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″.
as someone who has worn a corset (as a back brace as well as for fashion) i know people who did tight lace… they exist. that said they are a minority, in the same way that people who shove their size 8 feet into size 6 shoes exist.
as far as people’s measurements we also have to bear in mind:
people are TALLER now- the exact same build would be bigger.
people did refer to their corset measurements (as stated) and i wore a (redacted) corset for a while, and i left a darn big gap in the back but that was the size that FIT when my weight and size would cycle up and down over the month (puffiness is a thing)
as mentioned the optical illusion effect is a BIG part of that. you see that in Elizabethan clothing as well…
a part of the illusion in Elizabethan clothing was the fact that the front “bodice point” wasn’t at the waist, it went down well below the hips… look at a picture and your EYE tracks the point as the narrowest part? and ignores the big swaths of fabric to the side- just like modern illusions by having a darker color on the sides of the clothing.
we do this in modern fashion too. (also shoulder pads and peplums)
i read, in “little house in the big woods” about Ma Ingals having SUCH a tiny waist and kind of freaked? but then i realized she was probably a very very tiny woman, and her husband was probably a lot bigger- so “able to span her waist with his hands” when they met wasn’t that big a deal.
oh, and… one last thing: read up on period photography!!!! they did photo tricks AND photo editing!!!! seriously!
you can see evidence of models and etc in Victorian era (and later) being posed in front of a black backdrop and having their waist “painted” smaller!!!!
Can everyone kindly take a deep breath? Surely the article was not meant to set reader’s at each other’s throats or start you upsetting and offending each other. Clearly it’s a complicated and multifaceted issue. It isn’t clarified by remarks referring to unnamed experts, publications, or collections or works of fiction or presenting one’s own personal thoughts about the subject as generally accepted truth. My guess is the point was to reassure readers that their historical costuming can be historically accurate and proportional even if the wearer doesn’t have a 16″ waist. Althought the underlying logic may vary, isn’t that confirmation what’s important?
Indeed it IS a multifaceted issue. And you are correct that I wrote this to reassure costumers and those that study antiques that our ancestors were not all tiny humans. That we are closer to their looks than we realize. We still want to look good in our clothes, and each generation has its own view of beauty and fashion and how to achieve that in society’s eyes. Appreciate your comment!
So interesting! I purchased a waist trainer last year from Luxx Curves and it is possible to train these things! lol! Isn’t it weird what we consider beautiful? Squishing our colons within an inch of their lives and then wondering why we get colon cancer???
I’m new here, & thus far, I’m loving it. I for one love many eras in the realm of period clothing, & weather permitting, generally meaning it’s not summer (altho’ longing to get home to Pembrokeshire Wales, I presently reside in Las Vegas, NV) I wear all sorts of different garb when I go out. Basically I’m a pirate, but am frequently seen in the gentle bustle (circa 1876) & Southern Belle, late Civil War, Diane de Poitiers (Henri II,) Louis XV, Gay Nineties Tea Gowns, & a lot of modern chemises with bustiers. I afore my corsets, my bloomers & my reticules, all of which I create myself or sometimes refashion to suit myself. I like the Gothic, but not the modern Goth nor Steam punk. And being innovative, I frequently mixed the eras, an 1880 gown with Medieval sleeves or I’ll I may leave the house wearing a Chemise (Marie Antoinette, who invented the modern chemise (outerware, meaning the main body of the dress) as compared to the shift which is underware) but expecting it to get chilly I pack my custom made cotton print modesty cloth into its matching reticule along with a matching pair of Spats & Muffler, which completely changes the look & era of my daytime garb. To be frank, one never knows what I might be wearing, but I’m pleased to state that I’ve never received anything but nice compliments. In the realm of tiny waists, ever since I was a little girl & saw Gina Lolabrigida (excuse my poor spelling) I was determined to match that figure & started working on it by wearing wide leather belts, slowly tightening it until my waist was 18″. I literally lived in that belt! When I got married, my husband marveled at my tiny waist cuz even after 2 children it stayed betwixt 21″ & 22″; I’m 5’8″ & buxom. I am now 62 & ten years ago it was still 26″. I gained weight after I lost my mom & my much adored Welsh husband, whose memory I cherish everyday. But of late ive lost a great deal of the Sad Fat & am on the road to a 28″ waist. I do have a TIP to share about lacing & waist training. First be sure you buy a good corset with flex steel (not these new fangled coiled steel, they will not last) over bust is best, that way it gives xlnt bust support. Get one that’s made of stout fabric & good drawstrings that draw easily but do not slip, (boot laces work exceptionally well) after all, your asking a lot of this garment. When putting it on, & this is very important, tighten until it’s just barely on cuz you’re gonna want to adjust your clothing & your bosoms too, perhaps twice tightening just a little each time until everything is perfect. Then, standing statuest, and taking the deepest breath you can, pull on those laces for all your worth, wrap em forward, tie in a bow & tuck them in. You will never need to be worried about not being able to breath cuz having taken a DEEP breath before lacing means you have all the breathing room you’ll ever need. Even running & playing won’t be hampered by your corset. After this, each time you re-lace, your waist will gradually get smaller. Do not rush it. If you wear your corset everyday, Persistence will do it for you.
