#people dont like to dress like their moms. there were social pressures to wear certain garments

[aahsoka]

I just need to address this One section. Everything else I generally agree with but 20s fashion did not exclude corsetry. It just transformed into a different shape, focused on compressing the bust and hips. This also supports the idea that this wasn’t a deliberate move to make women thinner, because at this time it was still normal to use shape-wear to achieve a silhouette instead of modifying your body. Here are some examples of what a ‘corset’ looked like in the 20s (though there were quite a few other types of undergarments in this time):

You also. left out an entire sentence from that smithsonian quote that acknowledges that shape-wear was used (though clearly these ‘tubes’ were not always elastic or unboned as we see above and I disagree strongly with how they decided to word this; a “structured version of spanx” doesn’t actually sound more “freeing” than a corset? + Women could breathe perfectly fine in corsets… etc)

OP’s ideas definitely stem from the myth that the 20s got rid of corsetry, as no one with a naturally curvy body could achieve that boyish silhouette without it. So what can you assume except that women were modifying their bodies if you are also assuming they no longer used shape-wear? Arguably, it was the shorter, looser skirts that allowed for more mobility (as opposed to certain belle epoque styles like the hobble skirt, for example, though I don’t think its useful to view 20s fashion as a full rejection of previous trends; there were some fashion ideas that started in the 1900s-1910s that stayed and it was more of a gradual change. Skirts included) or things like the use of spiral steeled boning in shape-wear like in the advertisement above. Certain kinds of undergarments were less restrictive but some were more restrictive, and it would depend on your natural body type which kind you might choose to achieve this look. We still haven’t technically stopped using shape-wear ever, we have just at some point turned to modifying our natural bodies being the more acceptable method of fitting the fashionable shape.

Most women’s fashion trends were mainly driven by women. Men hated hourglass corsets (which were not necessarily constricting unless you wanted them to be; women worked while wearing stays/corsets/etc for centuries) and crinolines when they were in fashion too! I heavily agree that what women wear is generally not a big patriarchal conspiracy. There are certainly times when it intersects with patriarchy, but it is not typically an explicit function of the clothing. I believe acknowledging shapewear/corsetry as not being extremely restrictive garments (“forced on women by the patriarchy”) is vital to making this argument.

I cannot copy the link but if you’re curious about 1920s undergarments Nicole Rudolph has a great comprehensive video on them called “How Flappers Got Their Figure: the 1920s Silhouette” on youtube.

The fact that thinness came in vogue (as seen in popular culture, magazines, fashion models, etc.) in the 1920s when women got the right to vote is telling. We got real, tangible power and then were told to be thin to achieve beauty, and sickly thin too. The kind of thin with no muscles, no power. It is not surprising to me that our beauty standards keep women physically weaker, physically starving, and mentally exhausted. The beauty standard is nothing more than a tool to keep women weak, docile, poor, and too tired to act.