Silicone Bra

These sticky-backed silicone rubber domes are self-adhesive bra cups that are designed to give your bust a boost. Otherwise known as chicken fillets because of their resemblance to slimy uncooked meat, these can either take the form of inserts that go inside the bra and create a push-up effect, or self-adhesive supports for wearing under strapless or backless outfits.

Well before the advent of surgical cosmetic procedures to permanently enhance, reduce or otherwise reshape the body, humans spent centuries using all manner of materials to mould, coax, squeeze, lace and otherwise force the human form into the silhouette demanded by contemporary culture. Historically this hasn’t been a solely female pursuit: Elizabethan men, for example, famously favoured codpieces and calf pads made of wood, horsehair and rags to accentuate certain features of their bodies. However, women have generally been driven to greater extremes of reshaping their bodies according to fashions and social mores.

Bustles, bum-rolls, panniers and various other inventions have historically been used to change the shape of women's bottoms, but when it comes to undergarments, the body part that has perhaps received the most attention in recent years is the breast. For as long as we’ve worn clothes, women have been dealing with the question of what to do with their breasts: do you show them, hide them, push them up, squash them down or leave them be?

Like all other forms of clothing, bras have changed over time to keep up with fashions. For example, in the 1910s and 20s the flapper aesthetic necessitated reducing bras for a flatter chest, whereas the 1950s saw the rise of conical bras to fit with the nipped waists and full skirts of the time (as well as inflatable bra inserts that could be blown up to the desired size using a straw).

Equally, materials for bust enhancing and reducing tools have changed over time, from the whale bone, horsehair and linen used in the earliest bras, through to modern synthetic bra materials like Lycra and silicone rubber that trickled down from military applications. Silicone rubber was developed during the second world war for insulation, seals and cushions in aircraft and submarines, but soon became a popular material for medical applications, including for breast implants, because it was biocompatible and bio-durable.

Because of its elasticity, density and ability to be easily pigmented and moulded it has also become a popular material for mimicking human flesh in applications like these chicken fillets, theatrical prosthetics, or cosmetic covers for prosthetic limbs. As with nylon tights, bandages and makeup, historically there has been a bias towards offering ‘nude’ silicone rubber products in colours that only reflect white skin tones, although this is being challenged by Black-owned businesses such as Sheer Chemistry and Browndages. As our research on materials for prosthetic limbs shows, these ‘flesh-like’ silicone rubbers make all sorts of assumptions about normative ideals of the human body that do not always fit with what people wearing them actually want.