Welcome to our Joyful Community! Appreciate your comment here.
While I’m not arguing the basis of your article and it’s obvious that corseted women still had to manage life, women were known for being fragile because of their swooning or fainting. This has been linked to their clothing.
Also, it would be rare (not impossible, just rare) to find women wearing a corset daily or getting photographed/portraited through painting if they weren’t slightly higher on the economical scale. The farming families and families who’s survival relied on more movement wouldn’t indulge in these luxuries outside of a special occasion because even slightly it does affect overall efficiencies. In tandem to this, people who were able to wear them daily typically had some sort of help.
I’m quite confused by this article. People today wear waist trainers that are just a modern corset. What point are you trying to get across? What agitation are you trying to alleviate? Is it simply to say that corsets weren’t as cruel as most people think? Or are you wanting people to be more knowledgeable on historical accuracies and waist sizes were typically in a more manageable range?
I appreciate you taking the time to read my post and make your comments.
First, women were not “known for being fragile because of their swooning or fainting.” Their lives were SO much more physically tough than ours today in the First World areas. Health practices (food, exercise), medicine knowledge, and the like were the main causes of weak physical strength and health. Clothing has NOTHING to do with that.
Also, your thought of it being rare for women to wear corsets daily is so far-fetched I don’t know where to even begin. That’s like the main of today’s women going bra-less or with no breast support at all. Corsets were a basic undergarment that supported the bust flesh and smoothed the torso so the layers of skirts and petticoats had a firm place to sit, giving an even balance to the weight of the fabric around the body so to make them easy to wear. Yes, even working women had a few layers of petticoats and skirts and needed the corset to provide that support. Also – corsets are fantastic back support! There are literally hundreds of original photographs from the mid-19th century forward showing working women and their characteristic posture (and sometimes visible corset lines) to indicate their wearing them.
My main goal of this article was to tell that most women in the Victorian Era did not “tight lace” nor were they all super tiny humans and this based upon surviving corsets and clothing we can actually take measures from. ALL sizes of the human woman have existed throughout time. The 19th century was no exception as it is today. The myth is that modern people think women were very small. I wrote this article several years ago and so much more good information is out there now supporting my view that not all women had an 18″ waist. For a brief look at historical photoshopping (the basis that modern people merely THINK all women were small), I’ll direct you to Cynthia’s marvelous blog article on that.
To be fair, clothing did SOMETIMES have a hand in that, but more often on account of the dyes used. Black was particularly bad, especially full mourning black with veils, and some greens had arsenic components.
Although I like your article, corsets did not belong to the everyday part of the clothes of an ‘ordinary’ (peasant or working-class) woman, at least as far as the area of continental Europe is concerned. My grandmother showed me old photos of our relatives from the former Austria-Hungary (now the Czech Republic) and no woman in the photos looked like she had a corset, only a lot of layers of clothing. And it’s not just photos from our family album. I really think the corset was associated with the upper class living in cities. The same goes for bras, Grandma is my source again. Her mother apparently never wore a bra in her youth (early 20th century, my grandmother was born in the 1940s), nor did she wore a corset or any other supporting piece. Now that I think about it, wasn’t making a corset pretty expensive, even for that time?
