This is a huge one. Pretty much everyone who passes through our shop has heard (and usually believe this one) In some ways it isn't a bad myth as it gives people some sort of understanding of what a corset entails. most people understand what I am talking about if I use the words "Victorian Corset." What I have more trouble with than this myth, is people who think that any little top with a bit of ribbon in it is a corset.
Let's put it this way. This myth is equivelant to people, 100 years in the future saying "all women in 2010 had gigantic silicon boobs squeezed into Wonderbras" based on what was said by our media. The majority of women in the 19th and early 20th centuary did wear corsets, but in much the same way that the majority of women today wear bras. There were the odd ones who took corsetry to the extreme and as with all extremes, these are the ones that people remember, but most women wore corsets as a bit of day to day support. Our average tightlacer today is far more extreme than most of the extreme tightlacers of yesteryear.
Before I go any further, let me just explain to those of you who don't know, what a tightlacer or tightlacing is. A tightlacer is a person who wears steel-boned corsets (tightlacer or tightlacing corset) on a permanent basis for body modifying reasons. The corsets are usually worn 23 hous a day, seven days a week, and are taken off only to bath and exercise. Some people wear them in order to minimise their waists, sometimes to ridiculous extremes (think Guiness Book of Records, world's smallest waist / Cathy Jung, Ethl Granger, Spook) who, while I aplaud their discipline, I do not agree with their aesthetics, Extreme is seldom beautiful. Most wear corsets to perfect their proportions and give support under clothing. And there are few things more pleasing than a perfectly corsetted waist under a perfectly fitted suit.
There are plenty of records from the 19th C of women (and men) who tighlaced down to sizes of 12", 13", 14", of the much laudered Finishing Schools, and of tighlacing families however most of these have been proven to be fantasies usually published by the "National Enquirer" of the day. Not one of the so called Tighlacing Finishing Schools has been proven to have existed and it is now a known fact that tightlacing was frowned upon, paticulary by the upper eschelons of society. In fact the women who did tightlace were the feminists of the day. A corset gives a woman a confidant air and enhances her sensuality along with her natural assets, Men (and I am generalising here so don't get on your high horses) always have been, but were especially then due to the political upheavals in society afraid of a confidant sensual woman. Basically put, corsets took women out of the kitchen and away from the kids (it is difficult to correlate a corseted woman with the image of a pregnant one) and put them firmly in the public eye - exacly where no-one including Queen Victoria wanted them to be.
Over the years, corsets have followed the shapes of outer fashions, moulding and sculpting the body to the fashion of the day, As outerwear changed, so did corsets, not the other way around. They supported the bust, and helped perfect proportions to let every women look gorgeous in fabulous clothes, exactly like bras, and still over 100 years later, like corsets do today.
You may be running into some problems in definition of tightlacing. The "23/7 body modification" thing doesn't seem to be a consensus; an awful lot of people talk in terms of waist reduction. I know one woman who said that she "technically" tightlaces because she gets a 5" waist reduction, and that anything over a 4" reduction was tightlacing. Somebody else commented that she thought anything over 2" counted.
ReplyDeleteYou may also want to blame Laura Ingles Wilder.. there was that bit in Little House on the Prairie where her mother tells Laura that her figure is going to suffer for not sleeping in her corset. Her books may technically be fiction, but they shape many people's outlook on the period. The fact that they lived on a farm really magnifies the perception that it must have been everybody.
As I've said before, although I think that I expanded more on it in my previous, now defunct blog, My definition of tightlacing is based more on the idea that tightlacing is a discipline, rather than tightlacing is a waist reduction (which is the more common definition). My reason for thinking this is that many women who come through my shop (particulary african women who are often wonderfully curvy and supple to start with) easily lace down by 4", 5" or even 6" the first time I corset them. This isn't terribly tight or even particulary extreme for them, they just naturally have the body for a corset. "Tightlacer" is a term that I prefer to award to someone who has really put in the work no matter their waist size, rather that to someone who wears a corset for the odd night out.
ReplyDeleteThe reason that I also prefer to consider tightlacing as a 23/7 thing is because quite simply it is better for the body. If you are lacing full time, your organs move slowly and the body takes it's time to take to the new shape. Organs stay in their new places rather than been wrenched back into place every morning, (because let's face it, who actually has time to take an hour to lace-up every morning) This places undue stress on the body and particulary the connective tissue which can cause future problems.
Tightlacing is difficult topic and one of which there are very many opinions, but generally very few definates and often less truth. It is however a topic which I do love debating and hope to make an easier and safer place for many people in the lifestyle.