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Welcome to Edwardian Promenade! If this is your first visit here, your comment may be held in moderation. While you wait for your comment to go "live", please peruse the comments policy, and if you have any questions, comments, or concerns, please feel free to contact me!
12 Responses to “The Female Body in Corset”
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March 11th, 2010 at 4:01 PM
As my grandma says, you have to suffer for beauty.
March 12th, 2010 at 8:50 AM
Be careful – you don’t want to do yourself an injury just to look good.
March 12th, 2010 at 9:53 AM
I knew what it looked like, but it’s still shocking to see.
March 12th, 2010 at 12:36 PM
I think your grandma is wrong.
March 12th, 2010 at 3:24 PM
Social comments and analytics for this post…
This post was mentioned on Twitter by history_geek: The corset and female anatomy. Have seen this before–but still fascinating. http://bit.ly/aq03Kj…
March 12th, 2010 at 3:25 PM
Grandmas are always right! What we lack in altered skeletons we make up for in bunions
March 13th, 2010 at 7:00 AM
Very interesting pictures! I do like the scornful glances that these ladies are giving one another…
March 13th, 2010 at 3:01 PM
I have been wearing a corset for 4 years now. I love the look and the feel of tight lacing. But I am not going to the extreme as going for a 19in waistline. Some women went for that extreme, but not all. They started at an early age wearing a corset and forming the body gradually without pain. Our bodies go thought all kinds of changing, stretching, rearranging thought out our life time, especially during child birth.
It is not deforming the body. I feel if it crafting the body to your needs.
May 3rd, 2010 at 6:02 AM
The sensation of being tightly laced in well-fitting corsets is frankly superb and delightful. The most important thing is to impose the change in shape gradually.
The beauty of a slender waist is undeniable. All things in moderation.
May 4th, 2010 at 9:54 PM
Thanks for stopping by Lillian! In the past, I’ve asked a few costumers about wearing corsets, and many of them have stated that if the corset feels uncomfortable, you’re wearing it incorrectly.
May 7th, 2010 at 4:46 AM
I love the Edwardian era fashions so much. It was a time of the supremacy of feminine elegance. I can understand why Beauty became a religion for many women.
April 6th, 2012 at 1:12 AM
That illustration is actually from the 18th century, around 1790 I think (you can see it’s not an Edwardian type corset.) I always have doubted its veracity — unless someone tightlaced themselves 24 hours a day from a very young age so that their body grew permanently deformed such that it would hold the shape of a corset even without one on, there’s no way they could have really known what was going on internally. There were no x-rays in the 18th century and even with very severe and constant tightlacing, your stomach falls back to normal within an hour or so of removing the corset, so it couldn’t be from an autopsy.