the corset a cultural history by valerie steele

This thesis aims to demonstrate how our second skins, our undergarments and our clothing, are instrumental in fashioning our primary skin, our bodies. 8 2003 by Valerie Steele (Author) 54 ratings See all formats and editions Hardcover 98.07 Other used from 98. In doing so, I argue that cosmetic surgery creates bodies that mirror the practices of dress. The Corset: A Cultural History Paperback Feb. Through these interviews, I situate clothing as agent of influence on an individuals self-perception of their own body. My analysis includes interviews with three women, currently in their twenties, who underwent either a breast reduction or breast augmentation operation when they were between the ages of sixteen to twenty years of age. This thesis is an analysis of cosmetic surgery through the perspective of fashion studies in which I ask: what is the relationship between temporarily shaping the body through clothing and permanently shaping the body through cosmetic surgery? If bodies undergo cosmetic surgery procedures as a response to the experience of wearing fashionable clothing, can cosmetic surgery then be understood as a permanent form of dress? Focusing solely on cosmetic procedures of breast for this case study, I explore how the experience of dressing through bras and clothing can anticipate the decision to undergo a breast reduction or breast augmentation procedure. The Satin Corset: An Erotic Iconography 6. Fashion and Fetishism: The Votaries of Tight-Lacing 5. Dressed to Kill: The Medical Consequences of Corsetry 4. Art and Nature: Corset Controversies of the Nineteenth Century 3. So begins Valerie Steeles fascinating book, The Corset: A. Steel and Whalebone: Fashioning the Aristocratic Body 2. The corset is probably the most controversial garment in the entire history of fashion. In western histories of dress, considerations of cosmetic surgery are typically found as a concluding chapter, presented to the reader as a commodity of post modernity and the future of body shaping. The corset : a cultural history / Valerie Steele. A thorough analysis of the relationship between dress and cosmetic surgery is vital to the field of fashion studies. In the twenty-first century, the distinction between dress and body is increasingly becoming more indistinguishable.

The corset a cultural history by valerie steele