The article, Real Women, Normal Curves, and the Making of the American Fashion Mannequin, describes the history of American fashion mannequins, and how they emulated the fashion trends of the 1930s and 1940s. A notable fact spoken about in the article is the prioritization of representing young, middle-class, slim, white women. This was especially favored in the 1940s, when American patriotism and pride in self-sufficiency further popularized products that fit thin frames.
The article also goes on to describe how mannequins were often distorted by surrealist artists, who sought to critique humans’ relationship with the artificial, in order to produce uncomfortable reactions. These surrealist ideas then went on to be absorbed into high fashion by designers like Elsa Schiaparelli. However, the surrealist mannequin displays were later sanitized to a more appealing, dream-like advertising tool. A prominent figure at the time, Lester Gaba, detested surrealism in the mannequin window display career field, going on to mock it in his own displays. Gaba’s realistic mannequins were somewhat diverse, but often reinforced ideas of whiteness and femininity as the “standard.” He attempted to branch out and create a mannequin that represented a black woman, though the effectiveness of this attempt is said to be debatable.
Gaba also created a famous mannequin named Cynthia, which was modeled after Cynthia Wells, who both served as a traditional window display mannequin and a companion. As an odd display of their relationship, he would take her with him on talk shows and carry her around town. Cynthia’s popularity helped carry Gaba through the ranks of the fashion industry before he had to abandon her due to being drafted in World War II. Gaba’s relationship with Cynthia also served as a form of protection against homophobia, as Cynthia seemed to play the role of Gaba’s wife.
Another prominent designer, Lillian Greneker, had another idea of inserting realism into mannequins. Greneker attached photographs of famous actors printed on film to translucent mannequins in order to create a recognizable form. Yet another mannequin designer, Cora Scovil, also used translucent plastic in her designs, though her mannequins were far more futuristic. All three designers, and their different takes on realism, created a sort of base for the “perfect woman,” despite their works often being based on real women. A contributor to the popularity of mannequins in the 1930s was their ability to emulate certain personality traits depending on the way they were positioned, along with their usual bored expressions. This added an element of life and character to the mannequins, which drew viewers in. Lester Gaba took advantage of this, creating an art piece that depicted a mannequin shopping, stopping to smoke, and then looking in a mirror, as a traditionally feminine woman of the era might.
Similar to mannequins, off the rack clothing of this time were often designed to fit an average or approximation of the “normal” or “ideal” body, which was based on thin, white women. Due to women creating less of their own clothing and buying more off the rack, they began to expect store-bought clothing to fit them despite their unreliable sizes. When a garment did not fit, the article claims that women often assumed that the problem was the size of their bodies, rather than the size of the clothing that was never meant to perfectly fit them in the first place. The dissonance between the ideal body presented in fashion and the realistic bodies of women in the 1930s and 1940s often caused issues with body image among the population. However, measurement studies were conducted in an attempt to combat this with limited success.
The article could help me answer the question by providing a clear timeline of the cycle of women’s beauty standards within a pivotal section of American history. In the article, fashion mannequins are first presented as emulating the existing beauty standards of real women of the time, which were young, middle-class, thin, white women. Then, designers of these mannequins took the beauty standard and exaggerated it to its fullest extent. Which, led to women viewing these idealized mannequins as the new beauty standard, trying to emulate it themselves. This enacts a vicious cycle of the beauty standard becoming more and more unattainable as values of whiteness, thinness, and others are distorted to an unrealistic degree, creating a clear caricature of the values of the time.