Review of The Corset by Valerie Steele

This Cultural History Sheds New Light on this Lingerie Classic

Aug 4, 2009

The corset is as controversial as female sexuality. Valerie Steele examines its significance, and what it reveals about attitudes towards women.

The corset is one of the most contentious garments in fashion. It is unclear when it first came into existence, though it has certainly been around for a very long time. Images exist on Greek and Roman artefacts and it can be seen in classical painting throughout the ages. Valerie Steele, Director and Curator of The Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York, explores the diverse history and culture of this most overt item of clothing.

The Corset and Assumptions of Female History

It has been assumed for several decades that all women of the past were completely oppressed by men until second wave feminism liberated them in the 1960s and '70s. The corset has become a symbol of this – the restrictions it places on the body representing the limitation of women in the public world.

Steele asserts that the truth is more complex, arguing that women experienced corsetry in a wide variety of ways, both positive and negative. In fact, corset-making was a source of income for some women, and many men have also worn them, in particular the Victorian Dandy.

Health Implications of the Corset

A common belief is that Victorian women were forced to wear corsets by men. This is not true. Although some Doctors considered the corset a healthy support of the body, many others urged women not to wear them, citing potential damage to internal organs, particularly the womb. Like men today, they were alarmed at the extremes women would go to alter their appearance. Articles concerning the health implications of wearing corsetry were widespread in the era – it was women who chose to wear them.

Yet were corsets really so restrictive? Steele argues not. She researched the medical implication of corset wearing and found they caused no long term damage to organs. At a time of comparatively limited medical understanding, corsets became a scapegoat for all kinds of illnesses. At the time, it was also believed that educating a woman damaged her child-bearing capacity, revealing much about the gender biases of the era.

The Corset and Fetishism

Letters to publications such as the Englishwoman’s Domestic Magazine talk of extreme tight-lacing, where the waist was reduced to as little as twelve or thirteen inches. Historians have regarded them as fact. However, upon closer inspection these letters appear to be more erotic fantasy than actual truth. Most corsets had waists of eighteen to thirty inches, and women would have laced them tightly or loosely.

Fetishists have probably always existed, and there are many tight-lacers today, a famous example being the burlesque artist Dita Von Teese. Indeed, many men enjoy women wearing very high heels, but that does not mean every woman is walking around in vertiginous cockroach stompers.

Body-Sculpting: The Modern Corset

Perhaps Steele’s most interesting argument is that the corset has been internalised. Since women cast off the external corset, Western culture has become increasing obsessed with the body beautiful. In previous times there was an expectation that stomachs should look flat – now there is pressure for them to actually be flat. Fitness and diet have reached epic proportions, and plastic surgery is increasingly popular.

Perhaps the core issue is that the corset is, as Steele puts it, ‘a sexualising garment’ that exaggerates female curves, sometimes to an extreme level, and certainly draws attention to the wearer. Many women enjoy this – an hourglass figure is obviously attractive to men.

Certainly in Britain and America, women have often been chastised for being interested in their looks: a man will not be criticised for being fascinated by, for example, football or cars, whereas a woman who loves clothes and playing with her appearance is considered by some to be superficial and vain.

Women have been, and continue to be, under immense pressure concerning their looks, criticised for not reaching certain physical standards – yet regarded as self obsessed if they do. Why does a woman enjoying her body and its appearance arouse such fear? The controversy of the corset is really the controversy of female sexuality.

The copyright of the article Review of The Corset by Valerie Steele in Women's Lingerie/Swimwear is owned by Victoria Robinson. Permission to republish Review of The Corset by Valerie Steele in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.