Corsets Must Have Been Hell!

Early last Saturday morning, I was sitting on my little patio, having a cup of coffee and.....I admit it.....I wasn't wearing a bra.

Hey now! It was early, and I had on a big t-shirt that covered me up pretty well.

I couldn't help thinking....."it's nice not to have a bra on...."

I think all the women out there know what I mean. How about that time, right before you go to bed, when you take off your bra?

Let's all say it together, "aaaaaahhhhhh!!!"

So then I started thinking about the women back in the old days who had to wear corsets. What fun that must've been (not!).

Imagine having to wear one of those things day in and day out! It must've been hell.

Then I started wondering if corsets were just a phenomenon of the 19th and early 20th century, or did they go back further? Were women wearing them in the 1600's? In the 1700's?

So I did a little research. I found a few surprising things, but there was also some information that I had heard about before.

I had heard that corsets often made it difficult for women to breathe properly, which caused them to have dizzy or fainting spells (known as the "vapors" back then). This reinforced the stereotype of women being fragile, and weak.

I had also heard that because women often wore their corsets tightly laced, it caused their internal organs to become misshapen!

All in the interest of beauty and fashion.

But I didn't realize that corsets may have been around as long as 2,000 years ago!

Also, in the 1830's little girls as young as three or four were laced up into corsets!

And for a brief period of about ten years (1830-1840) fashion-conscious men (the "dandies" of the day) wore corsets too!

Here are a couple of links about corsets:

http://www.victoriaspast.com/DressingRoom/corsethistory.htm
http://laracorsets.com/History_of_the_corset_05_1800-1850s.htm

We are so lucky to live in corset-free times!