By the 1800s, corsets made a comeback, tighter and more tortuous to women than before. “These were deadly corsets,” said Stessin-Cohn, holding up one that looked more like a medieval torture instrument than an undergarment. These corsets were designed to emphasize a tiny waist. In an effort to make the waist as small as possible, the corsets were reinforced with whalebone and/or metal stays, and metal eyelets replaced the weaker embroidered ones. “You had to have a servant to lace you up,” said Stessin-Cohn, “or you had to have a corset with a pulley system like this one, where you could lace it up yourself.”
The sleeves of dresses ballooned out, as did the bottom, creating an unnatural hourglass shape where females’ waists could be 14 inches around. “They called it ‘figure training,’ and mothers who wanted their daughters to have a chance of getting married would start to put corsets on them as toddlers. There are stories of women tying their daughters’ arms up when they slept, so that they could not loosen their corsets.”
According to the letter archive at the HHS, there are many letters from daughters away at boarding schools, either complaining about how painful the “figure training” was or grateful that they had dropped inches from their waists. “It became similar to what we now call anorexia, with girls weighing 68 pounds and their mothers weighing 80 pounds. Women would compete with one another on how small their waist could become.”
“This became very controversial, with doctors beginning to publish articles about the danger of corseting,” said Stessin-Cohn, reading from various articles from doctors during that era that called the “tight lacing” of corsets a “folly,” enumerating the health issues that they caused, including damage to the lungs that could not expand normally, the constriction of women’s hearts, damage to the stomach, intestines and most notably the uterus. “These organs had no place to go, and many women miscarried, had prolapsed uteruses and suffered deadly consequences from these corsets.” The fashion industry fought back, and it was a controversial back-and-forth with the medical world.
To make fashion even more strenuous, the steel-hoop dress became a major trend. Women not only had to tighten a corset to make their waist the size of a teacup saucer, but then had to attach a steel hoop around their bodice, wearing layers of petticoats underneath a dress large enough to extend over the hoop. If the wind blew, or a female had to bend over to pick something up, the lack of underwear became an issue. “Underwear as we know it now had not been invented. So to add to the other layers of clothing, women began to wear crotchless pantaloons. This not only protected their legs from showing if the hoop would blow upwards, but it also allowed them an easier time going to the bathroom.”
Corsets continued throughout the early 19th century, but eventually morphed into figure-tightening girdles, garter belts to hold up stockings, underwire brassieres and today’s Spanx. But Stessin-Cohn warned that “corsets are making a comeback!”
Really? Women, run for the hills!
