If you’ve spent any time on social media sites like Instagram, the term “bodycon” will surely pop up every so often. Especially if you’re a female who’s into fashion, you might have mistaken “BodyCon” to simply represent the name of another retailer trying to hawk their wares online. You’d be wrong.
“BodyCon” actually stands for “body conscious” — and a “body con” or “bodycon” dress is one that usually fits tightly and hugs all the curves a woman possesses, from top to bottom. Like the Herve Leger bandage dress, “bodycon” dresses aren’t simply tightly worn apparel that grips every part of a woman’s curves. As the photos falling under the #bodycon hashtag on Instagram prove — with some of the 501,344 posts appearing NSFW — “bodycon” gear can include more than dresses.
Throughout pages and pages of fashion sites, “bodycon” apparel represents tanks, pants, dresses, and skirts, and more. Some of the “bodycon” clothing is very skimpy and reveals plenty of the wearer’s skin via basket weave type designs or those cut to reveal ample amounts of cleavage.
Reports of Kim Kardashian ceasing to wear “bodycon” dresses were apparently greatly exaggerated, because the Daily Mail has photos of a pregnant Kim still sporting a black bodycon dress in preparation for Kylie Jenner’s 18th birthday party.
Whether it’s Nicole Scherzinger donning a white bodycon dress or Kimberley Walsh showing off her weight loss via SlimFast in a bodycon dress with sheer panels, the main point of wearing bodycon means one is definitely aware of their figure. It takes confidence to pull off the bodycon, ultra-tight look — and it also takes a lifestyle that many times includes lots of gym time in order to gain the curves to show off in the gear.
Whereas fashion looks such as maxi-dresses represent the MuMus of the millennium and make it easy to hide a stomach swollen by a big lunch, bodycon gear at times necessitates shapewear such as Spanx or corsets to be worn beneath it to smooth out lumps and bumps.
As reported by the Inquisitr, BodyCon dresses were made all the more popular in society when celebrities like Kardashian and Jenner and others began sporting variations of the fitted clothing. From classy styles to tacky, all sorts of bodycon wear can be found online for the buying and wearing.
Leave it to social media to help bring terms like “bodycon” to the forefront in a visual way.
[Photo by Rick Diamond/Getty Images]