Corsets are these days often referred to as bustiers or basques (although there are some differences in detail) and are often seen as seductive, sexual items of female lingerie or underwear. However, in Victorian times, the corset was actually deemed to be a medical necessity! Women were considered to be very fragile, needing assistance from some form of stay just to hold them upright. Even girls as young as four or five were sometimes laced up into bodices, as corsets used to be called.
In time these bodices were lengthened and tightened. By the time girls reached their teenage years they were sometimes unable to sit or stand for any length of time without the aid of a canvas corset reinforced by whale bone or steel. The corset actually deformed the internal organs making it impossible to draw deep breath, in or out of a corset. Which is one of the reasons why Victorian women were always fainting.
Women were thought of as the weaker sex. It was believed too that their minds and bodies were weak. So the corset was deemed not only morally, but medically necessary. Tight lacing was considered virtuous - a loose corset was a sign of a loose woman. To keep her innocence a lady had always to be chaperoned. She could not read or see any plays, including Shakespear lest it excite her imagination!
Women needed to protect themselves from lustful men with heavily reinforced layers of clothing and tight corsets.
These corsetry induced discomforts were however, largely a problem for middle class ladies. Women from the 'lower orders' did not have to suffer the discomfort of tightly-laced corsets or bodices because they usually had to work much harder and were therefore allowed to wear lighter, looser corsets or bodices and simpler clothes. Because middle and upper class ladies had servants to carry out physical tasks such as housework it was thought that it was not important for them to have much freedom of movement – hence the tightly laced corsets.
In Europe, the corset has been in general use as an undergarment since the middle ages, but it probably dates several thousands of years back. The corset has at all times been used for shaping the body, most often for compressing the waist, but sometimes for raising the bust.
As the 20th century dawned, women continued to wear corsets - now lacing down to the knee - but the tide of public opinion was turning against them. Popular dancers Isadora Duncan and Loie Fuller reintroduced the ancient Greek idea of formless, free-flowing clothes - and no pinched waists.
Couturier Madeleine Vionnet banished the corset and cut her dresses on the bias to provide more freedom of movement. In 1913, a young woman named Mary Phelps Jacob invented a new type of bra - very soft, short, and designed to divide the breasts in a natural way.
World War I assured the end of the corset as an everyday undergarment. While the men were fighting at the front, women were on the homefront, laboring in factories, working in the fields. Corsets were abandoned in favour of a shorter and more pliable girdle, coupled with the modern bra. And as the Roarding Twenties swept in, American women led the way with their breast-minimising bras, loose chemises, and other promoters of the new "flat chest". In the 30's and 40's panties became very popular.
In the 1950s, bras and girdles were used to exaggerate the feminine form, much as corsets had for centuries before.
The backlash which followed in the sixties, as feminists set fire to their bras as a symbol of their new emancipation saw the pendulum swing back to looser, more practical clothing. By the 1980s, the rounded breast and well-padded bosom were back and wired bras became the number one seller in lingerie.
Today, women are enticed by a dazzling array of lingerie styles, colours, and textures. If a woman wants to enhance her silhouette, she can do so, without having to endure the tortures of ages past.
The new seamless support garments mold the figure gently but firmly, in revolutionary new blends of breathable fabric. Bras can be found with or without padding, and the new ultra-padded bras can create amazing cleavage effects for special occasions. Yet above all, lingerie today is fun. It's a personal pleasure, a way for women to pamper themselves and indulge their romantic nature.
The history of sexy lingerie proves one fact – women still want to look sexy. The only thing that has changed is the method.
We now have a society that allows much more freedom than in the past. We have lighter, lacier, sexier fabric. We have more liberal ideas of how much can be bared. And of course, the men are all for it.
So the aim of the lingerie industry remains the same – to create an image of a woman who’s desirable and sexy.
