The art of body modification - new exhibition explores historic ways to reshape the body

“Shaping The Body” – new permanent exhibition opens on 25 March 2016

With the trend for body modification – from tattoos to implants – currently at an all-time high, visitors to York Castle Museum from 25 March 2016 will see how the links between fashion and body shape have manifested over the last 400 years.

Whilst surgery and medical intervention, from breast implants to hormone therapy, offer a contemporary and permanent means of changing the body, the desire to modify the shape of the body has been a common theme of fashion for centuries – with many parallels between historic and modern techniques.

“One of the most common techniques of changing body shape throughout history is the use of corsetry – structured clothing that compresses the body to gradually alter body shape.  We’ve got a large collection of corsets on display that use different materials and techniques – from a straw-lined fabric design which enhances the hourglass figure, to a rare iron corset dating back to the late 16thcentury, which was probably created to retrain and straighten the spine of someone with a physical deformity,” comments senior curator, Ali Bodley. 

The corsets were an effective means of body modification.  Waspish corsets – designed to replicate the segmented shape of a wasp by cinching the midriff - reducing the size of the waist down to around 19 inches (the world record for the tiniest waist is an eye-watering 15 inches), and young girls received their first training corset as they entered puberty.  The tiny waists that they created were further magnified by exaggerating the size of the chest and rear end, with the latter regularly featuring copious amounts of padding or even framed bustle ‘exoskeletons’ like the lobster tail bustle, which is also on display.

Alongside the corsetry sits a body modification tool for younger children that was somewhat less successful – an ear straightener, produced by Happy Day in the 1950s, which was designed to be worn by toddlers whose ears protruded too far!  Probably taking its inspiration from night-time dental braces, the ear straightener would be worn at night to help adjust the angle that the ear projects from the head – although there is little evidence that it would have worked!

Curators have carefully censored one of the more recent examples of body modification on display within the exhibition – a full body X-ray of a clothed punk, complete with multiple ear piercings, a safety pin through his nose and two lip piercings created as part of a series by British artist Nick Veasey (www.nickveasey.com).  The studs, rings and safety pins in his body and clothing stand out in stark white in the image, but one particular intimate piercing has been pixelated for the purpose of the family-friendly exhibition!

“Shaping The Body: 400 years of food, fashion and life” opens at York Castle Museum on 25 March 2016.  For more details, please visit www.yorkcastlemuseum.org.uk

ENDS

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Jay Commins

Pyper York Limited

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