the.com/corset
A cage you choose, squeezing the breath out of fashion and lungs alike.
means A stiffened, often laced undergarment worn to shape and constrict the torso, traditionally cinching the waist and supporting the bust.
from From Old French 'corset,' a diminutive of 'cors' meaning 'body' (itself from Latin 'corpus,' body). So at root a corset is simply a 'little body' — a second, tighter body laced over your own. The word originally meant a kind of light bodice or close-fitting garment before it hardened, both in meaning and in whalebone, into the constricting stay we picture today.
- rib reality
- Tight-lacing could permanently reshape, not remove, ribs
- male wearers
- Victorian men wore corsets for posture and waist
- comeback queen
- Resurges every era as rebellion, then restriction, then rebellion again
- breathing tax
- Could reduce lung capacity by roughly twenty percent
- war casualty
- WWI steel shortages helped kill mass corset production
victorian steel-boned corset — standard women's garment 1850-1900s that reduced waist to 16-18 inches through tight lacing
corset in moulin rouge — 2001 film where nicole kidman's character wears iconic red corset as satine, the elephant love song centerpiece