Are corsets all that bad?

Throughout history, opinions of corsets have fluctuated. Some have called the corset the Western version of foot binding, while others think the corset's been stuck with a bad rep. Tune in as Cristen and Molly dive into the cultural history of the corset.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stump Mom never told
you from House top works dot Com. Hello, and welcome
to the podcast. I'm Kristen and I'm Molly. Molly. We

(00:20):
have discussed many aspects of fashion and fashion history, that's
true on our podcast. Those are some of my favorite episodes.
Very fun to find out, history of high heels, braziers, pantyhose, pantyhose. Yeah, great,
great fun. But today we're gonna get controversial. This has

(00:41):
been called the most controversial fashion item in the entire
fashion history of fashion. I know if there was ever
a loaded fashion item here, it is courses. It was
like a simultaneous fail. It's so controversial. Kristen, we can't
even say it in unison because its power might overwhelmness.

(01:04):
It really might. And we talked about corsets in our
episode on foot binding, because time and again, whenever you
read about foot bind at some point they bring up
what a lot of people consider the Western equivalent of
footbinding to be course, in terms of it being sort
of oppressive things, something that women did because men told

(01:29):
them too, and men wanted them to look like this
and fit these certain ideals. And I remember after we
did that Footbinding Um podcast, we heard from a few
women who are like, no, of course, it's are awesome.
You guys need to re examine the corset. And that
is sort of the argument that is going on about
corsets right now. There are a ton of people who
are saying this is oppressive and probably the worst thing ever,

(01:51):
and there are a ton of people saying, hey, now, no,
of course it's a pretty cool You're misinterpreting a lot
of history. And we're going to try and and and
sludge through these arguments today and figure out what exactly
is going on with this one piece of clothing. So
I think a good place to start digging through all

(02:12):
of this this corset unlacing the schools in history would
be with Valerie steels book on the Cultural History of
the courset. And Valerie Steel is a good person to
talk to about this because she is the head of
the Fashion Institute of Technology, so she she knows what
she's talking about. In fact, the course it is what
inspired her to go into fashion because reading about these

(02:34):
social and cultural arguments about the course, that kind of
showed her the importance of fashion through time. So it's
it's something that her name is associated with over and
over again. And I would say that she probably has
the most middle of the road approach to corsets. She
has traced the history and she kind of traces the
feelings the women at the time had about course it's

(02:54):
as opposed to what women of our time are projecting
on those women, right, And I think this from her
book sums it up pretty nicely. She says, corse of
tree was not one monolithic, unchanging experience that all unfortunate
women experienced before being liberated by feminism. It was a
situated practice that meant different things to different people at

(03:15):
different times. And so she goes back to the history
of the corset and the word course it and what
we typically think of as a corset really doesn't come
into being until the eighteen hundreds Victorian era. That's when
we most associate course it's, but there is evidence from
very early on that women and men were wearing tightly

(03:36):
laced undergarments who hold themselves in to be fashionable, to uh,
to look to look pretty swell. So the point of
course it's and the cloth bodices that were the predecessors
to course, It's was to lend shape, to provide some
kind of silhouette to the fashions of the times. It

(03:57):
wasn't necessarily meant to create the wasp waste, those incredibly tiny, tiny,
unnaturally tiny waists that we often hear about, right, It
was just I mean, it was just if regular is underwear.
It wasn't something that women thought of as confining. They
may not have been the most comfortable things in the world,
but it was just like christ and said, to lend shape,

(04:18):
and it was the kind of thing that reading about course,
it's kind of reminded me of our legs shaving podcast,
where the fashion sort of started at the top and
worked its way down where there were a lot of
queens associated with wearing corsets to make their beautiful fabrics
fall more gracefully on their bodies, and the aristocracy could
then forward a corset, so they were mimicking the royalty,

(04:40):
as we tend to do, and it just kind of
worked its way down through the masses. As as of course,
it's became more easily made, more people would would buy them,
and so to not where a course at the time
would be seen as the poorest of the poor, you know,
just unclassy. But critics of the corset would probably respond

(05:01):
to that with, well, what about iron corsets that date
back to medieval times. I mean, if that's not an
instrument of torture for women, I don't know what is.
It's not an instrument of torture, Kristen, right the record, Molly,
tell me what it is. It was actually a back brace.
And you know, there are still tales of women today
who wear a corset's simply because it makes them stand

(05:22):
up straight and have really good posture. But sometimes you'll
see these um iron metal corsets and museums and go,
oh my god, I would never wear that, no matter
how how much I slumped. But these very early prototypes
that have been drugged dug up as examples of women's oppression,
they were actually back braces that were often used during wartimes. Uh.

