A Waist of Time: A deep dive into the history of corsets

If there’s one thing about fashion I don’t miss, it’s the skinny eyebrow trend of the early 2000s. It looked like a strong breeze could blow those skinny bitches right off your face. But fashion is cyclical, and skinny eyebrows will probably come back. But, something I didn’t expect was corsets. 

The history of corsets go way back to the Minoans, an early Greek civilisation active from 3000 to 1100 BCE, and that garment hasn’t fully gone out of style since then. 

Vintage Corsets: More Victims than Jack the Ripper? Or a Harmless Fashion Accessory?

Both corsets and Jack the Ripper were active in the Victorian era. The latter definitely killed a bunch of women in the streets of London. The former? Well, the results are mixed. Many mainstream sources say corsets are dangerous, but it depends on what you use them for. There’s waist training (problematic, but I’ll get into that later), corsets as a bra replacement or just for the aesthetic. 

In the Victorian era, corsets were pieces of strong fabric that wrapped around the waist and had metal or bone inserts for structure. The front was done up with hooks and the back with laces. It was a trend for both men and women to shape their waists with corsets. Although, for women, there was more emphasis on giving the boobies a lift. For the guys, it was more about getting that V-shape silhouette. The bra was a recent invention, so most people used corsets to stop their back snapping from all that big, tiddy weight. 

Mary E. Halliday is just one story of extreme corset usage, after her sudden death in 1903. Two steel corset bones pierced her heart and caused a seizure. Valuing fashion over health has always been a problem over the centuries. From using arsenic dyes in dresses to sewing lashes into eyelids, the idea of “beauty is pain” has been one of the only constants in fashion. Some say that corsets are pretty harmless in general, if not beneficial for posture and wellbeing. But other more sciencey places have long been warning about the dangers of lacing a corset up too tight. For example, the Lancet, one of the longest-running and most respected science journals (it better be, I used their articles in my essays) has warned about the potential dangers of corsets, due to “tight-lacing”. Tight-lacing is tightening the corset to change the waist shape. Extreme tight-lacing can cause permanent organ displacement, which can lead to organ failure. Yikes. 

On top of that, materials like whalebone were used to make corsets. Baleen whales were a popular source for them, and because humanity sucks, they were hunted close to extinction. However, corsets became more hardcore because fashion technology advanced with the invention of steel bones, baby. So, the whales were spared, but the waists were not. They were snatched left, right and centre. Apparently, corsets caused faintness, restricted breathing, indigestion and the back muscles to wear down when worn improperly. But women continued to tight-lace their corsets because it was the trend. 

But, the reign of the corset ended (temporarily) in the 1920s when the “ideal” body shape for a woman was a “boyish” figure with a flat chest and a slim waist. Weird, how body sizes and shapes are treated like coats on a rack, aye? They can be put on and off again, depending on the mood and the weather. It’s kinda shitty. 

Netflix and Tik Tok: Our Fashion Guides

Bridgerton. I’ve heard about it, and you have as well unless you live under a WiFi-less rock. It’s got corsets, rich people and sex because if a period drama isn’t spicy, no one’s gonna watch it. Bridgerton’s added influence has led to corsets being hailed as the new accessory for winter. In the past couple of decades, variations of the corset have appeared. For example, Madonna’s iconic corset cone bra. It was a way of reclaiming corsets and saying “fuck you” to its history of constricting women’s bodies. Fast forward to today, and keeping with the cyclical nature of fashion, the “hourglass” figure came back along with its partner: the vintage corset. 

History has a poor memory, so we’re repeating the same story of corset tightening again. The culprit: Tik Tok, an app that often rates high on thirst traps and low on intelligence. The “corset challenge” was a couple of months ago, but give me a break. It’s never too late to remind people about how problematic some Tik Tok challenges are. The corset challenge involved seeing how tight someone could lace up their corset in time to the song “Haus of Holbein” from the musical, SIX. Participants would also lip-sync to the lyrics: “You bring the corsets/ We’ll bring the cinches / No one wants a waist over nine inches.” Nine inches is 22 centimetres, and while the song originally is taking the piss when it comes to damaging beauty standards, there’s no context in the corset challenge. Tik Tok is full of people who don’t know any better and take these as gospel when it comes to body ideals. It also can be triggering for people who have eating disorders. The goal of the challenge could be interpreted as having a waist that’s around nine inches. But, that measurement can only be applied to cartoon women! Even imaginary women like Jessica Rabbit from ‘Who Framed Roger Rabbit’ had an estimated 10-inch waist. The average waist size for an adult woman in the UK is 34 inches or 89 centimetres. For New Zealand, the estimate is 34/35 inches. 

Vintage corsets have come back into fashion, but these days we’re also playing it pretty fast and loose with the word “corsets”. I’ve seen tops with zips in Glassons and a little bit of structure boldly called “corsets”. There are societal influences in why corsets have come back into fashion, but there is no harsh social rejection if you don’t wear one, which was the case in the 19th century. 

So, what’s the verdict?

The ideal body of a woman seems more than a little unrealistic. We know that the world knows that, but it’s still being fed to us via fashion, the media, and so much more. About a decade ago, the goal was to be thin as fuck, and now we can be fat - but only in specific places. Big boobs and a big ass. But no flabby arms or belly fat? The “ideal” hourglass shape? That’s not a human being; that’s a cartoon character. But vintage corsets were invented to help create an “hourglass” shape. At one point in history, Catherine de Medici, a French queen, banned thick waisted women in court during the 1550s (smh). So, it led to a rise in corset popularity. I know history is a bitch sometimes but really, Catherine? Who hurt you? It shows how body ideals have shaped fashion rather than the other way around. It’s like the chicken/egg question: which came first? The trend or the body ideal? 

Surprisingly, someone who hated corsets, I mean loathed them, was Napolean Bonaparte, who said corsets forecast “the decline of humanity”. Oof harsh. Imagine the havoc Napolean would wreck if he was alive today and had a Twitter account. To be fair, many people use corsets today and don’t have extreme stories like that of Mary Halliday. It depends on how you use them. Corsets are bad for waist-training. But many wear corsets just for the aesthetic and play around with it, i.e., Madonna’s cone bra. 

Corsets themselves aren’t dangerous. Before bras, many women used them as lingerie and many people use a variant to help with posture or recovery after an accident. Think of it this way: skinny jeans aren’t dangerous, but an Australian woman had to be cut out of hers after they cut off her blood circulation. I have a couple of corset style tops that I wear for fashion reasons, but I don’t waist train for fashion. Using corsets to conform to the “hourglass shape” means that other body shapes aren’t as acceptable. It goes against body positivity because the history of corsets shows that body modification for fashion is not worth it. Waist-training is driven by societal pressures that are going to change pretty quickly anyway, and if it does come back into fashion, it’ll take decades. The costs of ruining your body aren’t worth those nine inches.