Body shapers usually bring to mind the image of a woman holding on to the bedpost tightly, risking suffocation in the next second, taking a deep breath, and tightening her abdomen to the limit, while the person behind her pulls the straps with all her strength to make her waist thinner.

 

The term "shapewear" carries a strong gender connotation, being almost exclusively female. We don't usually associate it with men, just as we often think of pink as a girl's color and blue as a boy's; women wear high heels and men wear flats; women wear corsets and men prize a muscular silhouette...

But if you go back in time, you'll find history is full of contradictions. In fact, until the 20th century, pink was a masculine color, high heels were invented for men, and they also wore corsets.

In today's world of "body freedom," searching for "women's shapewear" on Taobao reveals that the best-selling style boasts monthly sales of over 20,000 units, while searching for "men's shapewear" yields monthly sales of over 3,000 units. Body anxiety plagues most people in modern society. It's more pronounced among women and more subtle among men, but it's a real reality.

Men have been wearing corsets since the 18th century

Modern scholars believe that corsets are a manifestation of patriarchal oppression of women.

The inherent tightness of corsets shaped women's figures and shaped men's perceptions of femininity and attractiveness. Consequently, despite knowing the disadvantages of corsets, women continued to wear them for a smaller, more socially acceptable waist.

Corsets became popular in the 16th century, allegedly due to Catherine de' Medici, wife of King Henry II of France, prohibiting women with large waists from attending court. During the Baroque era, fashion further established an extremely harsh standard: the ideal female waist was 40cm, and even men's clothing favored a narrow waist.

From Catherine's introduction of the corset into fashion until the economic constraints of the post-World War II era, the corset underwent hundreds of iterations, evolving from complex to simpler, gradually becoming the foreshadowing of modern lightweight and comfortable corsets. The history of corsets in Europe is also seen as a history of women's confinement and liberation, but in fact, men have been involved in corsets since they were invented.

Whether male or female, the history of human body shaping can be glimpsed through the history of shapewear. Yet history is often contradictory. Before shapewear was fully accepted by men, male artists were using it to perform extreme body transformations.

And today, in the pursuit of body freedom, there is still a constant stream of buyers using shapewear to alleviate body anxiety.