6 Corset Myths That Make Me Want to Smack Someone With a Rib
Corsets were not the torture devices of Hollywood legend.
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In Bridgerton's sequel, Queen Charlotte, a young Charlotte complains that her whalebone corset is so tight that it might impale her. It’s a familiar tale of woe in Hollywood - A young lass is grabbing a bedpost and wincing in pain as her maid yanks the laces of her lady's corset tighter and tighter.
Although the corset-tightening trope has become a poignant metaphor for a woman's lack of agency over her body, there's one problem — none of it is true. Tight lacing was not done until the later Victorian period. And even then, it was not the norm.
Queen Charlotte takes place in the Georgian era — a period in which corsets did not exist. Women wore stays that aimed to bring the shoulders back while lifting and rounding the breasts. In other words, stays accentuated the decolletage, not the waist.
No tight lacing was done in the later Regency period either - when Bridgerton takes place. There was no need. The predominant style was an empire waist — a silhouette that lengthened the figure with dresses fitted below the bust line. Women did need rounded breasts, so Regency stays focused on accentuating breasts.
In the Victorian period, smaller waists became the beauty ideal. But as for women removing ribs to fit into their eighteen-inch corsets, there is not a single documented case of rib removal. And even if some quack doctor tried it, good luck surviving your innards ripped to shreds. Before antibiotics, surgery was far more dangerous.
Here are a few more corset myths that cause apoplectic fits and fainting spells among costume historians.
Myth #1: Corsets were so restrictive that women couldn't breathe, and some even fainted.
If you wore a Regency corset tailored to your body, you would find it remarkably comfortable. Corsets were typically lined with cotton cording and baleen— the keratinous plates found in the mouths of baleen whales. Despite its name, whalebone (it wasn't really bones) was flexible, light, and molded to the wearer's body. In other words, corsets were more supportive than restrictive.
Much like clothing today, if a corset was so tight that the wearer couldn't breathe or bend, she was wearing the wrong size. Most corsets were designed to have a lacing gap of 2–3 inches. So, if a woman had a 25-inch waist (equivalent to a size 2 today), her corset was typically 27–28 inches.
Myth #2: When corsets cut off the oxygen to their brains, women sunk into their "fainting couches."
The first fainting couches or day beds were not popularized until the early twentieth century, but there isn’t any historical reference to them being used by swooning women. And as a self-professed fainter due to low blood pressure, this wouldn't be my first choice for a soft landing.
For one, it's a bit narrow. It also looks hard and uninviting. Most fainters prefer a feather bed with a tall, dark, handsome Jaime Camil lookalike nearby, preferably with a medical degree.
Myth #3: The purpose of a corset was to make the waist smaller.
Except for more extreme corset trends between 1840–1850, the corset was not worn to make the waist smaller.
Most undergarments aimed to create an upright posture and smooth line for garments. A rigid posture was a reflection of a woman's morality and self-discipline. And although we can snub our noses at such constraints, it isn't any better than assuming someone who is overweight lacks self-discipline or is lazy — a fallacy that continues to harm women in the workplace.
During the Victorian period, smaller waists were certainly idealized, but they achieved those tiny waists through optical illusions, not tight-lacing. Most garments used padding to make the busts rounded and the hips fuller. The result of plumping the bust and hips was that their waists appeared smaller.
Myth #4: Women were expected to have 18-inch waists.
One of the first examples of a corseted woman with a wasp waist is this Minoan priestess.
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Suppose we assume an idealized goddess represented the typical woman. In that case, we also have to assume that the average gal of ancient lore accessorized with some badass snakes and torpedo nipples. #freethenipple
Yes, Victorian women were thinner than today, but most women did not have 18-inch waists.
Author of The Corset: A Cultural History, Valerie Steele compiled the sizes of 197 corsets from the Symington Collection of the Leicestershire Museums. She found one corset outlier of 18 inches, but the majority were 20–26 inches.
So what's with all those photos of Victorian women with waists the size of a grapefruit? It's simple. Victorians doctored photos. They didn't have Snapchat filters, so they used pencil markings and scraping to cinch waists.
However, there's another counterargument to the eighteen-inch waist myth. If most women did not have eighteen-inch waists, why are so many of our preserved corsets so darn tiny?
