Essay Notes on the history of the corset

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Reader corset
The primary significance of the corset is its role as an essential element of women's fashionable dress for a period of about 400 years (in the Western world from the sixteenth century through the early twentieth century, worn by women, dandies, military officers and children).
Some women did experience the corset as an assault on the body. But for others, the corset also had positive connotations of social status, self-discipline, respectability, beauty, youth, and erotic allure.

The word "corset" derives from the French corse, which simply designated a bodice. Early corsets were known as corps à la baleine (or in English, whalebone bodies), because strips of whalebone were inserted into the fabric (usually linen or canvas) to stiffen the cloth bodice. As whalebone became more expensive in the nineteenth century, lengths of steel increasingly replaced it. Traditionally, down the center front of the corset was inserted a busk (in shape and size similar to a ruler).

Corsets were also known as "stays," a term probably derived from the French estayer (to support), since they were thought to support the body. Because women = weaker sex so they needed additional support → same reason for children. By the 18th century, many doctors warned of various health risks related to the wearing of corsets, yet the rigid bodices were a common clothing item for centuries.
Ladies of the leisure class were not the only ones to wear corsets. By the mid-nineteenth century, with the development of cheap, mass-produced corsets, many urban working-class women also wore corsets.

Some doctors and corsetieres tried (or claimed) to develop safer and more comfortable corsets. During the 1890s, for example, Dr. Inez Josephine Gaches-Sarraute designed the socalled straight-front corset, which she described as a "health" corset (but in the end more uncomfortable and constraining than hourglass Victorian corset).

The shape and construction of the corset changed dramatically over time, but there was no simple progression toward greater ease. Between about 1790 and 1810, the rigid cone-shaped stays of the eighteenth century were temporarily abandoned in favor of a shorter, lighter style, some variants of which resembled a brassiere. However, as high-waisted Empire dresses gave way to lowered waists and fuller skirts, the boned corset reemerged. Now, however, it was shaped more like an hourglass. Over the course of the nineteenth century, technological developments, such as steam molding, contributed toward the fashion for long cuirassecorsets. At the turn of the century, the fashionable straight-front corset pushed the pelvis back and the bosom forward, creating the socalled S-silhouette. Yet as women engaged in more sporting activities, such as bicycling, they increasingly adopted flexible elasticized sports corsets. By the 1920s elastic girdles and brassieres had largely supplanted rigid corsets, particularly among the young. In 1939, and again after World War II, fashion showed renewed emphasis on femininity and the corset had a brief resurgence in the form of the "Merry Widow" or guépière (waspy).

By the 1960s and 1970s, however, a cultural focus on youth and body exposure resulted in greater reliance on diet and exercise, rather than foundation garments, to create a desirable figure. The corset was, thus, not so much abandoned as it was internalized through diet, exercise, and later, plastic surgery.

Weblecture: History of the Corset
Polikleitos: first human on earth wondering about beauty (440 v.C.). → Wrote a book about the rules, encompassing a law that every object on earth could be measured in numbers. Every part of the body has a number so with calculation you could calculate the ‘perfect body’ (scale 1:2 e.g.). → Symmetrical, harmonious body. Ideal scale was 2:3:4:5:7.
Firm breasts, slim waist → classical beauty. Broad hips for delivering babies. You were not supposed to have wrinkles/ body hair. Being
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