It’s true when you look at photographs from the 1800s or observe antique dresses on custom-made mannequins it’s not hard to envy those petite waistlines. Do you do this?
This perception usually leads to the generic thought: “Teeny, tiny waists are what women strived for back then. Everyone wanted an 18″ waist!”
But did they?…
I love Gone With The Wind. I do.
But I also don’t, because it’s put this *thing* in our modern heads that every girl wanted the smallest waist possible. That women back then cinched their corsets so tightly that they fainted.
Well I think this is a bunch of crap!
Honestly, it’s simply what people wore as clothing. And when we look at it through 21st Century eyes we see it as very, very restrictive. They can’t eat. They can’t breathe. They faint a lot. All for a little, itty-bitty waist. But that’s a 21st Century perspective. It’s a bunch of crap that they couldn’t live life normally.
We *think* they laced so tightly that they couldn’t breathe or eat. I personally don’t believe that.
And the 18 inches thing – no. Forget it. ‘Cause when you look at original corsets and you measure them, the smallest ones usually measure between 20″ and 22.”
Then you start comparing numerous measurements and discover many of them fall into the 20″ to 26″ category. That’s the measurement of the corset. When wearing corsets you always allow about a 2″ gap and that’s on the small size. Many women wore them with 4″ gaps.
So say you add 2″ to a corset measurement. You then learn women’s natural waists were between 22″ to 28″. That’s not unheard of today! It’s merely on the small side.
At this point, you have to look at the fact that these women were in corsets or some sort of restrictive garment since they were young teens. I don’t mean girls. Sure, some girls wore corset-type garments. But from a young teen and like 10-, 11-, 12-years old, they’re going to be in a lightly-boned corset.
So by training from that young age, you can alter the waist to a slim figure where it’s naturally going to be smaller because all that torso fat gets pushed to the hips and up to the bust. This creates a smaller waist over time.
But back to the thought of the teeny, tiny waist thing – you’d think it’s all about “tight-lacing” – NO!
It’s all about the fashionable silhouette. It’s about the appearance. The perception of a small waist.
Women wore a corset to hold things in place. To lift the bust into a fashionable silhouette and support it. Doing so gave her more or less an hourglass shape.
Then what do you do? You add petticoats. You add contraptions like a bustle, a pad, padding to the hips, padding to the bust, petticoats, chemisettes & corset covers that have ruffles on them and dropped shoulder lines. And all this increases the hips and the shoulder appearance. It increases the width. It’s all about illusion.
It’s the impression that the waist is small. They’re not necessarily tight lacing down to 18″. No. Why? Because we have original garments to measure. They don’t measure 18″ in the waist. They measure 22″ to 26″. It’s using trickery to fool the eye into thinking the waist is teeny tiny.
But the thing about corsets is that these women LIVED in them. They took care of kids in them. They went to tea and parties. They got out of bed every morning and put it on just like we get up every morning and put a bra and underwear on. It’s the same thing, it just looks different.
To them, they didn’t know what a bra and panties were. They had been wearing corsets all their lives, same as their mothers and grandmothers, and how many hundreds of years prior to that. Corsets go back quite a long ways.
That’s what they knew. Don’t you think they would have made corsets so that they could actually function yet still be fashionable?
We think of them as if they were fashion plates. Their photographs were of their best dresses. We view them as these stationary people. Not living and breathing, and “Oh, gosh I stubbed my toe on the table! And it hurts and I need to sit down ’cause it’s bleeding now.” “Gosh, I slammed my finger in the door.” Or “Henry’s just asked me out to the ball and I need a new dress.”
They were still living their lives. Because that’s what they did. We buy weird fashion to dress up and go out to imitate people and to impress other people. But we do it to reflect who we are. And that’s what fashion is. It’s how we connect with society.
They saw celebrities like the Empress Eugenie or Mrs. Vanderbilt with “small” waists. So women tried to imitate their look. Sure, they might have tightened their corsets. But they didn’t go so far as to restrict their movement.
