Victorian Fashion: Were Corsets Really That Uncomfortable?

Of the thousands of garments that existed throughout human history, not a single one has gained such a poor reputation as the corset. Usually described as a painful and suffocating burden found in women’s wardrobes, it is endlessly demonized by period dramas, history-inspired novels, and internet users. The corset myth, therefore, affects our perception of Victorian-era fashion and beauty standards. Read on to learn the real truth about the corsets, Victorian fashion, and the history of women’s undergarments.

The history of undergarments, the often overlooked domain of dress history, holds many controversies and unresolved questions. And yet none of them have ever been as polarizing

and media-backed, as the endless corset discourse. For decades, the media has presented the corset in a way similar to medieval torture devices: as a rib-crushing instrument of patriarchy that caused women to faint and irreparably damage their vital organs. Yet for some reason, women wore them for centuries, only recently switching them for mass-produced cotton or lace bras. The need for bust support came not from the place of aesthetics but from the need to secure health and comfort. Although historical undergarments rarely survive due to their prolonged and extensive use, historians have evidence of breast-supporting garments from antiquity.

Most corsets were made to measure, with the lacing structure allowing the garment to accommodate the fluctuating body size. Like any other attire at the time, corsets were expensive and served their owners for decades. Over the decades and centuries, the corset shape changed to fit new fashionable silhouettes, yet the concept of a lined torso-covering structure remained. Initially whalebone (also known as baleen, the bristle-like tissue found in whales’ upper jaws) was used for lining, with metal boning soon introduced as an alternative.

Pregnancy and motherhood were important parts of Victorian women’s lives. No pregnant woman eager to give birth to a child would deliberately risk her health. So, no one forced expecting women to tighten their laces: instead, they wore their corsets with relaxed lacing, sometimes adding extra panels to expand the garment. In the Victorian era, some tailors offered special pregnancy corsets with panels in the bottom to support the heavy bellies. Breastfeeding was also made comfortable with low cuts and detachable shoulder straps.

Contrary to a popular myth, corsets did not restrict movement, and could actually make moving easier by redistributing the pressure on the wearer’s back. However, it is necessary to mention that the range of movements performed by Victorian women was radically different than ours. Still, working-class women wore stays that helped them with their daily physical labor. Moreover, the Victorian era had sports corsets – functional and comfortable alternatives to today’s sports bras. A side note to disperse another popular myth popularized by pseudo-historic films – no one ever wore their corset without a chemise or a shirt underneath. Cleaning clothes, especially as complicated and structured as a corset, was tiresome for the washer and damaging to the fabric, therefore cotton or linen undergarment was required as a barrier against human skin’s oils and sweat.

Men Wore Corsets, Too!

In the Victorian era, men also wore corsets, although less frequently than women. Male corsets created the perfect posture. In the army, men’s stays were used during long physical exercises or hunting to ease the pressure on one’s back. As for beauty standards, a slim waist, wide chest, and muscular legs were the ultimate indicators of male attractiveness, so many men wore corsets and calf paddings in order to construct a fashionable body shape.

Most of the corset-related horror stories we hear today originated in the late Victorian era when the usage of corsets and stays was slowly coming to an end. The advancing medical research started to notice certain issues with feminine health—mostly, reproductive health—and started looking for causes.

According to the late Victorian medical discourse, a corset could cause chest and inner organ deformation, as well as malnutrition. Supposedly the trend-obsessed women laced their corsets so tightly to achieve the desired silhouette that they were not able to eat properly. Modern historians, however, could not find proof of such claims.

The real reason for the Victorian doctors’ concerns would reveal itself almost immediately if we attempt to read a couple of anti-corsets pamphlets. In most cases, corsets were blamed for allegedly deforming the unborn children during their mothers’ pregnancies. As we discovered in the paragraph on pregnancy corsets, this idea was not entirely correct. Rather, it was shifting the blame from either the uncontrollable genetic issues or negligible doctors to women. Another bold claim suggested that some women tight-laced their corsets to stop unwanted pregnancies. While no available historical evidence ever supported this claim, it makes it clear that the principal medical concern was not women’s health but their bodily autonomy.

Contemporary Medical Analysis: Were Corsets Really That Dangerous?

To disperse or, on the contrary, back up the claims of the harm caused by corsets, present-day experts have conducted extensive research. Many of them confirmed that a properly laced, made-to-measure corset provided much more back and bust support than the majority of the 21st-century undergarments.

In 2020, a group of medical anthropologists examined a variety of remains belonging to 18th and 19th-century women. Some of the skeletons indeed had slight deformations of their lower rib cages, although not nearly enough to cause any daily discomfort or physical injury. These women lived to an old age, with their deaths entirely unrelated to the garments they wore. The rib cage deformity could be explained by the suggestion that these women were most likely raised in corsets, wearing them from their early teens to old age non-stop. Thus, a corset was not a perfect solution for women’s health, but it was functional, and not nearly as horrible as it is usually described in the media.

Nearly every Victorian photograph or fashion plate shows a woman with an impossibly slim waist.

First of all, no proper corset could create a waist by magically squishing your bones and inner organs. A corset would achieve the safest and the most impressive result on bigger bodies, with enough fat to distribute and create a silhouette. For this exact reason, present-day actresses starring in period dramas complain about uncomfortable corsetry. Most of them fit into the twenty-first-century beauty standard of slim and muscular bodies, which were not as popular in the Victorian era.

Apart from lacing, some other tricks were used to create a dramatic bust-to-waist-to-hips-ratio. Instead of reducing the waist, many women were adding instead. Padded shoulders and hips, crinolines, and puff sleeves altered the body proportions and created the fashionable shape without pain or discomfort. In-depth fashion history research clearly shows that people of all ages and eras do not tolerate discomfort. They can handle a certain share of it, but no human would voluntarily subject themselves to the debilitating torture of traumatizing garments.

Another method of creating an envy-inducing thin waist was the good old photo manipulation. Ever since photography was invented, people have come up with ways to make their images more flattering. Skin texture, facial features, dresses, and body proportions – all these details could have been and certainly were altered by the Victorians. To create an impossibly thin waist seen in the images of rare Victorian beauties, photographers would paint parts of the image black or, on the contrary, scrape it away, sculpting a new waist instead.