Lycra: How A Fiber Shaped America (Routledge Series for Creative Teaching and Learning in Anthropology)

186 Pages·2011·2.98 MB·English

by  Kaori O'Connor

LYCRA
The Anthropology of Stuff is part of a new series, The Routledge Series for Creative
Teaching and Learning in Anthropology, dedicated to innovative, unconventional
ways to connect undergraduate students and their lived concerns about our
social world to the power of social science ideas and evidence. Our goal is to
help spark social science imaginations and in doing so, open new avenues for
meaningful thought and action. Each ‘Stuff ’ title is a short text illuminating
for students the network of people and activities that create their material
world.
Lycra describes the development of a specific fiber, but in the process pro-
vides students with rare insights into U.S. corporate history, the changing
image of women in America, and how a seemingly doomed product came to
occupy a position never imagined by its inventors and contained in the ward-
robe of virtually every American. And it will generate lively discussion of the
story of the relationship between technology, science and society over the past
half a century.
Kaori O’Connor is a Research Fellow in the Department of Anthropology,
University College London (UCL) in the United Kingdom. She holds four
degrees in anthropology, worked on Vogue magazine, was the founding editor
of the Fashion Guide to London, has written several books on fashion and shop-
ping, designed hand knitwear and originated and presented fashion and life-
style features for television, radio and national newspapers. She also works on
the anthropology of food, for which she won the 2009 Sophie Coe Prize for
her study of the Hawaiian Luau. Her most recent book is The English Breakfast:
The Biography of a National Meal published by Kegan Paul.
The Routledge series for Creative Teaching and Learning in
Anthropology
Editor: Richard H. Robbins, SUNY at Plattsburgh
This Series is dedicated to innovative, unconventional ways to connect under-
graduate students and their lived concerns about our social world to the power
of social science ideas and evidence. Our goal is to help spark social science
imaginations and in doing so, open new avenues for meaningful thought and
action.
Available
Re- Imagining Milk
Andrea S. Wiley
Coffee Culture
Catherine M. Tucker
Forthcoming
Fake Stuff
China and the rise of counterfeit goods
Yi- Chieh Jessica Lin
Reading the iPod as an Anthropological Artifact
Lane DeNicola
L Y C R A
How a Fiber Shaped America
Kaori O’Connor
First published 2011
by Routledge
270 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016
Simultaneously published in the UK
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2011.
To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s
collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.
© 2011 Kaori O’Connor
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by
any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publishers.
Trademark Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are
used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
O’Connor, Kaori.
Lycra / Kaori O’Connor.
p. cm. -- (The Routledge series for creative teaching and learning in anthropology)
1. Sport clothes industry--History. 2. E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company--History. 3. Baby boom
generation--History. I. Title.
HD9948.5.D87O26 2011
338.7'687--dc22 2010037391
ISBN 0-203-82990-5 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN13: 978-0-415-80436-3 (hbk)
ISBN13: 978-0-415-80437-0 (pbk)
ISBN13: 978-0-203-82990-5 (ebk)
IN MEMORIAM
With Love and Thanks
Gail Margaret Kelly
Professor of Anthropology, Reed College
Rodney Needham
Professor of Social Anthropology, University of Oxford
Owen Ulph
Professor of History, Reed College
Peter Gathercole
Cambridge University Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology

CONTENTS
Illustrations viii
Series Foreword ix
Preface xi
Acknowledgments xiv
1 Introduction: Lycra, the Ethnographic Moment and the
Anthropology of Stuff 1
2 Dupont: Culture, Kinship and Myth 26
3 Dupont’s Family of Fibers and the Birth of Lycra 54
4 Launching Lycra 84
5 Lycra, Aerobics and the Rise of the Legging 115
6 Another Ethnographic Moment 147
Notes 155
References 160
Index 165
ILLUSTRATIONS
Figures
1.1 Logo of E.I. du Pont de Nemours and Company 19
2.1 Portrait of Irénée Dupont by Rembrandt Peale 32
2.2 Map of Hagley by Frank Schoonover 43
2.3 Conestoga Powder Wagon by Howard Pyle 47
3.1 ‘The Chemical Engineer’ 57
3.2 ‘The Chemical Girl of 1940’ 63
3.3 Nylon Gives You Something Extra 65
3.4 Never Too Young To Step Out in Easy- Care DuPont Nylon 73
3.5 Before Lycra: advertisement for a girdle by Warner’s 75
4.1 Mother and Daughter: Orlon Good-Looking Clothes 85
4.2 Women examining sample girdles at the press launch of Lycra in 1959 89
4.3 Launching ‘Lycra’ in 1960 94
4.4 Mary Douglas, four- square grid and group box 110
4.5 Lycra: the Mark of a Real Woman 112
4.6 The Lycra Money- Makers! 113
4.7 Today’s Look Calls for Lycra 114
5.1 Jane Fonda’s New Workout video 123
5.2 Lycra Clothes Smoothers 129
5.3 The Pineapple Dance Book 131
5.4 ‘Move It, Shake It, Mix It Up. With Lycra’ 138
5.5 Lycra Sportivement 139
5.6 Lycra timeline 145
Table
1.1 Cohort chart 10
SERIES FOREWORD
The premise of these short books on the anthropology of stuff is that stuff
talks, that written into the biographies of everyday items of our lives – coffee,
T- shirts, computers, iPods, flowers, drugs, coffee and so forth – are the stories
that make us who we are and that make the world the way it is. From their
beginnings, each item bears the signature of the people who extracted, manu-
factured, picked, caught, assembled, packaged, delivered, purchased and dis-
posed of it. And in our modern market-d riven societies, our lives are
dominated by the pursuit of stuff.
Examining stuff is also an excellent way to teach and learn about what is
exciting and insightful about anthropological and sociological ways of
knowing. Students, as with virtually all of us, can relate to stuff, while, at the
same time, discovering through these books that it can provide new and fasci-
nating ways of looking at the world.
Stuff, or commodities and things, are central, of course, to all societies, to
one extent or another. Whether it is yams, necklaces, horses, cattle or shells,
the acquisition, accumulation and exchange of things is central to the identi-
ties and relationships that tie people together and drive their behavior. But
never, before now, has the craving for stuff reached the level it has; and never
before have so many people been trying to convince each other that acquiring
more stuff is what they most want to do. As a consequence, the creation, con-
sumption and disposal of stuff now threatens the planet itself. Yet, to stop or
even slow down the manufacture and accumulation of stuff would threaten
the viability of our economy, on which our society is built.
This raises various questions. For example, what impact does the compul-
sion to acquire stuff have on our economic, social and political well- being, as
well as on our environment? How do we come to believe that there are certain
things that we must have? How do we come to value some commodities or
form of commodities above others? How have we managed to create commod-
ity chains that link peasant farmers in Colombia or gold miners in Angola to
wealthy residents of New York or teenagers in Nebraska? Who comes up with
the ideas for stuff and how do they translate those ideas into things for people