Old lingerie to make your butt bigger

This old catalog page from lingerie pioneer Frederick's of Hollywood features a variety of products that will help you make your butt larger and more symmetrical, prompting me to wonder if there was an age in which women looked anxiously over their shoulders into the mirrors at the Frederick's store and asked, "Does this make my ass look small?"

Frederick's of Hollywood - Spring Catalog, Page 13

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chgoliz

Big butts/hips are sexually attractive to men on the subconscious level because they make a woman look like she’d be good at bearing children. (Which doesn’t actually mean it’s true in every case.)

Our current assumption that women should be so skinny they don’t even menstruate is, biologically speaking, very unnatural. It might be one of the reasons so many female celebrities turn to adoption or pregnancy surrogates: they can’t maintain their weight and fertility at the same time.

One of my daughters (89 pounds, 5’0″) is too big for the smallest adult women’s sizes these days, except for arm length. Think about that.
mellowknees

Hey, speaking as a woman with what my sister refers to as a “pancake ass”, there ARE some of us out there in the world with very flat butts, for whom a little padding could be helpful to fill out some fashions (especially those wasp-waisted 50′s dresses!).

Myself, I just deal with my flat butt and sagging jeans (although I wish I could get some saline butt cheeks like Hank Hill because my tuchus gets very sore if I sit for too long, even in a padded chair), but I can understand where some people might feel more confident if they had more “mainstream” looking glutes.
- LazarWolf
  
  I was about to say the same thing. My hips are very wide for my body type, but I have no ass to speak of. I wouldn’t wear padding, just as I don’t wear a padded bra (I feel like I’m lying to the world), but I do try to exercise those muscles and make them bigger, because small butts are painful to sit on and don’t look as good as something a bit bigger.
spencercat

Look how far we’ve come! Back in the olden days women had to wear padded undies to have a big round butt. However, nowadays JLo and Kim K get surgical implants or injectables to achieve that unnatural bubble butt effect. Progress!
- adamnvillani
  
  …and your evidence that J-Lo or Kim K’s rear ends are anything but natural is… ?
Anonymous

Or…

“Does this make my ass look asymmetric?”
mtdna

I like big butts and I cannot lie!
- Anonymous
  
  From the Frederick’s Sir-Mix-A-Lot Collection
Matt Maher

They’re like Booty Pops! LOL!

http://www.buybootypop.com
Daggar

The bubble butt is not a new phenomenon.
Anonymous

they still carry those:

http://www.fredericks.com/shapewear/firm_control_panties/sh8,default,sc.html?defaultOpt=true&all1=all

they’re not just for those who were born female.
Yamara

prompting me to wonder if there was an age in which women looked anxiously over their shoulders into the mirrors at the Frederick’s store and asked, “Does this make my ass look small?”

Well before Frederick’s, good sir. Allow me to reintroduce you to the bustle:

http://sucheternaldelight.files.wordpress.com/2008/10/1887.png

I don’t think these wee the smallest of their kind, either.
Sekino

I, on the other hand, have no difficulty believing that there were times when women curvier than stick figures were considered attractive.

Heck, I still firmly believe that many (most?) men prefer some curvy bums and hips. I wonder if Frazetta’s art would have been nearly as celebrated hadn’t it featured all these super curvy, luscious derrieres ;)
Anonymous

You can still buy these. Now in Silicone.
http://www.lovemybubbles.com/padded-panty-silicone.shtml
Looks familiar ? :)
Anonymous

“…prompting me to wonder if there was an age in which women looked anxiously over their shoulders into the mirrors at the Frederick’s store and asked, ‘Does this make my ass look small?’”

Doesn’t that happen now?
Anonymous

Let’s ask what Sir Mix-a-Lot thinks of this ad:

http://www.theonion.com/articles/ask-sir-mixalot,12240/
markbellis

Given that this was a mail order company, this might be aimed at the transgendered community..
- nixiebunny
  
  I think it was aimed at the drag queen community, as the transgendered community didn’t exist (at least not with such a name) back then. I remember visiting Frederick’s on Sunset 20 years ago and being amazed at the vastness of their collection of padded underwear items for that crowd.
mdh

That ass only looks good with that waist, and that waist is hand-drawn for a reason. Nobody has it.
- Sekino
  
  I don’t know; Jennifer Lopez’ and Kim Kardashian’s butts look at least this bubbly and they don’t have 18″ waists. Certainly doesn’t hurt their looks or careers (heck, KK’s career is solely based on sex-appeal).
  - mdh
    
    It’s the waist that’s not plausible. Today they’d just photoshop it, as with KK and JL
- Anonymous
  
  That’s what the girdle (probably on the next page) was for.
Anonymous

What are the chances the art is by Bill Ward?
Ratdog

Now I can’t help think of that creepy puppet Sailor Martin, from that earlier post.
IronEdithKidd

The last time I saw a new Frederick’s catalogue was probably 10 years ago, and they still had the butt-be-bigger padded thingys.
Sork

Judging by that waist size, my guess is most of the butt are actually internal organs trying to escape.
Nadreck

Extensive Butt Analysis (for scientific purposes only, nach!) would seem to indicate that Jessica Simpson was wearing something similar in the Dukes of Hazard movie.
Daemon

They still exist, and aren’t even hard to find.
Russell Letson

Don’t any of you whippersnappers ever watch old movies on TCM? Never seen the famous Betty Grable swimsuit pose that occupied a million foot-lockers? That preferred silhouette for women persisted into my high-school days, fifty-some years ago. And just as a nod in the direction of gender equality, watch older movies for the shirtless-guy scenes and note the changing fashions in hunkitude. Start with Gable in “It Happened One Night” and work forward. Note how long it takes to get to the ripped midriff/gym-rat look.
pattycakes

I need me one of these
softestmonster

Maybe the point mdh and Sork are trying to make is that each era idealized some extremely unhealthy and unrealistic physical quality–now, it’s an overall skinniness, but in the era of bustles, those ladies had their corsets cinched so tight their eyes bulged, and in the era of Betty Grable and padded panties, while the bubble butt may have been sought-after, society still expected you to have a miniscule waist. Just like now, when there’s pressure to look good in “jeggings” (god help us), there was enough pressure then to be simultaneously thin in the middle but round in the back for there to be a market for padded panties.
Anonymous

This just shows how ridiculous it is for us to let others measure our self worth by the shapes of our bodies. We will never be good enough for companies who can only make money by making us feel inadequate. If we are thin, they will pad us. If we are fat, they will starve us. If we are happy, they will not become rich off of us.
Lobster

Christ, what an ass(hole).