Support Group.(women's foundation garments)

Byline: KATE SULLIVAN

In the nineteenth century, the French longed for la taille de guA*pe (the wasp waist). Today, we revere the more prosaic six-pack. These are the garments that have whittled us.

TWELFTH CENTURY: A drawing of a demon in a laced bodice suggests that people at the time wore such garments; this and the period's tight-fitting gowns lead historians to believe that women wore corsets or coiled bandages at the waist.

SIXTEENTH CENTURY: French aristocrats' corsets include busksstomach-flattening stripsmade of ivory, mother-of-pearl, or silver. Working-class women wear buskless corsets reinforced with turkey cartilage.

1779: Describing the discomfort of the "open corset"which laces in the front, in the back, and on the sidesthe Duchess of Devonshire (right) writes in her novel The Sylph that "pride feels no pain."

1811: A girdle for expectant mothers, the Pregnant Stay, is introduced. It is a boned bodice meant to reduce "the natural prominence of the female figure during a state of fruitfulness."

1918: In New Guinea and parts of Africa, girdles made of plaited grass are createdand woven so tightly that they have to be greased to be removed.