(05:43):
There are some accounts of army doctors writing reports saying,
you know, the soldier had a back problem, I put
him in this iron brace. You know, that's what that was.
So um, that's one of the things that people bring
up as a symbol of oppression, like Kristen said, the
really tiny waist um sinching your corsets so tight that
would get to like, you know, a sixteen inch waist
or something like that. According to Valerie Steele, who went

(06:04):
and studied bodies from this time, that was not very common,
that was a very small element was practicing extreme tight
lacing and didn't that have a fetish aspect to it
as well? Right, there were all these ladies magazines. There
would be a letter from someone who was like, oh,
I tightened by corset so that it was six I
had a sixteen inch waist and I couldn't breathe and

(06:26):
the Waisteel looks at these letters becomes clear that sometimes
the men are writing them because they seem really turned
on by the fact that these women have really small waists.
And the fact that, you know, the way that the
language is repeated has let Steal in other scholars to say,
these letters were made up and it was very rare,
And it was because it was so rare, you know,

(06:46):
the rare things that are shocking. Those are the things
that make headlines, the things that are so out of
the norm. And it's just that history remembers that about course,
it's and not necessarily the women who were just wearing
them as an undergarment the way we might wear uh
inanks today. Right. I mean, they're certainly meant to to
keep the tummy and the hips all all tucked in.
But if you look at Corse, it's from colonial Williamsburg.

(07:09):
The smallest waist size you would have would be twenty
four inches, and the largest would be thirty inches. Granted,
twenty four inches is a very petite waste, but that's
certainly a far cry from a sixteen inch wasp boys right,
and one scholar actually looked at all the waist to
hip ratios of those like twenty four inch waists, and consistently,

(07:30):
no matter how small the waist was, the waist to
hip ratio was point seven two, which is considered normal.
So it's not like women, like we said, the majority
of women are not wearing corsets simply to get you know,
a broomstick waiste. That just wasn't the norm. It was
more about making sure that your dress fell correctly. It

(07:51):
wasn't you know. They admit it wasn't necessarily the most
comfortable thing, but I don't think many of us would
say that high heels are the most comfortable thing, or
that what else is not really that comfortable? I mean,
it's you know, there are some things where we're hesitant
to say, well, that was just the fashion of the time, um,
you know, and then there's other things where it's like, hey,
you know, we like wearing many skirts and we don't

(08:11):
care if men like them because we like them and
it's empowering to wear them. And still makes the argument
that women at the time would have felt empowered to
wear a course, because yes, it did draw a man's eye. Um,
but if you're coming out of the Victorian area where
sex was just kept behind closed doors, is it not
empowering to wear a corset in the same way that

(08:33):
you know, choosing to wear whatever kind of top you
want to wear is empowering today. Well, and I think
that a lot of the demonizing, of course it's is
looking at it from the wrong perspective, because like when
we were talking about legs shaving, it was surprising to
both of us to find that it was actually women
leading the new trend to remove all the hair off

(08:55):
their legs. And then by and large, all of a sudden,
it's you know, two thousand eleven and we're having to
go through this almost daily routine. But it wasn't something
that men dictated that we do. And you know, even
though a lot of women, when things like the suffrage
movement we're going on, there were a lot of women saying,
fellow women, take off your corsets, be free, don't don't

(09:18):
subject yourself to this pain. But just as many men
were saying that as women, Uh, there were always these
articles in medical journals about how bad corsets were for
your health, and scholars like still have gone back and
reevaluated them and say that, you know, a lot of
this is bunk. Like it just these problems that when
we were having, we're probably because they were not eating

(09:39):
a nutritious diet, and you know, there weren't there's no
knowledge of you know, vitamins and things to keep up
your health on a daily basis um. But just as
many men were saying take off your course, as women
were saying, you know, we're keeping the corset on. Yeah,
And making courses was also a source of income for
a lot of women of Valerie Steele says that by

(09:59):
the nineteenth century, the majority of small and medium sized
corset manufacturers were women and it ballooned into a two
billion dollar in today's terms, two billion dollar industry. I
think one really interesting point I learned about in reading
about corsets is the link between corsets and maternity, because
a lot of those doctors who were saying take off
your corsets tended to say them when birthrates fail fell,

(10:22):
and so there was this link between corsets and miscarriage
and um trouble pregnancies and stillborn births. And so sometimes
the doctors who were saying take off your corsets were saying,
oh my gosh, we need to keep these women at
home having children, not out fighting for suffrage. And sometimes
the letters of the women seemed to indicate that this
is the very reason they liked the corset. It was

(10:45):
a bit of a type of a birth control. But
as we know, in the twentieth century, fashions began to change,
garments got a lot looser. We have Paul poire Um
outlawing the corset in favor of these very dreight, looser
fitting clothes, and also we have the rise of the tango. Yes,

