I was recently watching 1900 House and the narrator mentioned that women were generally flatter chested during the victorian era. What could be the reason for that?
something to do with diet maybe?
Sorry, the title should read “Victorian women”.
I seriously doubt there was any change in how women were endowed in such a short time (in evolutionary terms).
Clothing at the time just didn’t emphasize the chest. Bras didn’t exist (first one invented by New York socialite named Mary Phelps Jacob in 1913), and the push-up bra was far in the future. In addition, big breasts were not considered a sign of sexual desirability (thin waists and a bustle were still in).
The obsevation may have been made from looking at clothes of the time, but that’s an invalid conclusion. Since style dictated smaller breasts, then women would bind them down in order to be stylish.
Health and eating can affect how one’s body eventually turns out. Having nutritional deficiences while developing and you could wind up shorter than your full potential. And if you are skinny and malnourished, then you have less body fat and less breast tissue.
But, sweeping statements such as the one about Victorian women being flatter is hard to substantiate.
One of Cecil’s columns may be of interest: Am I imagining or are women’s breasts getting bigger?"
Ah, but you’re forgetting how much we’ve changed the “formula” for human growth in the past one hundred fifty years or so. We eat more food, injest more drugs, and are exposed to a ton more chemicals on a daily basis. Back before the turn of the century girls typically got their first period around 15 or 16, today it’s closer to 12, with starts as early as 8 or 9 not being unheard of.
Environmental estrogens are often blamed for this–lotions, cosmetics, sunscreens, some drugs, and more all contain them. Also, hormone-injected cattle produce hormone laden beef and milk that are injested by growing girls all over the country. I don’t think any of this has been conclusively proven, but the theories are not new and the fact that girls today are developing much younger and to a rather more generous degree has not gone unnoticed.
Regarding Cecil’s column–not to question his all knowingness, of course, but Playtex wasn’t founded until 1934, and cup sizing wasn’t even developed until a year after that. I don’t think it’s fair to use those sales numbers to extrapolate 40+ years into the past and draw any kind of conclusion from them regarding the size of Victorian women.
I’ve heard these arguments many, many times, but noone has ever managed to come up with any facts to back it up.
So, do you have some cites to substatiate this?
When I was growing up in the 1930’s my parents used to play cards with a couple who had a lot of National Geographics in their basement. Baby sitters weren’t common so I went along to the card games and spent the night going through the magazines.
Looking at the many pictures of bare-breasts from Africa that the Geographic used to feature, I can positively state that if the above is true then those women were eating more food, injesting more drugs and were exposed to a ton of chemicals on a daily basis.
http://www.007b.com/breast_development.php
discusses the environmental estrogens
here http://www.emagazine.com/november-december_1997/1197gl_health.html
discusses increasing rates of early puberty in general
http://medicalreporter.health.org/tmr0595/mum.htm
talks about the decline in ages at time of first periods
http://envirocancer.cornell.edu/Factsheet/Diet/fs37.hormones.cfm
talks about hormones in foods and their possible side effects. While it states that the hormones=development theory has not been proven, it also points out that it has not been proven false, either.
You’ll note I never said any of this was the scientifically proven “pat” answer. The OP asked why breast size might be different now and I put forth a few of the more common theories on early development in general, assuming that breast size is a secondary indicator of that.
Which Victorian women ?
The Beautiful people of the time , or the peasants , or all ?
Every era , has had a class of women that were idealized for physical chacteristics, whether it was Ruebens , or the supermodels in the 80/90’s with the heroin chique look. Personally I am willing to bet that women did run the gamut of grand and petit tetons , just like we do today.
just the itty bitty titty committte got the headlines then.
Declan
I think that corsets probably had a lot to do with it. I would venture to theorize that women who kepts their chests squashed flat all day, every day, would find themselves more or less permanently flattened.
I readily admit, however, that I am not nearly the expert on the subject of the female breast that I would like to be. I try to make the best use of each opportunity for careful study that presents itself, though.
Victorian corsets did not flatten a woman’s chest - they accentuated it. There are eras in which the corset styles of the time were intended to flatten the chest but Victorian is not one of them.
If this is true, that fashionable Victoria Era women were small breasted, then we have to assume that there was an inexplicable change in European women’s anatomy right after the Imperial and Regency Periods when display of breasts (and the bigger the better) was as big a fashion point as it is at a Super Bowl half time show or the Oscars.
There’s also the point that in Victorian times there were fewer options for adjusting size to fashion. For example, it appears that breast implants were less common then.