This blog perpetuates a lot of common myths about corsetry and I find that disappointing.
It’s a pretty widespread and common thing that children wear similar clothing to adults, and whatever the adult fashion is, kids often get a miniaturized version of it. The children’s corsets pictured in the ads there don’t minimize the waist or attempt to give them an hourglass, and would have been lightly boned or have no boning at all. If there was boning, it would have been made of flexible material like whale balleen (the material filter feeding whales have instead of teeth, which behaves like a soft thermoplastic) or ribbons, cording or even paper. These are not materials that can damage a body unless maybe you stab yourself with them or light them on fire.
Corsets were used to provide a smoothing layer under clothes, to give some structure and yes the fashionable silhouette. However, it was commonly understood that a body in clothing was very different from a body out of it. There was more body privacy and control over how your body was perceived. The combination of corsets, stays, “bodies” and strategic use of padding meant anyone could be the fashionable silhouette, no matter your natural body type. Far more women achieved those “tiny waists” by wearing bum pads, hip rolls, underskirts and crinolines, mutton sleeves and frilly blouses than tight lacing. It was all smoke and mirrors.
Now with skin tight knits and thin leggings and exposed skin the only way to have a fashionable silhouette is for your body to actually look like that, which fuels the fitness and weight loss industry. I find it interesting that these articles always talk about “unrealistic body standards” when ironically body standards have only gotten more aggressively unrealistic and unreasonable, not less.
Modern corsets have little to no resemblance to their historical counterparts, which were lightweight, flexible, practical support garments that provided some structure to the clothing of the time and bust support for women. Extreme outliers existed but were far from the norm. A lot of the period writing about the harm corsets were doing was written by men bloviating about how stupid they thought women were to wear the clothing they preferred, a time honored tradition which continues to this day.
There is nothing controversial here, children wore underwear too.
I get tired of these myths getting repeated over and over again as well, so thank you for going into so much detail.
there is also a great video by Bernadette Banner that talks about how corsets when used with other methods could make the desired body shape without tight-lacing that I highly recommend watching if anyone else is interested in the subject.
its quite magical how layering certain elements of clothing and underclothing could create the illusion of the “ideal” fashionable body shape of the time.
Exactly, thank you. I also enjoy Abby Cox’s videos on corsetry and living in period accurate 18th century clothes full time for many years. The “dream team” of Youtube dress historians got together to debunk common corsetry myths on this video which summarizes succinctly how these myths continue to propagate and where they came from. I jumped to a timestamp where they talk about where those images of deformed rib cages come from but the whole video is pretty entertaining
This blog perpetuates a lot of common myths about corsetry and I find that disappointing.
It’s a pretty widespread and common thing that children wear similar clothing to adults, and whatever the adult fashion is, kids often get a miniaturized version of it. The children’s corsets pictured in the ads there don’t minimize the waist or attempt to give them an hourglass, and would have been lightly boned or have no boning at all. If there was boning, it would have been made of flexible material like whale balleen (the material filter feeding whales have instead of teeth, which behaves like a soft thermoplastic) or ribbons, cording or even paper. These are not materials that can damage a body unless maybe you stab yourself with them or light them on fire.
Corsets were used to provide a smoothing layer under clothes, to give some structure and yes the fashionable silhouette. However, it was commonly understood that a body in clothing was very different from a body out of it. There was more body privacy and control over how your body was perceived. The combination of corsets, stays, “bodies” and strategic use of padding meant anyone could be the fashionable silhouette, no matter your natural body type. Far more women achieved those “tiny waists” by wearing bum pads, hip rolls, underskirts and crinolines, mutton sleeves and frilly blouses than tight lacing. It was all smoke and mirrors.
Now with skin tight knits and thin leggings and exposed skin the only way to have a fashionable silhouette is for your body to actually look like that, which fuels the fitness and weight loss industry. I find it interesting that these articles always talk about “unrealistic body standards” when ironically body standards have only gotten more aggressively unrealistic and unreasonable, not less.
Modern corsets have little to no resemblance to their historical counterparts, which were lightweight, flexible, practical support garments that provided some structure to the clothing of the time and bust support for women. Extreme outliers existed but were far from the norm. A lot of the period writing about the harm corsets were doing was written by men bloviating about how stupid they thought women were to wear the clothing they preferred, a time honored tradition which continues to this day.
There is nothing controversial here, children wore underwear too.
I get tired of these myths getting repeated over and over again as well, so thank you for going into so much detail.
there is also a great video by Bernadette Banner that talks about how corsets when used with other methods could make the desired body shape without tight-lacing that I highly recommend watching if anyone else is interested in the subject.
its quite magical how layering certain elements of clothing and underclothing could create the illusion of the “ideal” fashionable body shape of the time.
Exactly, thank you. I also enjoy Abby Cox’s videos on corsetry and living in period accurate 18th century clothes full time for many years. The “dream team” of Youtube dress historians got together to debunk common corsetry myths on this video which summarizes succinctly how these myths continue to propagate and where they came from. I jumped to a timestamp where they talk about where those images of deformed rib cages come from but the whole video is pretty entertaining
https://youtu.be/4XBLBfWNH7I?t=616
oooooh I love Abby cox. she has absolutely great insights into living and dressing in period accurate clothes for quite a long time.
love her stuff. quite a lot of good dress historians and skilled hobbyists on youtube.