© 2001 by Design History Society
Designing the Electric Body: Sexuality, Masculinity and the Electric Belt in America, 1880–1920
University of California at Davis
 |
Abstract |
|---|
Electric belts, depues typically overlooked by historians of both medicine and technology, offer important evidence that the monts of electric energy and powerful bodies used in deco design of the 1920 were part of an actual attempt to add physcial power to the body through electricity in the early twentieth century In spite of their limited medicinal value, belts sold heartily between their introduction in the 1890s and their demise in the 1920s primarily because they offered a method by which electrical energy could add to the body's vital reserves and overcome what were perceived to be masturbations's depleting effects In doing so, they helped, primarily, male consumers understand technology as the means by which their bodies could achieve the physical power necessary to meet the modern era's public and private physical demands.
Key Words: design history • electricity • gendered design • history of technology • material • cultural studies • sexuality