Hi, this is a great article. I have worn a couple of lovely 2nd hand corsets I acquired occasionally but do not tie myself into a pretzel. I think (I may be wrong) that a lot of the myth comes from fashion photos/drawings that depict images similar to our modern day size 000 models. If you look at a fashion magazine today you would think that WE are all size 000, 5ft 9″ willowy with super flat tummies and gorgeous cheek bones!
Makes us then think of what people will see as our early 21st century fashion in 200 years! Also, there was photo retouching in the late 19th century forward which also skews our vision. Cynthia at Redthreaded has nice article on the subject of Turn of the Century “photoshop.”
And for those of us who sewed in the 60’s & 70’s, the images on the pattern front bore little resemblance to the finished product. Akin to Barbie’s measurements and the human body!
My paternal grandmother was raised as a proper young city woman in Savannah, Georgia (USA). She once told me how, when she was a young lady, she had a 19-inch waist. She seemed to hold it as a point of pride, which makes sense — a 19-inch waist takes a lot of hard work! Another time, we were watching a musical show at Dollywood, set in the 1950s or so. She mentioned how, when she was a young lady, she had a crinoline just like the ones the actors wore. She doesn’t talk a lot about her childhood, but I’ve gathered bits and pieces of information over the years. She’s quite attractive in her old pictures, and she was a very talented singer. If she wanted to, she could have easily gone professional, but instead she married a soldier boy from a farm in Idaho and had 10 beautiful children, 9 of whom survived to adulthood. I’m glad for it, because otherwise I wouldn’t be here! Anyway, the point of my rambling is this: People in different times had different ideas of fashion, beauty, hygiene, and societal roles. They didn’t think of how restricting everyday things were; they just were how they were. My grandma had a 19-inch waist because she wanted to. She wore those poofy skirts because she wanted to. She went out into the world and kicked butt because she chose to. She wore lipstick and did her hair up because that’s what she wanted, not because of some evil, oppressive force.
Hear Hear!! It bothers me when people see my costuming and automatically say, “wow that must be so uncomfortable!” when really it was a norm of the times! Are high heels and skintight dresses comfortable? What about those lacy panties that perpetually rides up your butt? Fashion has always been slightly uncomfortable to look your best, but in no way were corsets used to “cinch” your waist itty bitty.
There WERE some women with ridiculously small waists in proportion to their bodies. There are extremes in every age. This does not mean they were the norm, or even close to it. Those examples – and other pictures taken from deceptive angles and even retouched – are being taken as gospel truth. (I’ve seen quite a few portraits where a photographer took an inch or so off a woman’s waist & smoothed the outline)
“I’ve seen quite a few portraits where a photographer took an inch or so off a woman’s waist and smoothed the outline…”
But what about back in the mid-to-late 1800’s? What did photographers do to their photographs back then to give a woman that certain figure? Photoshop? 😀
Photo re-touching was a THING a little while after photography was invented. Cynthia has written a great blog post on this “Victorian photoshop” subject.
I work in a museum/store for vintage and antique clothing and a lot of the clothes that we see, particularly from 1910 and earlier, are TINY. 20″ waist and 29″ bust, that kind of thing. That doesn’t mean that everyone was that size though! My boss, who is a costume historian, pointed out that normal size Edwardian and Victorian clothing was worn in the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, etc, so we’re left with the stuff that’s still in good shape since no one could wear it. These clothes are also clearly designed for someone of about my height (I’m 5′ tall– small by modern standards) and with much smaller shoulders due to changes in nutrition and exercise for women.
Average height back then was several inches shorter than it is now, for both men and women. A smaller person will naturally have a smaller waist.
And that’s an excellent point, about only the smaller things surviving because they were the things that couldn’t be worn to death later! I would guess that many of the clothing items from much rounder people were cannibalized for fabric yardage!
And, in regards to photos of real women of the 1800’s with tiny-looking waists, two points: First, some of these women were just naturally endowed with figures that compressed easily, including actress Polaire who was considered unattractive (and thus might have resorted to over-lacing as a publicity stunt). Elizabeth Taylor always seemed to have a tiny waist, but it was mostly because she had the hips and bust to accentuate it –and she dressed to play up her curves.
