Corset Research Paper

Fashion was very important at the turn of the century but it wasn’t always painless. Women’s fashion was especially uncomfortable; outfits consisted of mostly of long, restrictive dresses - as many as four outfits a day for those who could afford that many expensive gowns, and for those who couldn’t they could purchase a pattern and sew a replica themselves. Either way, from the rich to the poor, under all of a women's outfits was the corset. Some men also wore corset-like garments called “body belts” that stopped their abdomens from bulging, though these were were not as restrictive as women's corsets. Though there is more opposition than support for corsets today, a corset was just a part of life for women in the 1900s, as ubiquitous as underwear is today. They did not think to question it, it was normal. In fact, fashion today has a garment …show more content…
This lead to the creation of the “health corset.” It was created around the end of the 1800s, and it was the corsetmakers way of avoiding criticism that corsets compressed the stomach cavity. Instead of pulling in the stomach in and the back vertically, these corsets pushed the upper body forwards and curved the back. They had many of the same effects as their predecessors, plus they also had the tendency to push and twist the bowels, leading to a horrific abdominal condition called muco-membranous colitis where the inner lining of the colon sheds like snake skin and is excreted. Without a doubt, this “healthier” version wasn’t truly any better. Saying health corset is comparable to saying health cigarette; if it sounds like an oxymoron, it probably is. At first glance, nothing in today’s fashion seems to match the corset. To most, the fact that a corset was a bad idea seems glaringly obvious and it’s hard to imagine a society that justified this. Look again, today style of clothing has something very comparable; the high