While researching this theme month, I found that for large portions of history, the human experience (this sweeping statement is rather Eurocentric, but I will get to that!) of dressing chests is one of trying to alter it. I love that sewing can help us to unlock the reasons we wear what we do and decide whether altering the shape of our chest is something we want or need to do. If you are interested in finding out more about the history of lingerie specifically, check out Jacinta’s brilliant post for last year’s Over/Under theme.
Throughout history, chest binding has existed as a means of gender affirmation. Men and non-binary people who were assigned female at birth have bound their chests with fabric to address the dysphoria they experience around their body. A particular example is Michael Dillon, a transgender pioneer who reportedly bound his chest from an early age before undergoing gender-affirming medical procedures. Historically, these bindings were often tightly wound strips of fabric wrapped around the chest. Nowadays, chest binders are tightly fitting garments and can be bought ready to wear or tailor-made for individuals to ensure that safety, comfort, and style are right for the wearer.
Image: gc2b marketing campaign photograph
Forms of chest binding and flattening have also been common at various stages for cis women as fashion, cultural dress, and even religion have dictated that flat chests are preferred. The stays and corsets of the 18th and 19th century proved the virtuousness of their wearers and by extension their celibacy, a Christian preoccupation of the time, while the flappers of the 1920s were rebelling against earlier Edwardian styles which accentuated curves by binding chests and wearing loose-fitting clothing to achieve a straighter, flatter body. In East Asian countries such as in South Korea with the traditional Hanbok dress, some women bind their chests to ensure the line of traditional clothes is uninterrupted.
In the West, the Second World War and the 1950s shifted the emphasis from the androgynous body types preferred in the 1920s to an extreme femme shape. Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell popularised an hourglass, voluptuous shape, and bullet bras and girdles became de rigeur. Even through to the 1980s and 1990s, Wonderbra lifted, enhanced, and told femme women that cleavage was most definitely the thing to have. Bras even promised an additional few cup sizes if you didn’t fit into the current desirable aesthetic.
Image: BBC News, “M&S archive images chart the history of the bra”
Although these chest changes seem to disproportionately impact men assigned female at birth and women, cis men were not exempt from sartorial attempts to alter their chest or change what they wear upon it in the name of fashion. Doublets of the 16th Century were padded waistcoats or jackets which accentuated certain areas and “hid” others, usually dependent on the physical appearance of the societal leaders and monarchs of the time. Although not designed to change chest shape, the men’s vest (an undershirt for American readers) was rendered embarrassingly dated by the simple act of Clark Gable removing his shirt and showing a bare chest in It Happened One Night in 1934.
Of course this is all, as I say, rather Eurocentric. There are many people throughout the world who do not cover their chests because they do not have the same sexualised or gendered notions of bodies. Often, the history of chest covering is also the history of violent colonialism, religious influence, and patriarchal and/or capitalist control. To name but a few, the Nádleehi of the Navajo Nation, the Fa’afafine of Samoa, and the Hijra of India cannot be described using a European sense of binary gender yet colonising forces attempted to erase these identities through the enforcement of strictly gendered clothing.
Image: “The ‘two-spirit’ people of indigenous North American’s”, Walter L Williams, The Guardian UK
All this is to say: This theme month, take a moment and consider how and why you dress your chest. Your space on the gender spectrum, your comfort, your culture, and your personal history will all likely mean that the clothes you sew to cover your torso are entirely your own—unique and yet part of a long shared history. Will you sew bras, corsets, binders, or vests, or perhaps you might consider eschewing them all?
Sophy is from England but currently lives and sews in Hong Kong. She is a temporary Sewcialists Editor and can be found online at @sophy_sews_hk.
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Ahem. That two-spirit person may also be a musician, but what they’re doing here is weaving.
Thank you so much for bringing that to my attention! I’ve fixed it now and you were right, I was focused on the fact the two-spirit person I was reading about was a highly acclaimed musician.
Really interesting and good for thought…… and sewing. Thank you.
Many easily accessible dress/costume historians show that some form of binding was used by Roman (and possibly earlier) women for support and ‘fashion’ purposes. This seems to have continued into the Middle Ages (although there are extant garments that demonstrate that there were other options). Stays were common from the 16th – early 19th century, again as a combination of support and part of the fashion of the time. Radical changes in corsetry began after 1830-1840 with development of new technology.
“The stays and corsets of the 18th and 19th century proved the virtuousness of their wearers and by extension their celibacy, a Christian preoccupation of the time” is an interesting and wide-ranging statement – would love to see your citations in support of this.
The comment about stays and corsets also surprised me. They served as huge a variety of purposes as bras do today and therefore there were as many attitudes about them!
Just another small note – that image of different folks wearing skin-toned binders is from binder company GC2B. It would be great if you could give it its original attribution, since it originates online unlike the other two which understandably have an online secondary source. (I’m also perhaps a bit wary of having the only non-wikipedia cited source on binders be one focused so much on harm/danger, but that’s the queer academic in me talking).
But, lest this all seem critical, I was really excited to see a post that recognizes that many and various ways in which we manipulate and cover/uncover the various fleshiness of our chests! It can be really easy to have one shape naturalized by seeing it so much in ads, media, etc, so it’s helpful to remember that chest shape is just as prone to fashion as everything else about the ways we display our bodies.
Thank you so much for bringing to my attention the need for proper attribution, I‘ll amend the citation of that image to reference gc2b.
I do appreciate my statement on stays and corsets is an over simplification, I was focusing on the many societal reasons for changing chest shape and this seemed an interesting side to consider. The post should definitely not be read as a comprehensive over view of chest covering, rather, as you say, a reminder that there are many ways to cover (or not) our chests and these all have a variety of reasons behind them.
Thank you so much for providing more information! This was a very basic look at a history of chest covering, so my statements are indeed wide ranging and generalised to prompt some food for thought. I found information on stays as a symbol of virtuosity on the site http://thedreamstress.com/2013/08/terminology-whats-the-difference-between-stays-jumps-a-corsets/. Please do let me know if I can/should amend this.