Cleavage enhancement - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Cleavage enhancement encompasses a range of techniques used temporarily to improve the appearance of a person's breast cleavage

Cleavage (breasts)

Cleavage, anatomically known as the intramammary cleft, is the space between a woman's breasts lying over the sternum. Cleavage is exposed by a garment with a low neckline, such as ball gowns, evening gowns, swimwear, casual tops and other garments....

or to create the illusion of breast cleavage on a person who has no such cleavage. This ranges from brassiere

Brassiere

A brassiere is an undergarment that covers, supports, and elevates the breasts. Since the late 19th century, it has replaced the corset as the most widely accepted method for supporting breasts....

s (bras) that lightly push the breasts together without any padding through a range of increasingly padded bras to techniques where chest skin is pulled towards the centre to generate cleavage and completely artificial breasts, such as breast prostheses are added to cover the materials used to pull the skin.

Cleavage enhancement may also include the use of makeup

Cosmetics

Cosmetics are substances used to enhance the appearance or odor of the human body. Cosmetics include skin-care creams, lotions, powders, perfumes, lipsticks, fingernail and toe nail polish, eye and facial makeup, towelettes, permanent waves, colored contact lenses, hair colors, hair sprays and...

to deepen the appearance of the cleavage and make the breasts either side of the cleavage appear more prominent.

Reasons for enhancing cleavage

Women often want to enhance their cleavage for special occasions or to suit the style of a low cut top or dress. Examples include nightclub wear and formal dresses.

In movies and theatre, an actress who has smaller breasts than the character she is playing may need to use cleavage enhancement techniques to present the image required by the role. For example, Julia Roberts

Julia Roberts

Julia Fiona Roberts is an American actress. She became a Hollywood star after headlining the romantic comedy Pretty Woman , which grossed $464 million worldwide...

was required to wear a water-padded bra for the movie Erin Brockovich
Erin Brockovich (film)
Erin Brockovich is a 2000 biographical film directed by Steven Soderbergh. The film is a dramatization of the story of Erin Brockovich, played by Julia Roberts, who fought against the US West Coast energy corporation Pacific Gas and Electric Company. Roberts won the Academy Award, Golden Globe,...

in order to increase her apparent breast size and enhance her cleavage.

Male cross-dressers

Cross-dressing

Cross-dressing is the wearing of clothing and other accoutrement commonly associated with a gender within a particular society that is seen as different than the one usually presented by the dresser...

often want to create the illusion of female cleavage as part of making their body appear feminine. Many crossdressers believe that displaying a convincing cleavage will distract attention from flaws in their appearance and will improve their ability to pass
Passing (gender)
Passing refers to a person's ability to be regarded as a member of the sex or gender with which they physically present. Typically, passing involves a mixture of physical gender cues as well as certain behavioral attributes that tend to be culturally associated with a particular gender...

. Because most such males have little or no breast tissue, some form of skin pulling technique is used, often in conjunction with the use of makeup to increase the illusion.

Bras

Cleavage enhancing bras are most commonly referred to as push-up bras. They vary in design from unpadded designs which simply push the breasts towards each other through to moulded cup designs with large moulded pads in the bottom and outside of the cups to force the breasts upwards and inwards.

Some cleavage enhancing bra designs incorporate removable pads to allow the extent of the push-up effect to be altered by the insertion or removal of pads.

Padding used in bras has been manufactured in a variety of styles, including sealed bags containing air, water or some form of liquid or gel, and from semi-rigid materials such as moulded polyurethane

Polyurethane

A polyurethane is any polymer composed of a chain of organic units joined by carbamate links. Polyurethane polymers are formed through step-growth polymerization, by reacting a monomer with another monomer in the presence of a catalyst.Polyurethanes are...

foam rubber.

Falsies

In fashion, falsies is a term used in American English to denote padding for use in a brassiere to create the appearance of larger breasts. The term is also, more rarely, used for pads which create the appearance of larger buttocks. In both cases, there is a note of amusement conveyed by the term...

are small pads similar to the removable pads sold with some push-up bras. Falsies made from silicone gel are also sometimes referred to colloquially as chicken fillets.

