Reenactment musings: Corsets - what they are for?

I promised this blogpost more than a year ago, when many tagged me at a post, where in a well-known Internet magazine, someone put up an article about how she wore a corset for a certain time period, and what an awful experience it was.

I did write down my thoughts at that time, but I just cannot find that file on my computer, so I kept putting off writing about corsets.

But then, a couple of weeks ago, I was at an lecture about how people shaped their bodies through history, and of course, stays and corsets came up again, and once again, I was screaming inside when I heard, how oppressive they were, how women suffered, their bodies were distorted, tight-laced, and on and on.  

Those, who ever met with me at an event know, that this is a topic I can get passionate about (another is when I hear that people in old ages – practically any time before the late 20th century were dirty and smelly, however, that is a topic for another post).

I for one, regularly wear stays or corsets, and as one, I have pretty strong opinion about them… and no, they are NOT the paternal society’s tool to oppress women.  In my experience, a well-made, made to the body’s measurements stays/corsets can be (or often are) better than a pair of bad (or even a pair of average) bra.

When I ask people “what is a corset’s main task?”, “why women wore corsets?”, the first answer is always: “to make them look thinner”.  Well, a corset has several task/role, and making women (look) thinner is the last one, more like a happy side effect than a main task.

So what are those “tasks”?

1). Shaping. Yes, that seems like the opposite of what I said above, but… Every period has its fashionable shape (think of the modern age's Twiggy, Cindy Crawford or J.Lo). Like

a) the 18^th century, rococo is an upturned pyramid shape, no real curves, the breast is pushed up.

b) the Napoleonic/regency era is a column with the emphasis on the column head, I mean the breast, that were pushed up as far as possible. Those dresses had high waistline, nobody ever saw the actual waist of women. So, when you see Mama Fetherington pulling the laces tight and the girl crying out “I cannot breath”, that is stupid. Partly, because the way those stays were made would not allow tight-lacing (they would tear), partly, because it would have been utterly unnecessary.

c) the Victorian era brought the hourglass shaped corsets most people are familiar with.

Every body, even the thinnest ones have - if not fat, but muscle to be pushed away a bit here and there, to give the wearer that fashionable shape. It does not have to “size down”, for a while, when I teared my corset last year while skating, I wore one that was a size bigger than me, still, it did all the shaping I needed.

2) Foundation. Giving a “massive”, stable foundation to clothes. For example, my early Victorian gown was made of a very light printed cotton from India, much like a viscose fabric, and still, when I had it on, it looked like it had lining, horsehair and/or boning in it… because I had corset underneath.

3) Holding one’s breasts. We like to forget that the first bras were made in the 1910’s, though women did have breasts for thousands of years. Corsets can hold them just as well, if not better than bra’s.

4) Managing/distributing the weight of the dress. Even though less than many people would think (we are NOt talking about tens of kilograms), these dresses, or let’s say outfits have a considerable weight, especially compared to our modern clothes. In one march 15^th event we calculated, and my early Victorian dress, with the appropriate underwear, and petticoats have 22 meters of fabric, and that is the minimum: a corded petticoat a ruffled one and a plain one. Now, the really fashionable ones, who wanted even wider skirts, wore even more petticoats, in some cases 5 or 6 of them, which weighed even more. Later, with the cage crinoline, it was a freeing experience to these women, that they could get away only with two petticoats, but still the crinoline also have some weight. So, when one wears them over stays/corsets, takes over the load, helps distribute the weight. If I wear these dresses without corsets/stays, by the end of the day, there is crying, and I am begging Norbert for a back-massage. With corset/stays: no problem.

So, if after all this, it can make someone a bit thinner… that is a happy side-effect.

Of course, everything can be overdone. Today, we have tiny, short skirts, or extreme high heels, so there were people, who overdid thightlacing, but that was NOT generally done.

Women are not stupid. They would not wear something for HUNDREDS of years, if it wasn’t good for them on some level.

And no, women did had ribs taken out (did you ever read about Victorian hospitals? They avoided them, like they avoided the plague), and no, it did not distorted inner organs either. Oh, that everybody saw the drawings printed in period magazines? They are DRAWINGS. (Not Xrays,, CT or US pictures, but DRAWINGS).

És nem, nem vetették ki a bordájukat (olvastatok már a viktoriánus kórházakról? Olyan messzire kerülték el őket, amennyire csak lehet), és nem nem torzította el a belső szerveket sem. Ja, hogy mindenki látta a korabeli magazinokban megjelenő rajzokat? RAJZOKAT láttunk. (Nem röntgen, CT, UH felvételeket. RAJZOKAT.)

What is the secret if we are talking about comfort and corsets/stays?

As I said above: well made, and made to the person’s measurements should not be uncomfortable.

I can bend, sit, walk, lift things, dance in corsets/stays. I CAN tie my shoelaces. Yes, there is the saying “Boots before corsets” but not because it is impossible to tie them… But, surely they are easier to take on when you do not have corsets on.

After a day-long event, when we take off our corsets/stays, and we breathe a sigh of relief, we often joke, that nobody, I just talked to about how corsets are not uncomfortable should hear us… But then, we should remember that we are NOT used to wear them all day, every day, and we do not wear them enough to really get used to them. Historical women started to wear some kind of stays in their young age (“training corsets” were just as different from grown up corsets than training bras are from push-up bras).

And also, there is a misconception, that we stopped wearing corsets… Oh, we do wear them. We just call them differently. We call them shapewear these days.