You can’t study 19th C. clothing from a perspective of what would look out of place today. The slender waists we see on these women of the past look so small but that’s only to our 21st C. eyes. Of course they look teeny-tiny compared to our soft, unfitted knit clothing that hides our figures.
I’d bet if you were to put on a well-made, custom-fitted corset, added a strong bustle shape with a dash of proper petticoats – you’d begin to see that slim waistline start to appear. If you did that every day for a month… I’d guarantee you’d discover that itsy-bitsy waist.
Because it’s merely a 21st Century myth that all the waists were 18″.
I recommend The Corset: A Cultural History by Valerie Steele. It actually addresses all of the myths about corsets and presents some really fascinating information about the place the corset held in Victorian culture–both good and bad.
There are some truths there, such as the 2″ gap in corsets. (No one in their right mind would have a 4″ gap though.) However, the problem with this assumption is that the actual dresses often measure 20-22 inches as well. I’ve had the opportunity to handle many original garments myself! Also, while the “training” aspect of corsets from teenage years is true, it’s also true that the corset pushes more than fat up and down, but actually the intestines as well. Furthermore, archaeologists have found female skeletons from this period with deformed ribcages from wearing corsets. So… Sorry, it’s not really busted yet.
When visiting the Vail mansion in Kansas City, MO area they had a chair that had sides that resembled the shape of cupping your palm and then sit in the palm with fingers and wrist on either side. The guide commented that this must been what ladies with hoops would sit on. Being the quiet, reserved person that I am, I said, “I don’t think so!” Of course everyone in the group turned to look at me. The guide asked how I would no that and I replied, “because I wear one most of the time and no way would a lady lift her skirts to her waist in order to sit down!” :))))
Just so (the blog post) Jennifer,
This past weekend I went to a Dickens festival and wore clothing from the 1850s, two days in a corset and the belt I wore out to the even was worn five notches tighter, till I got home, ate, lay about and drank a cider. All of my water weight (and I carry a fair amount), was displaced as was a bit of my fat. Add a bumpad and plenty of petticoats and my over 30″ waist looked small -in comparison- I don’t tight lace, but I imagine if I did wear a corset daily I might go a fair amount tighter to look extra special for a ball . . . but on a day to day basis I need to live my life.
This is a really interesting post. I thought I’d just add that I went to a conference on 18th Century Fashion at the 18th Century study centre at York last year and one of the speakers was the lady who has made the replica of the pelisse that’s thought to have belonged to Jane Austen. Although it’s not conclusive that it was hers, it came through the family and there were descriptions of her being tall. Anyway, the pelisse would suggest that she was approximately 5ft 6inches to 5ft 8inches tall and slightly thinner than Kate Moss. It was very small in the shoulders and only fit the makers young teenage niece in the top part. I know Regency stays were a different kind of corsetry but I found the talk quite fascinating and the pelisse was beautiful 🙂
Every time someone makes the dumb comment about how women in corsets just laid around and didn’t exercise or do anything, I yank out a book, “The Happy Valley” edited by Pauline Dakin Taft, of pictures taken by her father Leonard Dakin, they include women in bustles and corsets jumping over tennis nets, climbing fences and several other positions that do not resemble “lying down and doing nothing”. Printed by Syracuse University Press, in 1965 (I have a first edition) it can be tough to find, but worth it.
Sweet! Thanks for the reference book suggestion.
Whenever I tell people- mostly ladies- about corsets and petticoats and other things women of this era wore, they always answer with “Oh, I wouldn’t do that. I would wear comfortable clothing.” and I always have to explain to them that they are wrong. They would wear these layers upon layers because if they didn’t they wouldn’t be wearing anything.
And as a corset wearer I always tell them. “Putting the corset on and leaving it on doesn’t hurt. Taking it off and feeling everything shift back into place…now THAT is painful.”