Second point: most corsets compress the waist into a relatively circular shape, as opposed to the natural oval cross-section; even without changing the actual measurement of the waist, wearing a corset will widen the side-view (front-to-back depth) and push the sides in a bit–making the waist APPEAR smaller.
This is a fantastic post Jennifer, thank you so much! =)
Regarding the diary entry of Laura Ingalls (that she had matured to the point, she would have to start wearing a corset, and that would prevent her from helping her father in the fields, because she wouldn’t be able to move around in it.)
Certainly a young girl who had been encouraged to be a tomboy would find a corset restrictive, especially in the beginning, I wasn’t too fond of my first bra and that was far less restrictive. But bear in mind that her mother traveled west in a covered wagon, milked cows, chopped wood, hand made bread, harnessed and drove horses, hand washed clothes, carried water, planted and weeded a garden and raised children. And she did so wearing a corset.
And when they got together Laura’s father could put his hands all the way around her mother’s waist, something she seemed really proud of and something she drilled into the girls when they didn’t want to wear corsets.
I read an article (alas, I can’t find it now) that traced the rise in ladies fainting to the rise of gas lighting in homes. The gas wasn’t as safe as nowadays, it leaked more, and I don’t believe it had a smell. As a result, the article claimed, upper class or middle class women (the ones most likely to be “fashionably” fainting) were spending all day at home breathing in carbon monoxide from their fancy new lights. Which caused them to faint. Their husbands were out and about during the day, and so didn’t have nearly as bad effects. It was a pretty convincing article and I’d be intrigued to read something more in-depth on the subject because, like you, I don’t buy ladies lacing themselves so much they pass out on a regular basis.
I’ve heard of this. Quite a good possible theory.
Not really possible. Carbon monoxide acts quickly., and fatally.
Fainting figures largely in fiction and in urban legend but pretty much never in actual diaries or accounts unless someone is mocking someone else for putting on a fake show.
Corsets don’t really restrict breathing, anyway, unless you’re doing something incredibly intense. Women played tennis in corsets and went ice-skating in corsets.
And rode sidesaddle hunts ,and “ rotten row” equestrian adventures
It’s totally possible (the CO theory). CO acts quickly and surely in a high concentrations (which is why committing suicide in a garage isn’t uncommon). But it’s 100% possible to have low level CO poisoning and not die from it. Happens all the time. People complain of symptoms such as headache, nausea, lightheadedness, increased irritability, and mood swings over periods of weeks to months. It does indeed happen – and it makes sense that it could happen at an even slower rate in the high ceilinged and drafty houses of the Victorian and Edwardian eras.
Thank you for this article! I have been trying to convince my family of the exact point your making for years! Victorians were people too.
This is a very interesting article and comments. I mostly appreciate those who seek to put into perspective and proper context any activity practiced by groups of people who are no longer here to talk about them.
My grandmother wore a corset nearly every day until she passed away in 1980 (not that long ago and definitely not Victorian). Sometimes I helped tie it for her. It was not restrictive, She had full use of her musculature and she cleaned house, went shopping, scrubbed floors, etc., in it. She had several and wore them as we do shoes, saving the best one for dressing up. It was a fully normal thing, and a habit as common as putting on socks, painting fingernails, or shaving.
My main interest is in historical color and design use and I regularly have “conversations” with others about our inability to dispel our 21st century eyes and view things from the perspective of those who lived with them everyday (whether Medieval or Victorian, or another period in time). One story, or instance in a medical manual, does not represent the whole of the population then, just as one horrible news event today does not represent the whole of current society. They are one-off stories about individuals, not an entire population.
We must all practice the ability to view period occurrences with period-specific eyes. The inability to put yourself within that time frame and see the motivations and conditions that influenced the decisions people then made for themselves, does a huge disservice to understanding and better appreciating that time period and the people who lived in it.
