The modern myth of the corset

When a new period piece comes out of Hollywood, horror stories follow. Actresses time after time recount fainting spells and broken ribs from a garment that is frequently described as “torture”: the corset. As recently as last year, with the film “Corsage,” haunting stories of the corset have been recounted by lead actress, Vicky Krieps. In the film, Krieps said the corset she was required to wear for her role as Empress Elisabeth of Austria had an emotional toll on her. “It’s about sedating yourself,” she said. “As soon as I wore it, maybe two minutes later I got sad … When I took it off, five minutes later I started laughing and I realized something is happening to me that I cannot control and it comes from this corset.”

When hearing one of many stories about the “positively awful” experience in a corset, one may question the purpose of the clothing article beyond simple torture. In truth, the garment was used historically for both structure and shape of the body. Abby Cox, a dress historian on YouTube, explained the reasons why corsets were historically worn. “Bone support garments like stays and corsets were worn for a multitude of reasons, the main ones being chest support, back support, posture control and to achieve the fashionable shape,” she said. In an era where stays, the precursor to the corset, were a norm, a skilled artisan such as a tailor or staymaker crafted these garments specifically to fit the wearer, as was historically normal before ready-to-wear clothing. These structured garments were especially useful for the labor-intensive work that was required of many women in the past. 

In an interview with Bustle, Sarah Woodyard, a milliner at Colonial Williamsburg, said that there are benefits to wearing a stay. “That back support really helps me not have a sore back at the end of the day,” she said. She continued, saying she had “done eighteenth century laundry and cooking. And when you’re having to pick up heavy buckets of water, or bending and moving heavy objects (the support of the corset) is really helpful.”

By the end of the Enlightenment, corsets replaced stays as the primary support garment, but over its century-long lifetime, it would find many detractors among men. Given that fashion was one of the few realms run by and for women, it often drew the mocking ire of men. Even more ridiculous than the cartoons jesting the latest fashions are the drawings of deformed ribs drawn based on assumptions and likely no medical knowledge. Despite such mockery, women largely continued to wear corsets until World War I, when simpler and looser styles came into favor due to the limited availability of clothing materials.

Through time, in addition to its status as a supportive garment and historical artifact, the corset has evolved into a symbol of the patriarchy and feminine vanity in film and television. The imagery of the corset itself certainly aids in this: The stiff bones create a cage-like shape, and the laces tighten and confine the wearer. This tight shape, worn intimately close to the body and parted only by a thin chemise, forms the body into its most “attractive shape” — thus, the corset both sexualizes and confines the female body.

Even after World War I, when corsets were no longer en vogue and cartoons mocking the vanity of women and their fashion (mostly) ceased, the concept of the corset as a torture device continued. In “Gone with the Wind,” Scarlett O’Hara subjects herself to violent tight-lacing in order to attract a future husband. In “Titanic,” Rose is forcibly laced into her corset by her mother, a show of the larger imprisonment she faces by the expectations of her upper-class society. In “Pirates of the Caribbean,” Elizabeth Swann laments her lack of breathing while tight-laced into her own pair of stays.

As horror story after horror story is divulged and the corset becomes a greater and greater villain, an overarching narrative forms that this must have been what it was like to live as a woman of the past. When discussing her corset experience for “The Favourite,” Emma Stone said, “It’s historically accurate, but I couldn’t f—king breathe … Women existed in that for such a long time, which does give you a lot of sympathy for that time period.”

In reality, we don’t give the corseted women of these bygone eras enough credit. As they wore stays and corsets for centuries, women continued to work, sport and play in the clothing of their eras; Empress Elisabeth herself was an accomplished equestrian, not inhibited by the corset she was known to tight-lace. It’s not as if women were permitted strength and ability once they abandoned their corsets. Many women were always, in spite of oppression, accomplished and multifaceted; it’s only because of history’s propensity to overlook women that we often forget this.

Overlooking the capabilities of women of the past additionally serve to create a better view of our world now. Gender wage gaps and inequality in girls’ education still persist, but corsets are gone, and aren’t we all the better for it? But in the absence of corsets came girdles and bras, followed by Spanx and diet culture. Where we once found a focus on a fashionable shape, which could be achieved through a corset, bum roll, crinoline, bustle or the like, we now find a greater focus on size. In a time of ready-to-wear fashion, clothes are no longer made to fit the wearer, but instead are garments the wearer must fit into. For decades, an ideal weight as opposed to silhouette has often been the unachievable goal, serviced by diets, exercise and cosmetic surgery.

Though corsets no longer remain integral to our daily life, the fact that many modern actresses have such poor experiences wearing them is nothing to gloss over. Similar to the fashion of history, costuming in Hollywood is a female-dominated field — and likewise to how fashion was and is undervalued, costuming is similarly overlooked.

Beyond the script, the set, the acting and direction, costume is what contextualizes the actor or actress in their scene. Without a properly fitted corset and the time to adjust, it can be all the more difficult to portray a woman who’s worn a corset every day for most of her life when the person portraying her struggles for so much as a breath. We restrict ourselves with corsets for the sake of “historical accuracy,” when in all actuality, our conceptions of the corset restrict our idea of our past and present. Stays or not, corset or not, women have always been capable; putting down women of the past to prove ourselves now only limits our imagination for the possibilities of an enriched future.

Audra Woehle is an Opinion Columnist and can be reached at awoehle@umich.edu.