Life

The Hourglass Physiques Of The 1917 Forverts

Ad for Dove UK limited edition body wash Image by YouTube Screenshot

By Phoebe Maltz Bovy May 11, 2017

Dove UK is catching some online criticism for a curious promotional stunt: It’s promoting a “limited edition” series of body wash bottles, in six different shapes, meant to represent the various forms of women’s bodies. Which is nice and all but… why? At The Pool, Amy Jones explains that these bottles are not filling an unmet niche in the market:

I don’t think anyone in the history of the world has thought, “You know what would make me feel a lot more empowered? If I could pretend I was squeezing my soap out of a tiny-scale model of my own body”

Correct. And as Ian Bogost points out in The Atlantic, the bottles would if anything prompt the woman purchasing them to remember whichever body image concerns, at a time (buying soap) when one normally is thinking of other things (namely, buying soap). And yet, it’s an outrage story. It’s coverage. I have, in writing this, unavoidably reminded you of the existence of the brand in question.

The controversy might make you nostalgic for a time uncorrupted by advertising, and by unrealistic expectations of women’s physiques. Surely 100 years ago, our foremothers had no such concerns!

Not quite.

Wonderlift corset ad, 1917. Image by Forward Association

A Forverts ad from 1917, showcasing “Wonderlift” corsets, offered women a century ago the option of looking hourglass, hourglass, or hourglass. (Or as it’s known today, like the body-wash-shaped Dove body wash container.) The main part of the ad depicts three women, of subtly different builds, cinched to approximations of the same. They’re just sort of standing there, together, as corseted women are wont to do (?), the tall one in the middle smiling gently. “Uplifting support seated or standing” promises an inset image zooming in on the… corset-covering areas of a seated woman wearing a corset.

Image by Forward Montage

Have things for women improved, body-image-wise, in this, the (mostly) post-corset age? When en route to the Forward offices today, I pass a gym promising a workout that “lifts your seat.” I don’t not own Spanx.

What comes through, then, is an advertising universal: reminding women of our bodies, and any anxieties we may have about them, sells.

Phoebe Maltz Bovy edits the Sisterhood, and can be reached at [email protected]. She is the author of “The Perils Of ‘Privilege’”, from St. Martin’s Press. Follow her on Twitter, @tweetertation

Phoebe Maltz Bovy is a former editor of the Sisterhood blog at the Forward. Her writing has appeared in several publications, including The New Republic and The Atlantic. Her book, “The Perils of ‘Privilege,’” was published by St. Martin’s Press in March 2017. She has a PhD in French and French Studies from New York University, and has read a lot of 19th century French Jewish newspapers for a 21st century American.

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