bodies

In the sixteenth century, the fitted upper garment of a woman's dress was called a 'pair of bodies.' The term made sense: the garment consisted of two shaped pieces — a front and a back — that were laced together around the torso. Like a 'pair of scissors' or a 'pair of trousers,' the plural named a single object made of two parts. Bodies, pronounced over time, became bodice. The spelling shifted to match the changed pronunciation.

The bodice's construction required stiffening. Whalebone (actually baleen), wood, or metal strips called stays were inserted into channels sewn into the fabric. The result was a rigid torso that pushed the bust up, flattened the stomach, and held the spine straight. The 'pair of bodies' was not decoration — it was structural engineering applied to the human form. The garment shaped the body to match the fashion, not the reverse.

The bodice and the corset diverged in the seventeenth century. The corset became an undergarment, invisible. The bodice remained visible as the upper portion of a dress. By the nineteenth century, bodice-ripping became a figurative term — first for violent melodrama, then for a genre of romance novel. The Bodice Ripper, as a publishing category, emerged in the 1970s. The structural garment became a narrative device.

Modern fashion uses bodice to mean the upper portion of any fitted dress or gown. Wedding dresses have bodices. Ball gowns have bodices. The word has lost its connection to stiffening and boning. A stretchy jersey top can have a bodice. The pair of bodies that required lacing and whalebone has relaxed into a generic term for 'the part above the waist.'