Jayne Mansfield in Popular Culture - Anatomy

Anatomy

Physical features of the "voluptuous" actress became subjects of humor or fascination in popular culture in a number of ways. In a 1950s Trans World Airlines (TWA) advertisement Mansfield is shown in a low-cut bodice, facing TWA crews, with the copy reading "quite... roomy... perfect". She came to be known as "the Cleavage Queen" and "the Queen of Sex and Bosom". As early as in 1959, Harry Carlson, co-founder of Fraternity Records, marketed Jayne Mansfield water bottles shaped after her curves.

Her bosom was so much a part of her public persona that talk-show host Jack Paar once welcomed the actress to The Tonight Show by saying, "Here they are, Jayne Mansfield", a line written for Paar by Dick Cavett which became the title of her biography by Raymond Strait. Joan Jacobs Brumberg describes the 1950s as "an era distinguished by its worship of full-breasted women" and attributes the paradigm shift to Mansfield and Monroe. Almost half a century after her death, a biographer of Nikolaus Pevsner (a German-born writer on British architecture), noted the improbable coincidence that Pevsner and Mansfield had once stayed at the same hotel in Bolton, Lancashire. There, she had "electrified the dining room with her imposing bosom". Patricia Vettel-Becker makes that observation more specific by attributing the phenomenon to Playboy and the appearance of Mansfield and Monroe in the magazine. Anita Ekberg and Bettie Page are also added to the list of catalysts besides Mansfield and Monroe. Drawing on the Freudian concept of fetishism, British science fiction writer and socio-cultural commentator J. G. Ballard commented that Mae West, Mansfield and Monroe's breasts "loomed across the horizon of popular consciousness."

Only Hearts founder and head designer Helena Stuart commented, "She was the first one that was really that big. Without the bra, it wouldn't have worked. There was a whole lot there to be held in and pushed up." It has been claimed that her bosom was a major force behind the development of the 1950s brassieres, including the "Whirlpool bra", Cuties, the "Shutter bra", the "Action bra", latex pads, cleavage revealing designs and uplift outline.

In the short story by Graham Greene, May we borrow your husband?, a character comments on her breasts as, "Everybody could grow them big except me. I am no Jayne Mansfield, I can tell you." In the 2001 fiction and poetry collection of Zaffi Gousopoulos, The I. V. Lounge Reader, a character tries out lipsticks in Mansfield colors and lifting underwear to emphasize her femininity. "All women aspire to be Jayne Mansfield", says a character in Drake Worthington's 2002 book, St. Vincent's Manhattan, while trying out a bra. In the Seinfeld episode "The Implant" Jerry quips "you know that Jayne Mansfield had some big breasts!" to girlfriend Sidra (Teri Hatcher) as he tries to figure out if her breasts are in fact real. Mansfield Domes are the unofficial names of two prominent granite mounds located in Yosemite National Park. In Toni Morrison's Beloved a character comments "Yeah, while I'm nursing. I feel like Jayne Mansfield" when her son comments on how big her breasts are.

Mansfield's derrière is also repeatedly referred to in popular culture. On an episode of Gilmore Girls, Lorelai goes fishing with Alex. She catches a fish, brings it home and names it Jayne Mansfield because she had a "great tail switch." In a sketch entitled The Worst Job I Ever 'Ad in the 1976 LP Derek and Clive Live by comedians Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, known as Derek and Clive, Clive (Cook) had the terrible job of retrieving lobsters from Mansfield's derrière. In The Broom of the System, a novel by David Foster Wallace, much of the story happens in East Corinth, a Cleveland suburb designed to look like Mansfield's curves from a bird's eye view.