearly accentuated their bodies. Hooray for Mae West and Lana Turner.
In the following 40s and 50s, women were still influenced by what they saw onscreen – and these included voluptuous beauties like Rita Hayworth, Ava Gardner and Betty Grable. And then there was Jane Russell in The Outlaw. She wore a half-cup bra which looked like she was bra-less. Armed withthis feat of engineering, she tantalised and teased viewers.
Despite the protests and the bra burners of the 1960s, women never did stop wearing bras altogether . . . .
- - excerpt from an article in The Star - -
Acceptance is liberating
By L. JADE
www.TheStar.com.my/
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