I have read doctor’s notes about his female patients who wore their corsets 24/7, for so long their abdominal and back muscles had atrophied to the point, those women could not sit up without their corset. That’s not a myth, those are medical records. They wore their corsets 24/7, so their bodies could adapt to that restrictive garment, and they live their lives with relatively less pain.. Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote in her diary, that she had matured to the point, she would have to start wearing a corset, and that would prevent her from helping her father in the fields, because she wouldn’t be able to move around in it. That’s not a myth, that’s an actual diary entry.
I was disappointed that Jennifer lectured yesterday, that we should not look back at history with a modern eye, and pass judgement; yet that is exactly what she did with this entry. She ignored the tons of data, actual medical data, on just how women wore their corsets and how damaging it was to their bodies…. and it all begs the question: why fight this battle?
Why try to redefine the Corset into a Modern Context? Why ignore tons of historical data that paint that garment as a death trap? Why tie yourself in knots trying to rationalize that Woman wouldn’t torture themselves to be beautiful, so I don’t have to, either. Botox, rhinoplasty, lipposuction, cosmetic surgery… Women are still torturing themselves to be beautiful.
Let’s look at that ratio of the extant garment listed above: 4’9″ with an 18″ waist line. It was an adult woman’s dress; they know it was an adult woman’s dress. For my height of 6 feet tall, I would be in a 24 inch waist. I always struggled to gain weight, and was 50-75 pounds under weight for my height; I lost my 24 inch waist when I was 15, and was right at 100 pounds underweight for my height.
I would much rather we have the discussion that WE CANNOT BE HISTORICALLY ACCURATE, because we are healthier; that our prenatal care has improved so much that our species has increased in general size by 4-5 times that of the 19th century. That the majority of us are not malnourished, that we have better sanitary conditions; that we all have access to medical care..
The corset is not a “death trap.” And I invite you to read my popular post on Why We Can’t Be 100% Accurate.
Your post made interesting reading. However, you’re ignoring all the research that medical doctors have done. Carys show how wearing a corset year after year compresses the internal organs and forces them upwards and squashes the lungs. The woman is then unable to fully breathe in. You can’t say they’re not a death trap without saying how. You give no evidence at all. Where as if you Google x ray of women who wore corsets there is your evidence.
Don’t be a gullible idiot. Those images were DRAWINGS from the overheated fantasy of a doctor who hated corsets. Doesn’t make them real. The stories of “weakened women” were urban myths that some wanted to believe–that a woman’s vanity somewhere caused her death. Never happened. Doctors also wrote about how weak women poisoned their babies with their inferior breastmilk, and how low-class women could have c-sections without experiencing trauma because their coarse nature renders them insensate to pain. In short, doctors of the 19th century were very often wrong about almost everything. Housemaids scrubbed floors tightlaced. Actual skeletons show no deformations that can be associated with corsets. Levels of rickets were high, but that was found in both men and women and was due to alum as a bread leaven, not corsets.
Women didn’t wear their corsets 24/7 – they took them off to sleep. Certainly, their are some tightlacers today who wear corsets 22+ hours a day but that isn’t historical.
Yes, corsets rearranged the organs a bit but so does pregnancy and we’re not all running around saying ‘oh no, don’t get pregnant – it’s bad for you.’ The body returns to normal once you take your corset off.
And as for restrictive? I have danced, run, and jumped on a trampoline in my corset. And run about with overly energetic toddlers with no problem keeping up with them or picking them up and carrying them about. I can bend down to touch my toes too.
Have you actually had the opportunity to wear a corset? One made for your own body measurements? They are so comfortable – like a second skin. Granted, the longest I have worn a corset for has been four days in a row (taking it off to sleep, of course), but I have never had any problems whatsoever – I actually miss it for a day or two afterwards because my posture is so much better in a corset and we all know that a poor posture isn’t good for our health. So actually, one could argue, if they so choose, that we’re not doing ourselves any health favours in the present day because of bad posture, slouching, spending hours hunched over a smart phone or computer, sitting at a desk for eight hours a day, moving only our fingers as we type for work.
If corsets were so horrible and bad for you then why have they been around for so long? People in the past weren’t stupid – if corsets really were that terrible then they wouldn’t have continued to wear them, would they? If they were so harmful to women’s health then how could they have given birth to future generations? Or how did some (like my great great grandmother) live into their nineties?
If you want to read more about dispelling the myth of tiny waists then might I suggest these?
