A kinder, gentler incarnation of the corset, why you should wear one !

    It's no wonder that women burned their bras and cast off their girdles at the beginning of the woman's liberation movement. The history of repression is directly related to the history of compression.

    Those Victorians in their tightly laced whalebone foundations couldn't vote or own property,. Heck, they could barely breathe. A walk through "The corset: fashioning the Body." a current exhibit at the museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City makes one think clear. Those little hour glass shapers - so delicate with their tiny lace trim - were unyielding exoskeletons of satin and bone. And they held fast for almost 400 hundred years.

    "The corset was a sign of respectability", says the show's curator, Dr. Valerie Steele, "because it controlled the body and, by extension, the physical passions. A strait-laced woman was not loose."

    So it might come as something of a surprise that more than 30 years into reproductive choice, corporate opportunity, and personal liberation, women are trusting themselves again. And not just the ladies of the reenacting community.

    "Especially, woman who are portraying the ladies of the Civil War period," say's Valerie Parris, of Victoria Court Collections, "should always wear a corset. Not only does it make you and your clothing look better, but you will feel better. A proper fitting corset will hold the weight of your pretty coats, distribute it evenly the length of the torso, and keeps it from cutting into your hip's."

    Wearing a corset is like wearing high heels. You carry yourself differently. You're aware of the fact that you're dressed up.

Author unknown

"Last Updated... 05-28-2002"

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