Heh. My mother makes this huge deal over the sighs and stuff that I let out when I remove my corset, insisting that I really don’t think they feel good to wear after all, or why would I make those noises. I can’t seem to get her to understand that it feels much the same as kicking off your dress shoes at the end of a long day!
It always amazes me when women swear they would never wear anything uncomfortable, when they’re trussed up in skinny jeans, push-up bras, and high heels. None of those things are anything I’d consider “comfortable.” And frankly, they’re also all forgetting one VERY big thing: without some sort of support for the bosom, anyone with a cup size bigger than about a B cup has difficulty doing things like running after children without pain, and the larger the cup size, the more pain that causes when there’s no support!
Hi ya”ll,
i was just wondering about how they washed their corsets, and how often? did they spot clean them? i imagine they were quite expensive and you held onto them for a while, leading me to believe they needed soap and water after a certain period of summer wear. weren’t some components metal? just wondering about laundering. my ancestors were infamous boilers, but i’m sure a corset would not have been boiled, or the bone stays would have softened and broken down.
thanks bunches,
ellen
Corsets were generally not washed. A chemise was always worn under them and that was washed frequently. I could guess they were spot cleaned. You can see originals where the metal busk claps have rusted. The stays were whalebone and eventually metal boning. I would definitely NOT recommend throwing your corset into the washing machine… or boiling it. 🙂 A spray of cheap vodka onto the corset right after wearing & air drying will prevent odors and sweat stains.
I dunno about “expensive”, although obviously incomes varied like they do today, but Sears Roebuck sold them by the dozen for a few dollars. A seriously nice one might cost $4 by mail order, but that would have been the fancy type. A woman could have 2 or 3 to last her a couple of years, you kinda wanted to rotate those out due to sweating, you aired them out (don’t forget, sun bleaches whites really well) and spot cleaned them. They didn’t have Fabreeze back then.
You need to remember that inflation has changed the value/buying power of a dollar since the 19th century. That fancy $4 corset in the 1880 Sears Roebuck catalog would cost $88.48 today. Also, the average 60 hour weekly wage for a laborer (unskilled) in 1880 was only $8.10 and for a carpenter was only $16.56 (or $179.14 and $366.24 in 2016 dollars). So that fancy corset was a real luxury!
Sources: here and here.
I have a lovely 1870’s bustle dress that I made when I was 18, just out of high school, and it has a 23-24″ waist. I wore a corset with it, not laced too tight, but I didn’t make the dress super tight because I wanted to be able to wear it a little later in life. When I modeled it for 4-H, all the judges could not believe how tiny my waist was! Just went on and on! Didn’t believe me when I said 23″. Reasons: LARGE bustle, striped polonaise, and wouldn’t you know all those matched stripes tapering smaller to the waist with darts and seamlines made my waist look like it was just 18″ from the back?
Later, when I worked at the local museum, there was a red silk wedding dress from the late 1880’s with a 25″ waist and exactly my size in every other way. I’m 5’4″. They almost had me try it on for an official photo shoot, but we decided that might not be the best.
According to Laura Ingalls Wilder, women who wanted a lovely small waist slept in their corsets. She said that she could not manage it herself, but her sister, Mary,
did
Yup. That is taken directly from a fictional book. Very often quoted, and I even did this once based on the information I got from this fictional book. I gave up after a few hours. It was horrible and uncomfortable.
I have since learned a lot more from primary source materials and have since learned how to get a corset that fits well and how to wear (And more importantly how NOT to wear one) and I could say with confidence now that sleeping in my corset would be no big deal.
Also keep in mind there were as many types of corsets as there are bras today. For instance, some would rather ditch a bra altogether. There were a few people in the 19th century who ditched the corset altogether… Most people, then and now, would look at this kind of woman a little cockeyed. Some women prefer light support bras. There were women in the 19th century who wore corsets without boning at all. There are women now that like moderate support, and women in the 19th century who wore their corsets lightly boned. An some prefer extra support and in the 19th century you could find that extra support in more boning. It was all there.