Corsetted Victorians and others – myths and reality
Support Garment Showdown: Options for Creating a Victorian Look With or Without a Corset
With and Without: How Wearing a Corset Affects You and Your Clothes
Did Corsets Harm Women’s Health?
Exploring the Myths of Corsets
One thing to remember when citing historical writings, is the source–even in doctors’ journals, if a particular doctor had a strong anti-corset viewpoint, he would blame every health issue he could on corsets. If a woman’s musculature cannot support her out of a corset, then her corset doesn’t fit right–she’s been leaning on her stays instead of standing up straight. Since corsets were mostly purchased OTR in the Victorian era, it was every bit as possible as today for a woman to buy an ill-fitting corset and then stick with it because it was popular or cost too much to get a better one. Also, it is true that when corseted, it’s hard to lounge–period photos often show women practically lying down to read or veg–and if a women spent too many days in a row vegging like this she would certainly lose muscle tone. This is not much different from a woman today having several days or weeks of bed rest for medical reasons and then having horrible posture and fatigue when the bed rest period ends.
Laura Ingalls Wilder was a tomboy, and strongly disliked restrictions, including her Sunday Best dress with a stiff collar. Plus, her mother was looking for any excuse to get her out of the fields, away from “men’s work”, so the two seemed mutually exclusive to Laura. She also had a conflicted relationship with her older sister, who always preferred looking ladylike over farm chores and comfort. Every person’s writing reflects their own opinions, even when discussing facts.
The thousands of women who did chores in corsets never needed to see a doctor about weak core muscles, and most of them did not publish their journals for all to read centuries later. The AVERAGE woman of the Victorian era did NOT torture herself for the sake of fashion. What has been preserved is mostly the extremes. Your examples of modern “torture” for the sake of beauty/fashion are just as extreme (i.e. NOT the norm) as the tiny waist.
As for modern body measurements vs historical dresses, the average person today grew up drinking milk and doing PE including sit-ups and other muscle-enlarging core exercises. Plus most of us spend the majority of our day sitting, which encourages our organs to settle above our hips. We can see by the change in fashions from the high-waisted late 80’s and early 90’s to the current low-rise trends, that body shape has changed significantly in recent decades, concurrent with the rise in home computers, video games and cable/satellite TV, long-distance commuting, and GMO foods. My daughter is slim-curvy, but she can’t button the waist of a pair of jeans I saved (because of gorgeous fabric) from 1992 , when I was five years older than she is with the same hip measurement. Also, I was a dancer back then, so my core was quite muscular.
Besides, how is it relevant to compare a modern body to the measurements of a dress that we know was made to wear over a corset? They didn’t have bras, only stays, and wore them as much for posture as for bust-support; waist-cinching was originally an accidental and uncommon side effect of wearing stays , not a driving factor. No one claimed that the above dress fit an uncorsetted waist, and little is known about the wearer, including how old she was when the dress fit properly…”adult” dresses were often made for 14-year-olds (read An Old-Fashioned-Girl by Louisa May Alcott). Someone of your body type might theoretically be able to lace into a 24-inch corset with little discomfort, and with that height it might even look proportionate, if slim. There are Asian women with natural 20-inch waists (as well as being 4 ft 9 inches tall), due to their genetics and diet. Someone like that could very likely lace into an 18-inch corset and hardly notice a difference. The fashion industry was as unrealistic back then as it is now, and our magazines and TV usually make it seem that every woman is tall and thin.
No one’s denying that SOME women over-laced their corsets to the point of harming themselves. But this article addresses the unfounded concept of EVERY woman trying to have a 16-inch waist.
One thing that wasn’t mentioned in your article is that, as Diane has mentioned, Women were much shorter at the time. It means that all of their measurements were proportionately smaller. If you look at dresses in museum collections, it is easy to see that most of them were made for women under 5′ tall. Improved nutrition in the 20th century has lead to an increase in height of the average woman.
