The Langtry Bustle In the category of “Who Knew?”, I have recently become aware that young American women are in need of a reintroduction of the patented Langtry Bustle. In the 19th century, long before the miracle of silicone implants, young “fashionable” women who were deficient in their posterior endowments area made up for it by wearing bustles. These bustles made sitting a challenge, therefore inventors’ ingenuity came to the rescue with the spring-loaded Lillie Langtry bustle. It collapsed fan-like when a bustle-endowed lady sat down. When said bustle-endowed lady arose from her seat, her faux posterior automatically sprang back into place, maintaining her grandiose rear profile. This was considered so inspired an invention that someone named James Laver declared it to be “one of the most extraordinary inventions in the whole history of fashion.”

Young “fashionable” women of today have a similar problem, although much more hazardous to their health. As any big-bottomed lady with silicone buttock implants will secretly admit, sitting down, or anywhere else, when one has silicone appendages on one’s backside IS a problem. The everyday act of sitting must be done very carefully, apparently. The days of plopping in one’s chair are over for them. One blogger recently blogging of this type of plastic surgery cautioned “the prudent implantee should be cautious around cacti.”

For those young women cursed by nature with normal rear ends, and who for lack of money, bravery or whatever, cannot opt for the corrective surgery, the old time 19th century bustle for buttocks enhancement would be just the thing, except that they would then need to wear clothing to cover it. Wearing clothing is so “out-of-fashion” for today’s young women who prefer the 7/8s nude look, that there is absolutely no incentive at all for an entrepreneur to bring the bustle back into production. Hence, for young women of the twenty-oughts, it’s “go under the knife, or go out-of-fashion with the au-naturel physique that God gave you.”