(11:09):
apparently when women are given the choice between fashion and dance,
they will always choose dance. Now, at the beginning of
the twenty century, there was, um, you know, a greater
focus on athleticism where when we're getting to play sports,
and according to Slate, you know, you'd walk into a
clubhouse after a tennis match and they'll just be bloody
corsets from whale bones jutting into women's bodies as they

(11:31):
were playing tennis. That is extreme. It was pretty extreme.
But when when the tango rose in popularity, this was
the one sort of athletic activity where women were like,
I'm willing to give up this high fashion for for
a tango. At first there were a tango corsets, which
were a little bit looser and made for dancing, but
eventually the popular of the tango may have been the

(11:53):
downfall of the corset as a regular item of clothing,
because when they were trying to outlaw corsets, women just
saw that was the most classless thing that ever seen.
How how uncouth to wear anything less than a corset.
But when you give them a tango matango, they don't
want they don't want bloody corsets on their hands, you know.

(12:13):
And by the way, if I ever started goth band Molly,
first of all, I will ask you to join. And
second of all, it will be called the bloody corset.
But you know, as you said, fashions change and through time,
through the past century, the corset has been brought back
up into vogue and then put back down. And it's
I think it's through those kind of lenses that we
might judge it. Of course, the name most associated with

(12:34):
corsets is Madonna when she wore that corset, and people
were saying, this is when the corset turned from the
symbol of oppression to the symbol of female sexual empowerment.
But you know, like we said, according to some scholars
like Steel, women of the eighteen hundreds would have seen
it just as much a tool of sexual empowerment as
Madonna did. They you know, they may not have been

(12:55):
able to breathe, but they certainly didn't think they were
oppressed by the male gaze. They didn't think they were
oppressed this piece of clothing. It was simply what was
done and following fashion. And um, you know, so I
don't think that they would uh fall at Madonna's legs
and say, oh, yes, you were the one who who
truly revolutionized the course that they would say it was
this way all along and that uh, you know, that's

(13:17):
why to compare it to foot binding is so troubling
for the aficionados of the course. Yes, so I have
a feeling that at least a few people listening are
probably surprised that we did not just rip. Course it's
a new one, and we could have the researches out there,
we could have done at people people writing about heteronormative

(13:38):
societies and course it's a diamond dozen't. So Yeah, let
us know your thoughts on on corsets, and if you
want to do that, you can send us in an
email moms Stuff at how stuff works dot com. Or
you can also hit us up on Facebook and Twitter.
But in the meantime, let's read an email at you,

(14:00):
all right, I have an email here from patre and
it's about the Orgasmic childbirth episode, and she writes, I
thought that episode was great. I don't exactly understand why
people feel so icky about the subject, considering we all
talk about biograph and other men's issues with half a qualm.
My mother claims that she had orgasms in the hospital
with all five of her children, including me, her first child.

(14:20):
When she told me about her orgasms, I have to
be honest, I was a little grossed out the thought
that my head traveling down her birth canal caused her
to climax. It probably gross out other people as well,
now that I've had a few years to think about it, though,
I'm glad she had that experience rather than the pain
and fear a lot of other women have. Hearing the
horror stories from parents who are treated callously by doctors
or had complications kind of terrifies me. And it's good

(14:41):
to know birth does not have to be a sterile,
scary experience. I plan on becoming a mother someday, and
I consider myself like you'd have a mother who has
experienced and has a positive attitude about pregnancy and childbirth.
Well on the opposite end of the spectrum, I got
an email here on our child Free podcast, and this
is for um Katie, and she said, I'm a woman

(15:02):
with type one diabetes who has made the choice to
adopt instead of give birth to a child that would
share my genes. Diabetes can be passed on genetically, although
there is no guarantee or even necessarily a higher risk
that I would pass my condition on to any children.
Pregnancy is also high risk for type one diabetics, but
many diabetic women sometimes successfully give birth to healthy children.

(15:22):
I'm only able to live a healthy, normal life because
of the benefits of modern medicine. Had I been born
in an earlier time, I would not have lived to
a reproductive age. I would much rather adopt the child
who needs a family than run the risk of a
high risk pregnancy and the continuation of my genes. I
understand that too many people having a child with whom
they share a genetic tie is important, but for me,

(15:43):
it's not the genes, but the bond between parent and
child it's important. I don't be The choice to be
child free is selfish in any way. Only those who
feel like they're fit to and want to parents should
Adoption is a factor in that decision. So thank you
Katie for that email, and for everyone else who emails
us as well. And again, you can also hit us
up on Facebook and Twitter, and you can read our

(16:04):
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