120 Dieting
breasts could survive the lack of support, and the 1980s brought larger breasts
back in fashion again with the invention of the “Wonderbra.”
Western women have bound their waists and breasts in the same way
that Chinese girls had their feet bound. They conform to contemporary
ideas of femininity to increase their marriageability and gain economic and
social stability. There are physical differences between men and women,
and women are taught a variety of tricks, mutilations, and tortures to empha-
size these differences and thus emphasize their femininity. If femaleness is
defined as the opposite to maleness, then the more different from men,
the more female.
The onset of the dieting ageIn the late 1960s women traded in wired and laced corsets for the rubber
variety which in turn were traded in for freedom. Boadicea-like bras were
exchanged for the softer, lighter versions which were in turn exchanged for
the luxury of going braless. Women were allowed and even expected to release
their bodies and to resort to the natural support of flesh and muscles. And
then there came the bikini, and along with it Twiggy was launched enthu-
siastically onto the fashion scene. Suddenly at the beginning of an era of
natural control and natural support, women were told that they should
not have any flesh to control or support. Bikinis gave no protection and
represented a freedom that was only available to those without any excess
bodily fat. Twiggy did not need to wear a bra or corset; she had no need
to squash her body in only for it to reappear elsewhere. But this absence
of need did not come from a desire to free the female body, but from the
very fact that she had nothing to free. Women could go braless as long their
breasts revealed only a restrained life of their own, and corsets were out,
as long as what was left behind did not need a corset.
For centuries, whalebones, latex, nylon, and cotton had been used to
reshape and rearrange any aspect of the body which did not conform.
Even in the 1920s with the thin “flapper” days, bras and corsets were an
acceptable way to control the female form. But from the 1960s women were
free from these artificial devices but were left with only their flesh to con-
trol. The messages were the same. Breasts, bottoms, thighs, and stomachs
should be rounded or flat as determined by the whims of the fashion world,
and “in each case the woman is tailoring herself to appeal to a buyer’s
market” (Greer, 1970, p. 35). But to comply women had to change their
actual bodies and this is where dieting raised its head. Weight Watchers