Please remember that most gowns that survived to be museum pieces were not worn every day. Many girls started wearing “adult” styles (i.e. floor-length) when they were 14 to 16 years old, and they often had growth spurts after that, so their first long gowns were too short and put into a trunk in the attic. This includes wedding gowns–a young lady often laced tightly enough that it reduced her appetite-ergo her growth-but once married and pregnant, it was acceptable to loosen the laces and eat more, so she might have a late growth spurt while pregnant. Especially since many people felt that cow’s milk was only a useful food for women who were lactating, or who would be soon. The Pragmatic Costumer has a post addressing this, including a photo of herself in modern clothes standing next to her own 1860’s dress on a form. Sometimes the museums over-compensate for hoops and petticoats effectively shortening the dress, plus we have no way of knowing exactly how close to the ground a hemline was, or what height of shoes were worn. Not every gown in the 1800’s went below the ankle bone.
You are right on the mark regarding the early ages of young women wearing adult clothing. Most people do not realize that Vivien Leigh was 25 when she played the role of Scarlett O’Hara. Vivien Leigh looked 25. At the beginning of the story of “Gone With the Wind” when you see Scarlett being tight laced into her corset, Scarlett was only 16 years old. Generally speaking, it would be physically more possible to achieve an 18 inch waist on a 16 year old than someone who is 25. People see a 25 year old actress in one of the greatest films of all time being tight laced into a corset easily misleads the viewer. In those days (in the South) the prime age for a young lady to marry was right about 16 years old, and marriage was very serious business. Every move Scarlett made the morning of the barbecue was for the sole purpose of catching a husband. And she did. It just wasn’t who she’d hoped for, but it was a 16 year old Scarlett, not a 25 year old. The later is closer to the age she was by the end of the book..
I work in a museum cataloging our 19th and 20th century clothing collection and I have to disagree with this. We have had 40+ garments that have a 16 to 18 inch waist from the 1800s. These are women’s garments that we have struggled to even put on a mannequin due to the size of the waist and hips. Also, this petite waist was made possible due to the fact that children were often corseted starting at ages as young at 2.
I would like to know more about these garments. How tall were the women who wore them? Do they show signs of having BEEN worn? Are they adult styles or juvenile styles?
I agree. Much of the research I have done on existing garments from the period (know to have been owned and worn by adult women, pictures often included) has severely tiny waists. Now, larger women could and did obtain the illusion of this shape, however, an 18-20 inch was quite natural on a gown or skirt. People have become larger (both taller and thicker) over time. Examples: door frames on historical east coast homes from the 1700’s are shorter, shoes even four generations ago didn’t run into double digits for women, the average ring size in the 1800’s (for women) was a 4-5 on the ring finger, and many many more. I understand that she may have been working with items that contradict those ideas, but after seeing thousands of garments, underpinnings and shoes from the 18th and 19th century, I am assured that tiny (in our modern opinion) was more like average in theirs. Nutrition, sanitation, coal pollution, personal hygiene, and other factors contributed to their smaller stature. I would however like to see pictures of the collection she studied.
You can’t really use door frames as a reference because it assumes that people in the 18th century (or Middle Ages) cut their door frames with the same clearance that we do in 2017. They didn’t. It’s a fault reference measurement.
People during the times when they were the smallest in England were only 2-2.5″ shorter on average than today. In the early middle ages, they were only 1-1.5″ shorter on average. Footmen, for instance, were almost always 5’10” to 6’2″ in the 1800s–a height that was easy to find plenty of applicants for but tall enough to make an impression. The clothes that survive are often tiny because the temptation was great to cut down clothes that could be reused into something smaller. Worn out clothes were sold for rag. What got preserved was usually clothes considered “too nice” for the rag man but also too small to cut down for anyone else to use.
People under the age of 40 were rarely fat historically…except that the Victorian era was our first huge obesity crisis as people became much more sedentary on average, especially middle class women! A natural waist over 35″ is central obesity. A natural waist under 28″ is considered a lean size. Women typically laced to a 4″ reduction, though up to 6″ isn’t uncommon–the fatter you are, the bigger the reduction without feeling restricted, because fat smooshes around very well–and they left a gap of at least an inch in the backs of their corsets. You can see in MOST photographs of Victorian women that a “tiny” or even quite small waist is pretty rare, especially on people of middle age. Celebrities are always extremes. That’s why they’re celebrities. (And many just lied. Mae West, famous for her “big” figure, achieved it through enormous amounts of padding around a fairly normal, slimmish natural waist with a normal level of reduction.)
