Pain For Beauty: Corsets, Corsetieres and Women

One of the most interesting product designed exclusively for women probably is a corset. First appeared in Greek and Minoan times, corsets have survived in human history for a very long time. Ancient Greek females used a long piece of cloth called ‘zona’ to wrap their waist to breast, but it was worn for purpose to lift the breast up than to shape their bodies. It was late 16th century when people started calling the thick canvas underwear for shaping the body a corset (a French word). Corset became very popular among high-class females in 18th century as wasp-like waist became the symbol of feminine beauty along with weak body and pale face (there is a record that some high-class ladies borrowed a handkerchief from a consumptive patient in order to get sick and pale). Since corsetieres used whalebones or sometimes metal to make the stiff frontal structure called busk and delicate measurement and craft to make a corset, working class female often couldn’t afford to get a real corset – instead they had to satisfy themselves with cheaper corsets made from thick canvas. Every woman’s dream was to have waist that is thinner than 20 inches, and a record says that a lady in Medici family had a waist of 13 inches with a help of metal corset; however it probably was exaggerated, because the lust for wasp waist was a part of sexual fetish (BDSM) that were associated with the period, just like having pale skin and being sick. The act of tight lacing the corsets caused many troubles to female body; equipping the stiff structure for the whole day made female to be impossible to stand or sit for a long time without a corset, to cause constant constipation, deformed ribs, forced women to breathe way to shallow and caused faint often, organs deformed and moved because of insufficient space, liver divided into two pieces – and the history tells that many women were killed by just equipping a corset. Ironically working-class females didn’t have problems with corsets because their corsets were softer and was not used very often.




tight lacing was often done with a help of a maid or her husband, a screen shot from the movie Gone With the Wind

Tight lacing your corset in daily basis can deform and move your ribs and organs, causing countless number of health problems.

It was late 19th century when people began to realize the danger of using corsets. A corsetiere in Paris called Mme. Gaches-Sarraute was the first to design and sell ‘healthy corsets’. She had studied in medicine and knew what kind of problems a corset could make. It would do its job as a corset, but busk was redesigned to leave the thorax free, removed pressure given to vital female organs and also to support and lifting the abdomen instead of compressing and pushing it down. Then came a major change in the design of corsets; its structure resembles modern day’s girdles – elastic material was used for comfort and breast part became separated as brassieres. Except for 1920s to 1930s when women wore cylindrical corset to achieve boyish body shape, girdles and brassieres that were invented from corsets had released women from the strain that held their waist for centuries without losing its role for shaping body. It is interesting to see that it was the corsetieres who caused and also relieved their customers from pain. When reflecting to this issue to women walking in stilettos despite of the pain and troubles it causes to feet, it is quite obvious that women could’ve continue wearing old corsets if the designers – corsetieres – didn’t find the solution to its flawed design. Thus it is my belief that designers are responsible for what they design for the customers before putting it in the market for use.

Corset advertisements used back in days. Corsets were usually drawn onto actual photograph because it was very hard to find a model with 14 inch waist - which was the ideal size of waist which women desired.