Unlike fast fashion today, garments were prohibitively expensive, so most were recycled. Obviously, the more a garment is worn, the less likely it will be preserved for posterity. Consequently, the garments preserved in museum collections were worn less often.
And there's a logical reason they were not worn — no one could fit into them. As every sewist knows, taking a garment in is much easier than taking it out.
Not to mention, some fabrics are hard to duplicate. For example, most costume historians needed a fainting couch after Kim Kardashian traipsed down the runway in Marilyn Monroe's iconic "naked dress." Marilyn's dress was flesh-colored soufflé gauze imported from France. Good luck finding vintage soufflé gauze in your local craft store. Repairs would be tricky.
But the biggest reason women could not have had eighteen-inch waists is biology. Throughout most of history, a woman achieved status through motherhood. However, having an eighteen-inch waist would cause a BMI of approximately 17.5. And guess what happens to most women when their BMI drops below 18? Ovulation ceases.
Sure, medicine was less knowledgeable about fertility during the Victorian period, but eventually, people would have noticed that skinny girls weren't having babies.
Myth #5: Corsets were a symbol of patriarchal oppression.
If you look at nineteenth-century advertisements, you would assume most women have wasp waists. These advertisements were the real oppression — they bombarded women with impossible ideals. And that isn't the patriarchy's fault. That is capitalism's fault.
Corsets couldn't have been the evil invention of the patriarchy for one reason — men wore them too. Called trusses, they were designed to provide back support while narrowing the waist.
And although utter quackery, many corsets were worn for health reasons. In the late nineteenth century, the electric corset was marketed to men to increase their sexual stamina and to women to decrease theirs. With both genders, corsets claimed to harness the potency of electricity to increase vitality.
In reality, electric corsets were lined with magnets and copper plates. No electric currents passed from garment to wearer. It would take another Victorian invention — the vibrator — to get ladies, um…stimulated.
Myth #6: Corsets caused organs to shift.
I can’t stress this enough. Most women did not practice tight-lacing. Tight-lacing would be the equivalent of a woman having a Brazillian Butt Lift (BPL) — the dangerous cosmetic surgery that removes fat from your waist and grafts it to your arse. How many women do you know have had BPL?
And you can bet some Victorian women said to hell with this nonsense and chose not to wear corsets. Some even posed in public pictures un-corsetted.
But if a woman did pull a Kardashian and tight-laced her corset, it wasn't the corset that caused displaced organs. It was the metal eyelets. Autopsies found livers with indentations. Stomaches were squashed and misshaped from corset training. Pregnant women had prolapses when tight lacing forced the organs downward.
However, the belief that a corset squashed organs could also be rooted in the lack of anatomical knowledge. Livers come in different sizes depending on age, sex, and body size. Prolapses happen for many reasons. (Childbirth is the most common cause.) In other words, we can't assume corsets were to blame.
And even if tight-lacing did cause organ displacement, that's not exactly a monstrous tragedy. Our organs are suspended in fluid, so there's a certain degree of floating.
Do you know what also causes organs to shift? Pregnancy. Fortunately, organs return to their original placement after pregnancy so that women are tricked into having more babies. (If my kids are reading this…that was a joke. Not tricked. Blessed.)
Of course, countless Victorian doctors warned that tight lacing would cause digestive problems and muscle atrophy. (For the record, these same doctors believed leeches cured female "hysteria" and eugenics would save humanity.)
And they were right about the digestive and muscular problems. No one wants to eat a Big Mac in a tight-laced corset, and improper waist training causes stomach muscles to weaken. But these nineteenth-century medical warnings were directed at women not wearing corsets properly. And let's face it. Most of these tight lacers were young, unmarried women. Or as one truism from a nineteenth-century journal explained, "the male, once captured, it was no longer necessary to charm his eye with the slender waist…"
Thankfully, women get to capture men with their brains today. Or at least the ones worthy of being caught.
If only we could go back in time and push all the corseted ladies into bogs. Then we would know for sure just how much rib-crushing torture they endured. Until then, let's not castigate Victorian women too harshly. At least not while wearing tight skinny jeans and ridiculous shapewear.
Carlyn Beccia is an award-winning author and illustrator of 13 books. Subscribe to Conversations with Carlyn for free content every Wednesday, or become a paid subscriber to get the juicy stuff on Sundays.
Wonderful article. Really glad to learn that these supposed "facts" weren't @