When hemlines went up in the 1920s, Suzanne Geoffre’s hopes for the future were dashed. The fleshy shape of her calves deviated significantly from the standard silhouette of modern fashion. It put a damper on her dream to become a major fashion designer in Paris and eventually cost her a leg.
The silhouette of the 1920s took up where it had left off on the eve of World War I. It became increasingly clear that having a slim figure was desirable and fashion designs mirrored this belief.
The new silhouette proposed by designers was so straight, in fact, that images of greyhounds made regular appearances in fashion sketches. The dog was evidently touted as the breed which best complemented fashion’s most wanted body shape: lean and boyish.
At the turn of the century, on the other hand, the ideal figure had been curvaceous and more or less concealed by clothing. It was easier, at the time, to hide actual or imagined physical defects from strangers’ eyes. Curves were acceptable on real women as opposed to official works of art.
At the Paris Exposition Universelle of 1900, Paul Moreau-Vauthier – commissioned to sculpt a statue of a lady meant to represent the city of Paris – presented the figure of a voluptuous woman, loosely modelled on the actress Sarah Bernhardt. Ironically, the public was outraged: they expected a slender figure of classical antiquity. They got, instead, the figure of a modern Parisienne. By the time the war was over, however, thin was in. Bosoms and ample calves were out.
In Body Parts (2005), a collection of critical studies edited by Christopher E. Forth and Ivan Crozier, historian Carolyn Ward Comiskey discussed the case of Suzanne Geoffre. In the paper, ‘I will kill myself…if I have to keep my fat calves!, Leg and Cosmetic Surgery in Paris in 1926’, Comiskey explains why Geoffre took advantage of plastic surgery to remodel her fleshy calves, eventually suing the surgeon who had carried out the procedure.
After saving up enough money, the story goes, by working hard in the fashion industry, Geoffre founded a maison de couture. According to her lawyer, Jose Thery, Geoffre’s life would have been perfect had it not been for the fact that “her legs were a bit heavy”.
When a well-known and respected plastic surgeon agreed to remove the extra fat he damaged, in the process, a significant amount of muscle.
Three weeks after the intervention, gangrene developed in her leg and doctors requested her permission to amputate it.
Although it was a matter of life or death, Geoffre did not want to go through with the procedure. Her fiancé married her in hospital and it was only thus, according to the legal records, that she was convinced to save her life.
Geoffre’s desire for “perfection” reflected a change in the mentality at the time. It was becoming acceptable for an individual to undergo a medical intervention to improve appearance.
The experiences of World War I had changed the public’s perception of plastic surgery and they had also forced the medical establishment to intensify its expertise in this department.
For one thing, as Jennifer Terry notes, changes in the way war was fought caused injuries which had never been dealt with before. In her study, ‘Significant injury: War, medicine and empire in Claudia’s case’ (2009), Terry observes that the “bodies and faces (of soldiers who fought at Verdun and Somme) were surgically reconstructed using plastic surgery techniques that have been incorporated by the now billion-dollar international industry of cosmetic surgery”.
The difference between plastic surgery and cosmetic surgery is, according to Alex Kuczynski, that one is necessary while the other is not. Plastic surgery may repair a cleft lip or a part of the body that has been disfigured by an accident while cosmetic surgery is medically unnecessary.
The war also accelerated the erosion of old barriers. It created a need for plastic surgery and subsequently made cosmetic surgery acceptable. It also showed that physical strength, as opposed to physical appearance, was less important than it had been.
Women were earning their own money, while men were realising that physical might was not as crucial as it had been before the age of mass industrialisation. Technology had changed the nature of warfare and the diminishing importance of individual might.
The Lewis machine gun, for example, could fire up to 700 bullets a minute. It was so light that a soldier could easily carry it on his own.
During the early decades of the 20th century, it became more acceptable for both men and women to improve their appearance to better succeed in a society where beauty was an asset, whether to get a job or a spouse.
The beauty industry flourished, with city-dwellers seeking the services of hairdressers, beauticians and, occasionally, plastic surgeons.
The case of Geoffre did not, in the long run, stand in the way of plastic surgery. Medical interventions continued to satisfy (and dissatisfy) people who yearned to conform to traditional standards of beauty.
The skirt length for this autumn is the Midi, that mid-calf length that spelt such bad news for Geoffre who, like most real women, was not pencil thin.
The good news is that, unlike Geoffre,we can simply ditch it and wear something else.