In modern times, without corsetry, adult women’s clothing sizes in America have always started with a waist size of 22″ and gone up from there, whether that was called “size 12” (as it was in the 1930s) or “size 4” or, most recently, the ludicrously named “size 000″, even as the average woman get fatter younger (again). These are off-the-rack sizes, so not incredibly rare. That 22″ waist would take a 16″ to 18″ corset, when it laced closed, which she would wear with an 18: to 20” waist.
Oh, and as for door frames–the poor and low-middle classes had no issues with the idea of having to duck down to enter a building or even go room to room. The lower the door, the warmer the room stayed with less fuel. It was about the cost of materials, the time in labor, and the cost and time in heating a space.
Yep! Also door frames in the 18th century are commonly said to be too narrow for the court dresses they wore at the time with those massive panniers under, since they belonged to houses made before the fashion took off and so it wasn’t uncommon for the women to enter rooms sideways so their dresses would fit through! Using a door frame as any kind of relative measurement isn’t very useful as it only can tell us the size of the door that fitted it and nothing else really. Could you imagine if people claimed the same with monuments like the Arc de Triomphe in Paris – how tall must everyone been to fit under that?! Giants! ROFL
The reason that so many of the extant pieces are so tiny is because they are so tiny. They were too small to be handed down to other family members because no one else could fit in them. Those garments that were handed down were used until they fell apart or were thrown away, and later were used by people playing dress-up or as theatrical costumes. That’s why it’s so hard to find larger sized extant historical clothing. I have been lucky to acquire a couple of the more average sized garments in my collection, including a cotton 1860s dress with a 29″ waist (and for a tall woman!), as well as a 28″ waist 1890s silk suit.
First thing that came to mind ~ Did the people in your museum leave a 2 to 4 in. gap at the back? Or did they lace the corset till it closed? I say this only because I have seen photos of corsets from the Met that were laced wrong ! Also, did the mannequins present the current body shape? I believe women today are suppose to be without hips. That would affect the way a Victorian corset would fit on the mannequin.
I was always jealous of my Grandma’s 18 inch waist in her wedding photo. Until I realized she was only 5 foot tall, and I’m a 6 inches taller. Her’s didn’t last, she went on to have 9 children. Leaving corsetry behind.
Bravo! Exactly the point I try to make in every one of my presentations. It’s uncanny that one movie (Gone with the Wind) can start a myth that endures, and subsequent movies, etc reinforce. I have seen advertisements in ladies magazines from the 19th and early 20th centuries and many offer waist sizes up to 52″ That is definitely NOT itsy bitsy. Thank you for sharing your insight!
Tightlacing was most associated with low-class shop girls!
While in general I agree with you, I did read a book recently that brings evidence to show that tight-lacing and the teeny tiny waist was a Thing, though in extremes. I do not recall the exact title but it was something like ‘How to be a Victorian’. She brought letters from girls to friends or mothers where they talk about tight-lacing and attempting to get 18/16 inch waists. This was an extreme though, which we still have today when people try to follow fashion.
On the other hand, we have comments in today’s world from women who are anorexic or have body dismorphia that would appear to be the same thing, if we didn’t understand that these aren’t things that are to be ADMIRED. Additionally, a lot of those things were, well, Victorian erotica, not necessarily actual truth. It’s absolutely possible to cinch yourself down way smaller than you would ever wear to go out for the sake of having the laces cut, and, ah, there’s kind of an erotic rush to having something that restrictive abruptly removed. (That restrictive == cinched unusually tight.) But there’s also a huge element of cliquish one-upmanship in letters like that, no different from teen girls discussing the fantastic styles they’re going to wear to prom, none of which do you ever actually SEE at prom.
It’s most likely that you were reading p*rn. The letters about tightlacing were the Penthouse letters of the Victorian era. They got published for masturbatory purposes, and later readers sometimes took them for actual letters. 🙂
Great article – points I never knew about. In addition to all this, women were also several inches shorter and smaller overall than women are on average today. It’s easier to have a smaller waist when you’re 4’9.