Why women in the 1850's cared about body image less than women today (Body Projects, Part 2)

Last week, I wrote about something that kind of blew my mind:

Our belief that our appearance is the best indication of our identity is relatively new from a historical perspective. People in, say, the 1850s, believed this much less

(Missed that essay? Read it here.)

Today, I want to share more about why this transition occurred, according to historian Joan Jacobs Brumberg and her book, The Body Project.

Brumberg argues that the transition to “body = identity” occurred — at least partially — because it was genuinely more difficult to be fixated on one’s body before the late 1800s.

I wanted to share four reasons about why this is, that felt particularly profound to me:

1. Mirrors

Mirrors only became a staple of the American middle-class home starting in the 1880s, with the widespread adoption of a bathroom sink with running water and a mirror above it. Before then, “a reflective mirror or ‘looking glass’ was the luxury of the rich.”

Can you imagine a life before having a mirror in your home?

You simply couldn’t see your face, or your body beyond your arms and legs, on a regular basis. Maybe you could get a wobbly reflection in a window or a lake, but you definitely couldn’t look + scrutinize.

One clear result of mirrors in the home? An increase in concerns about acne.

Brumberg points out that before the widespread placement of mirrors in homes, pimples were “primarily a tactile experience, at least for the girl who had them.” This makes sense to me — if you can’t see and obsess over every pore and color on your face, it’s hard to be as worried about the whole thing.

But once you could see and obsess over your face? This led to a huge growth in the market for facial creams, lotions, and soaps — and the popularity of bangs (to cover up forehead acne) as a fashion trend.

2. Scales

Scales were not widely available in the US until the 1920s. Prior to that, “drugstores or county fairs were the only place where young women could weigh themselves.”  

The Body Project has fabulous pictures of Victorian women — often quite full-figured Victorian women — grinning as they stood at a county fair next to a guess-your-weight booth and a scale.

Grinning! Next to a scale!

They weren’t terrified of their weight; there simply wasn’t an infrastructure for obsessive knowledge and comparison of weight yet.

I can’t tell you the number of people who have told me things like “I gained 3 pounds this week, I’m so upset.” What would it be like to live in an era when you couldn’t possibly know if you’d gained 3 pounds this week?

3.  Mass-Produced Clothing

It was only in the early 1900s that mass-produced clothing became widely worn. Previously, most clothing was homemade. For adolescent girls, this meant that their mothers typically “made and supervised” their clothing.

Brumberg writes: “So long as clothing was made at home, the dimensions of the garment could be adjusted to the particular body intended to wear it. But with store-bought clothes, the body had to fit instantaneously into standard sizes that were constructed from a pattern representing the norm.” (110).

How much have you obsessed about being one size higher or lower? How would it be different if your mother simply took your dimensions and made you a dress in the size that was right for you — a size that could not be compared to others, because there was no standard sizing?

4. “Cultural mirrors”

Not only could women increasingly see themselves more easily as the 1900s dawned — they could more easily see images of other, more ideal women.

From the photographs in women’s magazines to motion pictures — women were now seeing a lot more of perfect, idealized women, beyond simply the women in their families and community.

Think about it: how would your perception of your own body be different, if most of the women you saw were simply women in your own family and community? Women in your community, at that time, in particular, probably had similar genetics, ate similar foods, had similar lifestyles, and as a result…probably had a similar body type.

…

Imagine being an American middle-class teenage girl in, say, 1870:

• You don’t have regular access to a mirror, and you have no capacity to weigh yourself.

• Most of the women you see are women in your community who probably have similar bodies to yours.

• When you need a dress, your mother makes you one in your size — which can’t be compared to others’, because it is custom.
  

Instead of a body image, you have a felt experience of your body.

This is not to say that life was halcyon and perfect in these previous eras — the Victorian era was also the era of the corset, for example. And, of course, it is an analysis of America at this time — Brumberg doesn’t do a cross-cultural comparison, but many of the same points will likely hold.

But it is interesting to imagine: what was it like to live in a time when “body projects” were both discouraged and genuinely harder to implement? 


As always, I’m rooting for you. You’ve got this.

Katie

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