From the busty Victorians to the flattened flapper, women have stayed abreast of fashion throughout the ages.

Today, many women choose to undertake breast enhancement surgery, whether augmentations, lift or reduction, to increase their confidence or enhance their overall appearance. But even before the days of cosmetic surgery, women were taking certain measures to ensure their breasts look right - and not just for a particular outfit or for themselves, but to suit social trends and the status of women of the time.

During the 16th century, there was an emphasis of the female form. The ideal form was narrow waisted (hourglass) but voluptuous, which could be achieved with corsets, with laces and stays made of whalebone or metal. It could narrow an adult woman's waist, while compressing the breasts and forcing them upwards to the point of almost spilling out, so a considerable part of the breast was exposed.

In the Victorian era, (during Queen Victoria's reign from 1837 to 1901) women's clothing was designed to emphasise both the breast and hips by tightlacing the waist. Medical reports and rumours later claimed that tightlacing was detrimental to health. Various reformers proposed, designed and wore clothing supposedly more rational and comfortable than the fashions of the time.

The first bras were invented to liberate women. It was women's interest in bicycling that led to the first calls for ‘emancipation garments'. In 1874 Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, an early American feminist, urged women to "burn their corsets". Frenchwoman Herminie Cadolle started a revolution of her own when she cut her corset in two to make a garment more comfortable than an original corset.

At the turn of the 20th century, the ideal woman was the ‘Gibson Girl,' with her corseted S-shaped silhouette and a mature, womanly bust. But the war shook up gender roles, putting many women to work in factories and uniforms for the first time. Women needed practical, comfortable undergarments. The war also influenced social attitudes towards women and helped to liberate them from corsets.

In 1910, Mary Phelps Jacob, a 19-year-old New York socialite, purchased a sheer evening gown for a social event. Jacobs found that the whalebone on her corset visibly poked out around her plunging neckline and from under the sheer fabric. Dissatisfied with this arrangement, she worked with her maid to create a soft, lightweight undergarment that became known as the ‘backless brassiere'. Women began to enjoy an improvement in terms of comfort, lightness and visibility of their undergarments.

It was the arrival of the Jazz Age of the 1920s that convention really went out the window. The end of World War I brought a general sense of optimism, and culture became more liberated. It was the end of Victorianism and the ‘modern' flapper's thin, flat-chested, boyish style symbolised the new era of the worship of youth. Instead of wanting to look like grown-ups, younger women wanted to rebel and they turned to the look of early adolescence.

Women strove for a neutered femininity by flattening their breasts and de-emphasising their hips. It was relatively easy for small-busted women to conform to the flat-chested look of the Flapper era. Women with larger breasts tried products like the popular Symington Side Lacer, which when laced at both sides pulled and helped to flatten women's chests.

After the 1929 stock market crash and during the Great Depression that followed, there was a backlash against the freedoms of the Jazz Age. Women's fashions became more conservative, feminine and ladylike, and curves came back in vogue. Women looked to the glamorous Hollywood stars for their fashion cues as a means of escape from the deprivations of the depression. Jean Harlow, known as Hollywood's ‘original blonde bombshell', gets the credit for being the first screen actress to focus erotic interest back on the breasts.

Glamour became an even bigger goal for women in the late 1940s and prosperous 1950s as people began to enjoy the good times after the hardships of World War II. Leaving behind their no-nonsense time working in factories during the war, women were encouraged to return to their homes and make babies. The ‘domestic goddess' was idealised in her feminine role as male dominance was reaffirmed. Breasts were back in fashion and women worldwide wanted to attain the seductive sexiness of the Hollywood ‘poster girls'. The traditional ‘bust' was replaced by the trend to separate breasts, and it was the pointed circular stitched conical bra that gave film stars such as Lana Turner, Ava Gardner, Rita Hayworth and Jane Russell their curves. In 1948 alone American women purchased 4.5 million breast pads in their bid to attain the coveted curvaceous figure.

The Cold War threat of the 1950s also influenced what women wore. This was reflected in the ‘armour' of the fashions of the time. Women's bodies were transformed into symbolic weaponry via smoothing girdles and the ‘bullet bras' made their breasts even more prominent. The ‘blonde bombshell' Marilyn Monroe had her dresses lined with wires for extra uplift and support, suggesting a barely-contained explosive sexuality.

The 1960s took a twist that was comparable to the youth rebellion and sexual liberation of the 1920s. There was a revolution against the traditional norms of society and an awakening that came with the introduction of the oral contraceptive pill in 1960, the start of the Vietnam War in 1962 and the hippie movement that culminated in Woodstock in 1969. The baby boomer generation were coming of age and women grasped the new-found freedoms. Gawky, small-breasted Twiggy, the model synonymous with swinging London, came to represent the rebelliousness of the times. Twiggy was independent woman - slim, young, and free from housework and mothering. Her androgynous, frightened-kitten look and extreme thinness was reminiscent of the prepubescent flappers of the 1920s. Breasts were de-emphasised as girls strove to disguise their curves.

In the 1970s ‘freedom' became the big buzzword. The awakening of the previous decade continued to evolve, social activism grew more mainstream and feminism had a powerful impact on women's traditional roles. More and more women went braless and the comfortable ‘no-bra' bra, which gave a natural look under T-shirts, became popular.

Australian feminist Germaine Greer famously described bras as "a ludicrous invention" and a fellow student at Cambridge Lisa Jardine, remembered Greer loudly explaining that there could be no liberation for women, no matter how highly educated, as long as they were required "to cram their breasts into bras constructed like mini-Vesuviuses, two stitched white cantilevered cones which bore no resemblance to the female anatomy."

In comparison to the 1970s, greed was the goal of the 1980s, when bigger was always better - be it big shoulder pads, big hair or big breasts (whether natural or enhanced). The very well endowed country music singer Dolly Parton had her breasts enlarged to further emphasise her already ample curves, while Pamela Anderson Lee of Baywatch (1989), is famed far more for her cosmetically enhanced breasts than her acting ability. Soon came the introduction of the Wonderbra, so women everywhere could achieve this much-desired busty, womanly appearance.

These days, in the age of postmodernism, breast fashion is very much a matter of individual taste and is constantly changing, along with the idea of what an ‘ideal' woman should look like.

Women can choose not only surgery, but also from a myriad of temporary solutions for different occasions - from chicken fillets and push-up bras to enhance cleavage, to comfortable and supportive options for exercising.

Recent Statistics from the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery revealed that the most popular surgical procedure in the United States in 2008 was breast augmentation, the first time in 12 years that liposuction procedures were outnumbered. Aesthetic Society president, Alan Gold, MD, said, ‘Changes in fashion, i.e décolletage baring styles might be a factor behind this change,' which shows that breast fashion is still keeping up with the times.

The way women have displayed their breasts over time, and continue to do so, is intertwined with the social history of the status of women, as well as the evolution of fashion and changing views of the body.

ACSM #44