I did some research into social history (1800 1950) in the UK in the 1970s. I talked to severalold ladies who were young when the small waist was not just fashionable, but also a mark of being “well dressed”. One of the recurrent themes was that up to about 1914 you watched your waist measurement rather like we watch our weight (how many times a day do we weigh ourselves ?!). They told me that if you say that your waist was getting bigger you immediately tightened your belt or laced tighter. So a small waist was easier for them than it is for us today when we are not used to it.
One ladt told me that to have small waist you had to start young, always be well laced, and to “think yourself into a smaller waist”. I’m sure she was right.
Annie
I know if I had been corsetted from a small child and in boned ones from a young age I would have had a small waist as my normal waist was only 25 after having 3 children I dont know what it was when I was teenager as we didn’t seem to bother about size in the 1940-50’s but it must have been around 21-22 so take 2 inches of if I was corsetted 19 – 20″ waist perhaps. Now at the age of 73 I have a whopping 36″ waist cosetted but I am happy and still look okay in my costumes as I am bulked out with the underpinings of the era. The 1880’s bustle is great for making you look as though you have a small waist.
I’ve been educating the public for a few years that corsets were not torture chambers but an earlier version of our bras. And they, like us, would have wanted to be comfortable. I also compared some of the tight lacing to the fashionistas of today which is not the norm. My favorite response when someone gasps, OMGosh, are you wearing a corset?! Yes, are you wearing a bra?
That’s a great response! I’ll have to use that sometime. 🙂
And, oh, yes, bras can be pretty uncomfortable. You know, all those teensy teensy pills that you can’t quite get out and the deodorant residue . . .
We have definitely gotten larger. I own my great-grandmother’s wedding dress from 1875, when she was 19. It is so small, I estimate that she was at most 4’10” tall, and probably shorter. Two and three generations later, my mother was, and I am, 5′ 5″. Even though my great-grandmother was so young and small, the waist of her dress measures 22″ – 4″ greater that the “supposedly” ideal of 18″!
18″ waist. You Betcha!
Facts:
1. 1800s menses started in the late teens
2. Some pubescent girls have 18″ waists
3. Some corsets were padded
4. Enhancers for corsets were sold
5. Some chemises had bust ruffles
6. Padding was added to some of the waists/bodices
Conclusion: Only her corsetiere knows for sure.
Intersting article, but I beg to differ. My grandmother frequently commented she would have loved an 18″ waist when she was younger. She was born in 1880 and, when full-grown, was 5’8″ tall — very tall and statuesque for that age. She was lucky to get to a 25″ waist for her wedding in 1900. Her grandmother’s traveling jacket from her honeymoon from 1863 (which I still have) measures 16″ in the waist with no slits or gaps. My mother and I — both of us being BBWs — measured it twice because we couldn’t believe it. So, there were those who had that small or smaller waists. It might not have been common, but it was there.
Oh thank you Amanda for another personal point of view! That’s fantastic that you have a piece of your heritage.
I really enjoyed reading this blog post! I think it’s important for those interested in period costume and fashions to understand the reality of how they were worn. It’s very easy to forget that the women we see in old photographs or paintings did lead normal lives, as you said, raising children or running a household. Also, that the photographs and paintings we see and use as references are very often formal ones – for example all the photos above are taken in a studio, where the sitter and the photographer must have paid at least some attention to making the subject look its best – probably tightening that corset a little, just for ten minutes, to get the enviable portrait to show off to friends and family!
one can aspire to to 18″, that doesn’t mean one will ever get there. just as so many (by no means all) women aspire to “model thinness”. it must also be remembered (as mentioned above somewhere) these were their “sunday go to meetin'” clothes. “working” clothes, especially for the economically disadvantaged to whom fell much of the heavy work, would have been much simpler and corseting looser.