Skin pulling techniques

Various methods are used to pull loose skin from the front of each breast towards the centre to create two vertical bulges of skin, then imitation breasts such as mastectomy breast forms are worn outside those skin bulges such that only the inside edges of those bulges are visible past the bra, top or dress.

Taping

Taping involves the use of some form of adhesive tape applied to towards the bottom of the breasts to pull them together. Types of tape used include surgical micropore tape and athletic tape. Some also use a strip of moleskin

Moleskin

Moleskin, originally referring to the short, silky fur of a mole, is heavy cotton fabric, woven and then sheared to create a short soft pile on one side. The word is also used for clothing made from this fabric, as well as adhesive pads stuck to the skin to prevent blisters.Clothing made from...

across under the breasts with tape at the ends to hold it in place.

Use of the wrong techniques or tape with too strong an adhesive can cause injuries such as rashes, blisters, and skin being torn off.

Glued shapes

Semi-rigid pieces of material such as plastic can be applied to the skin using surgical tape, surgical adhesive or specialist adhesives normally used to glue mastectomy breast forms to the body. Even a general purpose craft glue can be used for this purpose.

Under-bras

Under-bras are commercially manufactured garments designed to pull the skin towards the centre. These garments look somewhat like a conventional bra, having a band and shoulder straps like a bra. As with other designs, breast forms and a bra are worn over the garment to complete the illusion of breasts. One disadvantage of these designs is that, with a bra over the top, there are two pairs of bra straps and two underbust bands that can potentially look like the person is wearing two bras. The design of these garments limits clothing styles to those that will adequately cover the straps, preventing, for example, the use of halterneck

Halterneck

Halterneck is a style of strap which holds up women's clothing which features a single strap or material which runs from the front of the garment around the back of the wearer's neck, and which enables most of the wearer's back to be uncovered...

garments.

One such design is called a Diva. It has conventional bra style hook-and-eye fasteners at the front instead of the back and has cups that curve inwards, are fairly rigid and covered on the inside with a material that grips the skin to hold it in place using pressure rather than adhesive.

Another similar device is called the Busty Cleavage Creator. It uses a pair of crossed velcro straps on the front to pull the skin towards the centre, leaving an uneven surface for the breast forms to sit against.

Adhesive gel bra

Adhesive gel bras consist of two shaped silicon gel filled bra cups that stick to the skin of the breast using built-in re-usable adhesive, then clip together to pull the breasts together.

These can be used as falsies that won't slide around in a bra, and can be used to enhance cleavage on a woman by using them in their originally designed manner.

For cleavage enhancement purposes, these gel cups can be applied towards the bottom and outside of the breasts and then the clip done up to pull the skin together. They have advantages over techniques of pulling the skin forward, as there are no straps and they are widely and cheaply available. Some users deliberately wear the cups upside down by swapping the cups left-to-right.

Makeup techniques

Making cleavage appear deeper and the breasts look fuller alongside the cleavage using makeup is achieved using shading

Shading

Shading refers to depicting depth perception in 3D models or illustrations by varying levels of darkness.-Drawing:Shading is a process used in drawing for depicting levels of darkness on paper by applying media more densely or with a darker shade for darker areas, and less densely or with a lighter...

effects. The middle of the cleavage is made to look deeper by using a darker makeup colour than the base colour of the skin, while the most prominent areas of the breasts (either side of the cleavage) are made to look larger or more protruding by the use of a paler colour. Sometimes, the darker shade is extended in a Y shape to add further emphasis to the roundness of the top of the breasts.

Mistakes

Cleavage enhancement techniques do not always give the desired results.

Using a skin pulling technique and pulling the skin too tightly or wearing a bra that is too small in the cup size will create excessive bulges either side of the cleavage, which will look obviously pushed out of shape.

Either pulling the skin too little or showing too much of the peaks of the bulges created by a skin pulling technique may cause the curvature of the cleavage to be visibly different from the curve that would exist for real breasts of the same size. The parts of the breasts visible in the cleavage will appear to curve away in a manner that does not line up with the rest of the breasts.

Excessive or poorly applied makeup may look obviously false and may detract from an otherwise effective cleavage illusion.