The Grecian Bend was a dance move introduced to polite society in America just before the American Civil War. The "Bend" was considered very daring at the time.
The stoop or the silhouette created by the fashion in women's dress for corsets, crinolettes and bustles by 1869 was also called The Grecian Bend. Contemporary illustrations often show a woman with a large bustle and a very small parasol, bending forward.
The term was also given to those who suffered from decompression sickness, or "the bends", due to working in caissons during the building of the Brooklyn Bridge in New York. The name was given because afflicted individuals characteristically arched their backs in the same manner as the then popular "Grecian Bend" fashion.
Read more about Grecian Bend: Appearance in Popular Music
Famous quotes containing the words grecian and/or bend:
“Such were garrulous and noisy eras, which no longer yield any sound, but the Grecian or silent and melodious era is ever sounding and resounding in the ears of men.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Young, and so thin, and so straight.
So straight! as if nothing could ever bend her.
But poor men would bend her, and doing things with poor men,
Being much in bed, and babies would bend her over,
And the rest of things in life that were for poor women,
Coming to them grinning and pretty with intent to bend and to kill.”
—Gwendolyn Brooks (b. 1917)