I echo Kendra’s comments. The corset changed the shape of the waist to more round, so when you look at the Victorian lady from the front, you’re seeing about 1/4 of her waist measurement. The dresses in our museum collection generally have 22-26″ waists, though we have some with much larger waists, as well. The problem I have fitting them on our museum mannequins, though, is the narrow shoulders and tiny armholes. We have certainly gotten bigger there.
Awesome post! As a historical interpreter, reenactor, and student, I’ve always found it important to remember/remind others that they were ‘real people’, too. Your “Oh, gosh I stubbed my toe on the table! And it hurts and I need to sit down ’cause it’s bleeding now.” made me laugh out loud. So very, very true! It’s great to have those numbers, too, to remind ourselves that we don’t have to be teeny-tiny to be accurate and ‘fashionable’ within the Victorian period (my other home).
Keep up the good work–I loooove your blog, fitting guides and other resources. You rule!
And don’t get me started on the “rib removal” thing! (I work in a Victorian museum, so we get that a lot from guests.) Nobody in their right mind would subject themselves to the surgical practices of that time just to look thinner.
However, they did sometimes resort to Photoshopping (or its 19th c. equivalent). The Astors’ Beechwood in Newport used to display a photo of Mrs. Astor where the photographer had clearly touched up the waistline (on the negative). She was standing in front of a dark background, and it was filled in even further to make her appear more svelte. The 1905-10 photo on the top of this page could almost be done the same way, considering how white and washed-out the background immediately behind her is.
Hear hear! In my day job, if a female client comes to me wanting a tiny waist, they can initially be baffled as to why my focus immediately goes to developing the muscles their shoulders, back and bum! Exactly the same principle of optical illusion.
Really interesting to hear the actual measurements for corsets from the time. Assuming all women swanned about with 18″ waists makes as much sense as looking at the poor, skeletal creatures on fashion magazines and assuming all modern women are that shape!
The corset also helps feed the small waist illusion because it shifts the shape of the body from an oval to a more round shape- so the waistline looks narrower.
What people also don’t remember is that humans are larger now than they were even, oh, 60 years ago. Scientific studies back this up — better eating habits, etc, mean that as a race, we’re 1-2 inches taller than we were earlier in the last century (it might even have been as late as the 1940s). If you’ve ever been to one of those Living History places — Colonial Williamsburg is a good example, though I always went to Sturbridge Village in MA since it was near where I grew up — one of the major things to note about those old houses is how everything is smaller. Beds are shorter, doorjams are MUCH more treacherous to tall men (even average ones!). Those waists that seem so tiny? Proportionally, they were just on a tinier body to start with!
So true Caroline!
As some on who is a period size 5’2″ and shape (really cant bye any strapie tops cause the straps are usually several inches to long) I would just like to back that up. My natural waist is 25 inches after two babies an I can very comfortably corset down to 22-23 inches and chase round after my kids. I have a friend however who is even smaller than I am she is 19 with no kids, her height is 4’11” and her waist is 20 inches uncorseted so for her 18 inches is very realistic with a corset although she could probably achieve 15 if she had been wearing corsets all her life.
Sorry, have to jump in here.. I work in a 1660’s historical house museum and the myth about people being significantly shorter is simply untrue. Firstly, the ceilings are low because heat rises and it was expensive to heat a home in those days so they built them with lower ceilings to conserve heat. Wealthy families from that time have very high ceilings (the place where I work has almost 10ft ceilings). This means that the door frames found in many house museums are smaller to fit that. Beds were shorter because people slept sitting upright as they thought it was better for your health. Chairs are smaller because normally people didn’t sit “full back” in a chair. This was still a courtly era, where you are showing off your calves if you are a man, and all the expensive fabric in your skirt if you are a woman, so your legs stick out more. Yes, on average they were an inch or so shorter than us, but that’s about it, even going back to colonial times. As for the poor nutrition? That actually meant that a lot of people were fatter, since their main intake was bread and other simple carbohydrates. So while the theory of them being smaller and having smaller waists seems like a decent one, the evidence does not, in fact, back that up. 🙂
On this one I think you are out a bit. People’s heights have changes significantly throughout history as backed up by archaeological evidence in the form of our ancestors bones. In the Victorian period people were much shorter than they are today. However during the 1500’s people were about the same height as we are. The change is down to water quality , air quality, and most importantly diet cause by the industrial revolution and our migration out of the country side and in to urban situations.
