colette's breast

The 'modern' corset is attributed to Catherine de Médicis, wife of King Henri II of France. She enforced a ban on thick waists at court attendance during the 1550s and had a questionable effect on women for the next 350 years. 1

''Ten years ago, so many department stores wouldn't even consider carrying larger sizes because they didn't want larger-size

women in their stores,'' said Kurt Barnard, the president of Barnard Retail Trend Report. 2

In order to survive, female movie stars had to be constantly wary of excess fat. "Eternal vigilance in the diet is the price of liberty from the ogre, obesity," declared Corliss Palmer, the winner of Motion Picture Magazine's Fame and Fortune Contest for 1920.

Throughout the 1920s, fan magazines were liberally sprinkled with dramatic tales of stars' battles with weight as well as their "helpful advice" for readers who might wish to reduce.

When "Bar- bara" made her first hit, she was a slim young gift.... When the money came rolling in, "Barbara" became a victim of luxury. She grew plump and prosperous; naturally, because she was carefree and happy. But the public didn't like it. Her "fans" complained; the exhibitors
kicked; the critics laughed at her. "Barbara's" admirers wanted to see her slim and big-eyed. "Barbara," alas, looked too healthy for a "vamp."

Yet all reducing articles, even those that highlighted particularly painful or foolhardy methods of weight loss, operated under the tacit assumption that no one, regular folks included, would wish to "let herself/himself go." 3

so despite the fact that madeleine vionnet, when a fat woman walked into her shop, would ask her to turn around and go, many a woman, obese by today's standards, was considered a paragon of beauty, a muse and inspiration.

lillian russell, misia sert, loie fuller and others had more paintings done of them than any other women of the time. they were on more maga- zine covers, and they were names in dedications in every- thing from music to novels.

colette satirized the whole "flapper situation" in a number of her non-fiction essays:

Colette makes us laugh at the fact that fashion affects not only clothes, but bodies; style fashions the body and hence the self. Breasts were to be dieted into oblivion for last season, Now we witness the return of the repressed in, what is more, a fashion industry bonanza: if you do not have any breasts left, we can do something about it.

Designed in rubber and painted a delightful skin colour, you may find them lifeless: why not try this little tulle number, with an accommodating hole for the nipple? Moreover, for women who failed to fashion their bodies for last year, there is also a solution: any breast can be changed, filled out if it is too flat, rounded and lifted if it is pendulous, the whole body encased in a rubber tube to give you no more hip than a 'bouteille à vin du Rhin.'

There are fashions in bodies: a woman's body is infinitely 'malleable' — if you are required to be a sausage, then a sausage you will be. We are taught by Colette to see that dress reaches very deep into the flesh, that style fashions the body and hence the self.

Rubber tubing and the extraordinary inventiveness of corsetry ensured that where diet and patent medicines failed, the female form could still be disciplined into the tubular shape required by the waistless tunic. But where 'too fat' required constraint and compression, 'too thin' was simply reinterpreted.

No longer referring to a woman ageing before her time, the 'thin' body becomes 'slim', acquiring an erect posture and youthful vitality; it is captured as it were eternally at the threshold of sexual maturity before the deposit of womanly fats on the hips and the breasts. 4

(i hope this makes some sense to you. it's a long essay, with all of colette's words in untranslated french -- too complex for the online translators or for my old rusty skills. but to tell the truth, i didn't perfectly understand the english, either. in any case, it becomes clear that colette was hip to the game: when imitation -- even of the bodies of the women of japan -- goes below the surface to effect self-esteem, it becomes just another power game. women, yet again, are pawns in that game of fame. no wonder clara bow looks so sad.)

'colette's breast' is from sisters of salome.

the art of loie fuller reemerges

On Tuesday, April 3, 2007 the Westminster Arts Center at Bloomfield College will host the performance “Dance of the Elements,” a powerful celebration featuring dance pieces by Jody Sperling (Time Lapse Dance) which bring The Art of Loie Fuller to life. The performance will begin at 7:30 pm in the Van Fossan Theatre located on the corner of Franklin and Fremont Streets in Bloomfield, and will also include a lecture-demonstration.

Artistic Director Jody Sperling (Time Lapse Dance), a choreographer, performer and dance scholar gives a postmodern twist to vintage genres, from the mesmerizing spectacles of Loie Fuller, to circus and music hall entertainments. Sperling, who is based in New York City, has gained an international reputation as an expert on Loie Fuller and as an interpreter of Fuller's style of dancing. She combines research with imagination, to craft inventive, visually lush, and often humorous dances. Her luminous works in the style of early modern dancer Loie Fuller are a mainstay of the repertory; other dances draw inspiration from such eclectic imagery as sideshow contortion acts, partner acrobatics, hula-hooping, low-flying trapeze, burlesque, Degas ballerinas, magic-lantern shows, mermaid myths, and... (more)

for more about fuller, see our earlier post; also check out kora in hell about fuller and other dancers of that era.

the butterfly dance

the butterfly dance served to inspire a dancer who was to become the toast of all of paris.

Around the turn-of-the-century the figure of the dancer, and particularly that of Loïe Fuller, can be found at the heart of an aesthetic revolution in Paris. Fuller appears in writings on this historical period as the figure who “embodied” the changing perception of human physicality, in particular its function regarding the production of meaning. Fuller's dancing is an exemplary model of transformation through flux and rhythmic continuity.

Following is a description of Fuller by her contemporary, Isadora Duncan, who travelled with Fuller to Berlin prior to her own successful tours to Europe: "Before our very eyes she turned to many-coloured shining orchids, to a wavering, flowing sea-flower, and at length to a spiral-like lily, all the magic of Merlin, the sorcery of light, colour, flowing form... She transformed herself into a thousand colourful images before the eyes of her audience. Unbelievable. Not to be repeated or described."

This was a dance of transformation through motion; flowing, spiralling, wavering, turning movements that fired audience's imaginations and inspired multiple readings of the morphing shapes she created. Marked by instability as a signifier and a quality of constant flux, this art was “not to be repeated or described”, a dance of continual invention that bypassed poses and postures, emulating the ephemeral “flow of life”.


Stephane Mallarme, the leading poet of the Symbolist movement, dubbed her "La Loie" and described her dancing as "the dizzyness of soul made visible by an artifice."

video of "skirt dancing"

more photos of la loie and of sada yacco, a dancer from japan who came to study and dance with fuller. (go all the way to the end on the right, then click on the photo)


and only a few of the artistic renditions of the artist...