After hearing yet another scene in a Historical Fiction (the new Wuthering Heights adaptation) depicts corsets as an oppressive instrument of female torture, I have yet again, become outraged with our modern perception of these garments. The myth that corsets caused fainting and that women had ribs removed to fit in them was a lie, made by men to ridicule women. These myths date back to the women’s suffrage movement in the early 20th century. In order to make women seem stupid and undeserving of the right to vote, they came after the articles of clothing they wore.
While it was true that wealthy people primarily used corsets for aesthetic purposes, the majority of women were poor and had to work. If they supposedly couldn’t breathe in corsets or move comfortably, how do you expect them to have even survived for the centuries that corsets and stays were used, let alone work to get food on the table? Corsets weren’t as tight-laced as is depicted today. They could be worn without cinching the waist excessively on a day-to-day basis, and could even be quite comfortable when tailored to fit the torso. Corsets weren’t just to get a tiny waist either, they were a functional undergarment. Bras weren’t invented yet, so how did women support their busts? They used corsets! Additionally, many layers of petticoats were often used under heavy dresses for appropriate volume. Applying this without anything underneath puts a lot of strain on the hips, but corsets offset this by creating a rigid structure that disperses the strain across the body.
Additionally, corsets were never worn against bare skin, which makes the scene from Wuthering Heights painfully inaccurate. The scene shows a woman with cuts on her back after tightening the corset too much. A chemise—a simple, white linen or cotton loose gown—was always the layer worn closest to the skin! This is such a basic dress-history fact that many films get so wildly wrong.
If corsets were so dangerous, then why would women wear them? The idea is only meant to ridicule women for doing “stupid” things for beauty. But let’s not forget who made and perpetuated these unrealistic standards of beauty: men. Even now, women do crazy things for beauty. The newest skincare trend is injecting your face with salmon sperm for crying out loud! We are so quick to dismiss people in the past for being stupid and ignorant, but we forget that we are living in the past. Time is relative. People 300 years from now will look at all the Botox that rich people are injecting into their faces and make fun of them for that.
So, while modern women don’t wear corsets anymore, we can at least correct our perception of them. Believing corsets were a tool of female oppression actually isn’t some grand feminist statement; it perpetuates ideas sexist men made up a hundred years ago that served one purpose: to make women look dumb.
Sources:
https://www.historyextra.com/period/victorian/corsets-history/
