Magazine Ad, 1891

[doreen T]

<img src="images/Toothin2.gif">
Source http://www.bodypositive.com/images/Toothin2.gif

[Edited by tamarian on 22-12-00 at 20:00]

[doreen T]

Okay, now I'm dying to know what was in Professor Williams' formula. I wonder if it was like Lydia Pinkham's Tonic, very popular for decades, a blend of various herbs and 30% alcohol?:eek:

Doreen

[tamarian]

Interesting find! What a shift in culture/media.

[doreen T]

Just 50 yrs before the time of this ad, we had the wasp-waisted belle aka Scarlett O'Hara (Gone With the Wind), and her 16-inch waistline. Aaarghhh! I measured my KNEE, it's 18 inches! Of course, the figure was also "comely bosomed, and shapely hipped". In fact, surgical removal of the lower ribs was a not-uncommon procedure amongst the idle and bored rich of the mid-19th century, with numerous mechanical contraptions invented to help lace and corset the poor victim into such an unnatural shape.

Men were not immune to fashionability; whalebone corsets and cummerbunds were popular "gutbusters" of the day.

A century before this even, in the mid-1700's, hips were in, busts were out. Formal women's gowns were hooped and boned and shaped so wide at the hip, most genteel ladies were instructed to enter doors sideways, to accomodate the bulky skirts. The bosom, meanwhile, was squashed flat as a pancake. God, I was born 2 centuries too late. Damn! I hate that!:eek:

Doreen

[Norma June]

That used to be me, I think I posed for that advertisement :) ... many moons ago!

Would you believe that when I was a young teenager, my mother actually made me take a product called Weight-On?

I was pathetically skinny, got married at 18 weighing 84 pounds and looked like I was having my first communion instead of getting married.

Even into my early 30's I was skinny. Met my present hubby at 32 and weighing 92 pounds. I weighed around 115 pounds when we married. What happened to that skinny gal I used to be?

ciao, Norma June (Barrie, ON Canada)