Girdle (undergarment)

A girdle is a form-fitting foundation garment that encircles the lower torso, extending below the hips, and worn often to shape or for support.

Women now coaxed their bodies into two new types of foundations, the two-way stretch girdle and the cup-type brassiere, both more comfortable than their predecessor, the boned corset.

In 1968, at the feminist Miss America protest, protestors symbolically threw a number of feminine products into a "Freedom Trash Can".

These included girdles,[3] which were among items the protestors called "instruments of female torture"[4] and accoutrements of what they perceived to be enforced femininity.

In John Masters's Bhowani Junction, once the mixed-race Victoria Jones decides to opt for an Indian rather than British persona, she rejects her girdle as a "western garment".