Also do recall that before WWII it was VERY common for adult ladies to hand their gowns down to their daughters and nieces, so these dresses were frequently cut down to fit younger and smaller figures. A great many extant garments are on the small size, but once 14-year-old Susie has had it tailored to serve as her second-best party dress (After it was Mom’s evening dress and sister Kate’s Coming-out gown,) there’s not much practically that can be done with it size-wise.
I’m afraid I have to agree with Ketala here. I think we can all look back in our own ancestry and find short people. I cannot base any information on facts beyond the mid 19th century, but a study of civil war soldiers (who would have had their heights documented and come from a sizable cross section of the population) reveals that their heights were shorter on average than we are today, but not as drastically as we’ve been led to believe. 1 or 2″ or so.
I am 5’10” but my mother is 5′ 3″ This doesn’t mean I got better nutrition than her, it just means I got taller genes than she did. Her family has both tall and short genes and that can be found anywhere in history.
Another point is that I have done a little studying of my own on dresses from the mid 19th century and I’ve found that Jennifer’s finding match with my own. The dresses I’ve seen have small but normal waistbands and their lengths and other dimensions do not differ enough from period dresses to even mention it. A woman who was significantly shorter than a modern woman would be tripping over 41-43″ skirts, a common length I’ve found in my research. At 5′ 10″ my own reproduction skirts have between 43-45″ lengths (Depending on what I use the dresses for, the type of skirt support and the length I need it for fashion or work needs).
I collected a random sample of measured museum garments, their total dress lengths measure 55″ to 61″ in length. Some of the dresses were off the shoulder looks and some are high jewel neck designs, so that can make several inches of difference in dress lengths. Lower necklines obviously creating shorter measured garments, even if a taller woman wears them.)
I then measured the reproduction garments I’ve made for my own use. Their lengths range from 55″ to 61″. Keep in mind, I am a 5’10” woman.
There is no way that we can say that these women were all 5’3″ and shorter. A 63″ tall woman would have a lot of problems putting on a 61″ dress unless it was built with cutouts for her eyes.
So yes, we have gotten taller, but not enough to make claims that everyone stood barely over 5 foot. Those people existed to be sure, but so did 6 foot+ people. Same as today.
I do have to disagree however on the account that beds were shorter… All the beds I have personally measured come pretty close to what our standard beds measure as far as length is concerned. Some maybe an inch or 2 shorter, but nothing significant. I own an original 1850s bed which will fit a full size mattress just fine.
Height is not all genetics. Yes, it plays a significant role, but it isn’t everything. Per the article below, height is roughly 60-80% genetics, and 20-40% environmental factors, the most important one being, yes, nutrition.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=how-much-of-human-height
Totally agree, people were a lot smaller, both my maternal grandmothers were under 5Ft, I am 5 ft 9 ins and my son is 6ft 2ins, however he and I share a waist size, 29″ !
What I think would put the stake through the heart of the “18 inch waist myth” would be measuring the waists of the dress, not the corset. One could argue that corsets in period weren’t worn with sizable gaps, but measuring the circumference of the finished outer garment, as it has stationary closures, would give a definitive answer.
Yes! The skirt waistband would give a definite answer. And yet, the skirt was over several layers too, like the undergarments, corset and petticoats. So even then the skirt waist would be larger than the real person. (Of course, this is true with our own costume sizing.)