Actually, women have been the ones messing around with their waistlines. Even in ancient Greece and Rome women wore tight linen wraps to make their waists look slimmer. It wasn't until people began hunting whales that the whalebone corset came out.
And it was a woman, not a man, who invented the bra. I'm bad with names, so you're going to have to Google or Ask Jeeves for the name, but the story goes, this upper-crust young lady was wearing a corset, which ran from the armpit to the knee, and one evening she wanted to wear a daring strapless gown to a social event. But the corset kept peeping through the fabric roses on the dress, so finally she had her French maid help her out of the corset, bring her two large cotton handkerchiefs, and tied them together in front, put them on her bosom, and tied the other ends behind her back. She loved the feeling of being without the corset, and apparently had no problems at the ball. She then went on to create an actual brassiere (French for "arm guard"), and the rest, as they say, is history. Corsets began a downward spiral in popularity after that.
I remember the bra-burnings in the 60s and 70s. Supposedly they were a demonstration against men deciding what a woman should wear. I always wondered if those women's libbers who burned their bras in protest thought when they found out that the bra was actually invented by a woman, in order to free womankind from the tyranny of the corset? And women brought this on themselves--just like guys suck in their stomachs and push out their chests when they see a woman, women have pulled in their stomachs in order to make themselves look thinner to guys. Don't you just LOVE the crazy things hormones make you do? :D: :p:
;)
I recently read why the bound foot was popular in China, before the fall of the monarchy. Seems this one emperor was enjoying the company of his harem, and one of his concubines got on a table and started dancing for the emperor. She happened to have tiny feet, and not only did the emperor enjoy the dance she did for him, he fell in love with her tiny feet. He elevated this concubine in status, and declared that small feet on women were a desirable trait. So women, in order to catch the eyes of men, began binding their and their daughters' feet, and shoving them into these "flowerpot" shoes. When the Communists took over, foot binding died out.
