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From Cotton to Silicone: Breast Prosthesis before 1950
- NYU Press
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3 From Cotton to Silicone Breast Prosthesis before 1950 Kirsten E. Gardner IN 1904 LAURA WOLFE, a single woman who worked as a saleslady in downtown Columbus, Ohio, filed a patent for an “artificial breast pad.”1 After earning her patent two years later, she described the product as “durable and efficient and simple and comparatively inexpensive to make.”2 Like many inventors seeking patents for breast forms, she relied on basic and accessible products to create the forms. By combining a clever design with uncomplicated production, Wolfe and other women filing patents in the early 1900s earned a niche in the male-dominated fields of retail sales, manufacture, and business. Moreover, in filing for a patent application, inventors articulated their designs, intent, and purpose and rendered a detailed record of the material culture of these early artificial parts.3 Many of the first patents for breast forms, filed as early as 1873, identified the aesthetic value of their product. Beginning in 1919 some applicants distinguished a medical application for the form. By then, surgeons performed a radical mastectomy as standard treatment for breast cancer and increasing numbers of women survived a breast cancer diagnosis.4 An expanding market emerged for women who wanted to disguise the results of this extensive surgery by wearing breast forms. As one inventor explained, a surgical bust form offered a “convenient and comfortable substitute for the bust of a woman, which has been removed by surgical operation, and which will relieve the flattened appearance caused by the operation and will reproduce the exact shape of the amputated part.”5 102 Historically inventors have conflated the aesthetic and medical application of the breast form. In midcentury, however, as refined and synthetic materials became part of breast form production, inventors’ designs reflected a heightened sensitivity to the needs of post-mastectomy patients. Moreover, patent production shifted to factories, overseas locations , and corporate ownership. Tracing breast prosthesis patents from the late nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth illuminates the functions of this form as both a fashion accessory and a therapeutic surgical device. The history records inventors’, and moreover common laypersons’, knowledge of breast cancer treatment, the medical implications of radical surgery, and a woman’s sensitivity to the amputated breast. References to surgical scars from the radical mastectomy, indentations that resulted in the chest and shoulder, and the disfigurement that accompanied this operation speak to the inventors’ familiarity with breast cancer treatment. The record in the patent further employs language and visual representation of different shapes and forms of the breast and suggests how value was attached to the various characteristics of a replacement breast. Finally, all inventors of breast forms, whether their products were designed for cosmetic or medical purpose, stressed the importance of natural appearance in an artificial form and recognized a profitable market as they sought proprietary claims on their designs. In spite of the specificity apparent in the breast prosthetic market by midcentury, both aesthetic and medical breast forms relied on similar popular conceptions of femaleness, womanhood, and “wholeness.” Comparing early patents for breast forms offers a lens through which to compare images of the female body, particularly the breast, and efforts to augment and imitate it. This essay explores the design, construction, and material culture of external breast prostheses designed before 1950. EARLY BREAST FORMS In 1874 the U.S. Patent Office issued its first patent for a breast prosthesis to Frederick Cox.6 This “breast pad” introduced the basic components of the first breast prostheses–a fabric casing filled with an artificial material meant to serve as a substitute for human breast tissue. The first “breast pad” design relied on a cotton “cushion” as casing and “inflatable india-rubber breast pads” as fill material. It served a cosmetic funcFROM COTTON TO SILICONE 103 [52.205.218.160] Project MUSE (2024-03-19 14:14 GMT) tion and created the illusion of larger breasts. Most early prostheses were based on this “casing model” and varied according to their shape, choice of fill material, and adaptations for comfort or ventilation. Using cheap and accessible supplies, designers often made casings of cotton, and fill material ranged from cotton to feathers, sponge, rubber, or hair. In figure 3.1 the model’s appearance, including her refined clothing , hair design, and corset-imposed shape, point to Cox’s assumption that his part be associated with upper-class customers concerned with...