How to grow your bosom (according to 100-year-old beauty books)

Sweet food + sweet thoughts = sweet bosom

Young woman
(Image credit: (Hulton Archive/Getty Images))

In the 19th and early 20th centuries, even the most fevered dreams of vanity couldn't have imagined the precarious magic of surgical breast augmentation. To think that there would come a day when women could have a doctor stuff bigger, firmer breasts into the space nature had designated parking for compacts only. Yet many women of a century past were just as obsessed with beauty as those who go under the knife today, and just as desperate for an ample bosom.

The Anonymous Countess C__, authoress of 1901's Beauty's Aids feels your pain, Tiny Breasted Woman:

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up
Therese O'Neill

Therese O'Neill lives in Oregon and writes for The Atlantic, Mental Floss, Jezebel, and more. She is the author of New York Times bestseller Unmentionable: The Victorian Ladies Guide to Sex, Marriage and Manners. Meet her at writerthereseoneill.com.