Okie dokie artichokie we're here.
Whether you've read it or written it, most period novels, stories, movies or shows have incorporated the infamous and elusive idea of corsetry.
Corsets and structured garments are an important piece of a large chunk of history. 
They've changed and evolved with the times, reflecting fashion trends and fads. 
They've provided structure and stability in clothing for hundreds of years. 

Which is why it baffles me that corsets are presented as some evil contraption of torture implemented by men to control women. 
tHe PaTRiaRChy dId iT
Right?
WRONG!

Corsets and stays are structured garments invented by women, for women (particularly the working class) in order to provide back support, posture improvement, and breast support. 
They became a staple in fashion, because they helped achieve fashionable silhouettes and they could be made in beautiful designs to add to the outer garments. 

But Local Baker, you may ask, what does this have to do with how uncomfortable they are??

Let me tell you. 
Many corsets were made with whale bone and, later, steel boning. 
However, many more corsets were made specifically for structural support, and the boning in them was made of flexible materials, such as tightly rolled paper. 

Each corset that each woman wore was specifically tailored to her body, and she wore them consistently from a young age. 

The slim waists shown in portraits were a) exaggerated, and b) achievable because these women's bodies grew to the shape of their corsets. 

Movies and books portray corsetry as this terrible painful thing that was difficult to breath in, move in, caused fainting spells, and required help to put on. 

If this were the case, then the working class of women would have needed their own servants in order to garb themselves each morning. 

EESH. 
What a nightmare that would be!  A never ending cycle of corset lacers. 

What the media and entertainment industry seems to draw on, is the art and practice of tight lacing, which began to show up in the 19th century in the upper class.

A small percentage of extremely wealthy and upper class women would constantly lace their corsets beyond the general and societal norm, in order to achieve what they believed to be a desirable figure. 

Over the course of their lives, they would continue to have smaller and smaller corsets commissioned in order to push the limit of their impossibly tiny waists. 

These are the women whose skeletons are displayed as disfiguresd, and who the general public uses as a model for all women who wore corsets.

Corsetry lasted for far longer than many people realize. 

In the 1920's, the flattened figure with little curves was achieved by wearing long, hip binding corsets, worn by most anyone who could afford basic underclothing. (Almost everyone until the Great Depression)

In the 1930s and 40s, women wore corsets as support, and continued to wear corsets as working field nurses during WWII.  It was part of the uniform. 

Corsetry and other structured garments served as breast and back support basically up until the 70s, when the free love hippie movement became a big thing, and clothing became loose. 

If corsets were as painful and restricting as most cliches say they were, (I'm looking at you, Elizabeth Swan,) nobody would've ever gotten anything done. 
Including men, because men wore corsets as well. 

Thank you for coming to my ted talk 😊