INQUIRY IDEA N°6 -FOR OR AGAINST CORSETS?

Consult these excerpts linked to the Web activity Inquiry Idea #6, "For or against corsets?."

21. What started the debate over the wearing of corsets and where did it lead?
22. Who were the key players in the debate over the wearing of corsets?
23. Why did some physicians participate in the debate over the wearing of corsets?
24. Why did women continue to wear corsets through the 19^th and early-20^th centuries?

 21) What started the debate over the wearing of corsets and where did it lead?

“Yet from mid-century onward the purpose and meaning of the corset generated heated debate among physicians, ministers, couturiers, feminist dress reformers, health and hygiene activists, and advocates of tight-lacing. Their lengthy argument suggests that keeping women in corsets was an ongoing project.

“In the early twentieth century these corsets debates intensified. Turn-of-the century corset styles became even more constricting and thus protest against their use gained ground.”

Field, Jill. (1999). “ ‘Fighting the corsetless Evil’: Shaping Corsets and Culture, 1900-1930”. Journal of Social History, 33 (2), 355-384. [On line] http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/journal_of_social_history/v033/33.2fields.html

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 22) Who were the key players in the debate over the wearing of corsets?

“The corset controversies that raged throughout the century were not primarily between absolute opponents and defenders of the corset. […] But although there were “extremists” on both sides, most people came down somewhere in the middle: opposed to “tight-lacing” or the “abuse” of corsetry, but in favor of “moderate” corsetry, however these terms were defined.”

Valerie Steele. The Corset: A Cultural History. New Haven, Connecticut Yale University Press, 2001, p. 52.

“[…] The hardcore anticorset contingent included many (but by no means all) doctors and many (but by no means all) feminists. […] But feminists and female doctors were themselves ambivalent about corsetry.”

Valerie Steele. The Corset: A Cultural History. New Haven, Connecticut Yale University Press, 2001, p. 59.

“[…] doctors were not alone in their uneasiness about modern society or even about fashions. In Canada, the Ontario Woman’s Christian Temperance Union was on record as seeing women’s fashions as unhealthy. In the United States in the 1840s and 1850s, feminists had attempted to reject fashion’s dictates and to wear the bloomer costume popularized by Amelia Bloomer.”

Wendy Mitchinson. The Nature of Their Bodies. Women and their Doctors in Victorian Canada. Toronto, University of Toronto, 1991, p. 70.

“Men were not responsible for forcing women to wear corsets. On the contrary, a number of powerful male authority figures, including many doctors, opposed corsetry. So did a vocal minority of dress reformers of both sexes, who wondered why the majority of women persisted in wearing corsets.”

Valerie Steele. The Corset: A Cultural History. New Haven, Connecticut Yale University Press, 2001, p. 35.

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 23) Why did some physicians participate in the debate over the wearing of corsets?

“But why would physicians want to get involved in the corset controversy ? In the nineteenth century, the medical profession (dominated by men, and highly patriarchal in its attitudes) came to be viewed as responsible for the maintenance of health, not just the treatment of disease. Personal and public hygiene came within the physician’s purview. For women, personal hygiene included issues of dress and practices undertaken to enhance beauty, as well as sexuality, motherhood, and “female complaints.” The concept of “health” broadened to include moral, spiritual, psychological, and sexual health, as well as public health and the welfare of future generations. As communications media of all kinds, including professional and popular journals, proliferated during the course of the century, doctors began to publish their views on these matters.”

Valerie Steele. The Corset: A Cultural History. New Haven, Connecticut Yale University Press, 2001, p. 83.

“In theses decades (1880s and 1890s) the medical literature was much more specific about the problems fashion caused, perhaps reflecting the rise in gynaecology and increased information concerning the diseases of women. As in the earlier decades, what worried physicians most was tight lacing and the use of corsets. According to the literature, both led to miscarriages, displacement of the womb, local inflammation of the liver, gall-stones and biliary colic, wandering liver, protuberant abdomen and enteroptosis, prolapse and flexions of the womb, lateral curvatures of the spine, anaemia, chlorosis, dyspepsia, diminished lung capacity and oxygen starvation, intercostals neuralgia, weak eyes, and Bright’s disease.”

Wendy Mitchinson. 1991. The Nature of Their Bodies. Women and their Doctors in Victorian Canada. Toronto,University of Toronto, p. 68.

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 24) Why did women continue to wear corsets through the 19^th and early-20^th centuries?

“Certainly, women’s reluctance to abandon the corset was closely related to their interest in fashionable dress. But “Fashion” can not logically be reified as a magic power that causes women to behave in ways contrary to their own best interests.”

Valerie Steele. The Corset: A Cultural History. New Haven, Connecticut Yale University Press, 2001, p. 35.

“Older women, not men, were primarily responsible for enforcing sartorial norms. Within the family, the patriarch usually deferred to his wife’s or even his mother’s authority in deciding how the females of the family should be dressed. The cultural weight placed  on propriety and respectability made it difficult for women to abandon the corset, even if they wanted to.[…]

“During the nineteenth century, many aspects of life were rapidly changing but some traditions, especially those surrounding women, were all the more anxiously retained. Moreover, since most women’s socioeconomic lives depended on marriage, it was understandable that their mothers and grandmothers should want to maximize both their physical “beauty and their reputation for propriety.”

Valerie Steele. The Corset: A Cultural History. New Haven, Connecticut Yale University Press, 2001, p. 51

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