Life In A Victorian-Style Corset

I was musing on this today because in the draping class on Monday we learned how to drape and draft a bustier. Today I brought in my corsets and some bones for folks to look at. In talking to one of the women, I realized I have a rather unique insight into what it might have been like to be a Victorian woman. Even those women who wear a corset for RenFair 2-4 months out of the year generally only wear them on the weekend days, so they would not see the physiological changes that living in a corset will bring. I’ve emailed the programs director for my local romance writers group offering to do a brief talk on this and share what I learned. This will be old hat to anyone who knows me, but I wanted to put my thoughts down in case the group takes me up on the offer.

At 13, I was diagnosed with 3-curve scoliosis. In my case, I had a lateral curve in each of the 3 sections of the spine (lumbar, thorax and cervical) and had the additional problems of having too much sway in the lower back with zero curve in the neck and finally, there was the lovely hip twist in which the right hip wants to be in front of the left hip. Basically, I was screwed all up! Scoliosis, however, is not a bone problem, it is a muscular problem. Literally, the muscles in the back are so tense that they consistantly and chronically pull the spine out of alignment. Without preventative measures during the growth phase of life, the curves get worse. Step one was a series of exercises designed to strengthen the opposite muscles. I failed to do them, and the curves got worse within a few months. The doctor told me that if they got much worse, the corrective procedure would be a metal rod inserted beside the spine. Surgery! Eeeeuuu! Fortunately, there was an intermediary step : bracing. NOW my education in fashion history looks at what they made for me and says “That is an underbust Victorian hourglass corset, but it’s made of hard plastic and not boned fabric.” At the time, however, I had no clue what it was. To avoid surgery, I leapt at the bracing option. The first brace/corset was made for me in the summer before entering 9th grade. Lovely.

The entire function of the brace was to keep the spine as straight as possible. In order to do this, they used the waist as a fulcrum point and shoved the ribs up while at the same time shoving the hips down. The braces were made (I went through 3 or 4 of them, I think) by having me hang horizontally from a set of bars (tired arms! tired!!) while they wrapped a band around my waist and tightened it using a roller at my feet — pulling the hips down. Another band when around the waist and up, pulled tight by rollers over my head. Basically, it was a rack though they only pulled on the waist, and man did that feel gooooooood, apart from the whole tired arms thing. Once the spine was stretched straight, they’d wrap me all up in plaster of paris and let it set. From that, they fashioned the brace. It closed in the front with a series of 3 wide velcro strips. Once on, it continued using the waist as a fulcrum to keep the lumbar spinal curve (the worst one) straight.

Beginning at the age of 14 (only a few months after my birthday), I had to wear this contraption 23 hours a day until I stopped growing. Victorian girls were generally given their first corsets between the ages of 10 and 13, so I wasn’t too far out from that age. For these early corsets, it should be noted, the purpose wasn’t waist training as much as it was getting the body used to the constriction and the movement modifications you have to adjust for. Because my brace spanned the entire lenght of the waist to include the top part of the hips (just as a Victorian corset does), it was initially extremely difficult to move. I couldn’t lay down in bed without looking like Gumby climbing stairs. When you’re used to bending at the waist, suddenly it’s very hard to sit and stand when you can’t move the entire torso.

At the time, I didn’t notice a lot of stuff. You just adjust and go on. Now, however, as I look back on those years and think about things, I can see all the areas where I had to adjust and how I had to adjust. Here are those reflections of Life in a Victorian Corset:

Eating. Victorian corsets were unique in that the goal of them was a tiny waist. With a tiny waist, you quickly realize you also have a tiny stomach! Big meals are suddenly no longer an option. I could not eat more than 1/4 to 1/3 of a Whopper JUNIOR before I was full. Of course, this meant I had to eat constantly, like every few hours. Looking at things now, I can see that a light breakfast, a mid-morning ‘tea’ with some light snacks, a lunch, a mid-afternoon tea with more snacks, a dinner, and often times tea in the mid-evening with yet more snacks is actually the PERFECT meal plan for a woman wearing a waisted corset. Take out the tea, and this was my eating schedule. When the brace started coming off and I could eat more at a time if I wanted to, I quickly found out that my stomach had shrunk. Even without the corset, 1/4 to 1/3 of a Whopper Jr had me feeling utterly stuffed until time and lack of restraint fixed that problem! I have worn some Elizabethan corsets, and while they do constrict the waist to some degree, the goal is not an 18″ waist! I had no problem eating my usual portions (post-brace portions! or a whole Whopper Jr.) wearing the Elizabethan corset.

Breathing. Because of the tightly constrained waist, the brace took out any and all chances of breathing from the diaphragm. It also constricted breathing from the rib cage because even though it was underbust, the lower ribs are encased and therefore deep breathing was simply not an option. I never even realized the changes in breathing until many years later when my dad’s workplace offered a health fair. There was a breath capacity machine there, and even though I inhaled to nearly bursting my lungs, my most powerful and exhausting exhale barely registered on their machine. I had mastered shallow breathing to the point where even the lungs had reduced capacity, as the stomache was at reduced capacity. Despite this, I did manage to run cross country while wearing my corset and never once felt faint from lack of oxygen! True I was breathing more shallowly, but I also breathed more rapidly. Not obviously so, but if I stand beside someone even now and try to match their slower breathing pace, I get light headed. I just breath faster, but draw less air in per breath. Now, consider the corsets of the 1500s to 1700s. They were not waist constriction corsets but rather bust constrictions. The ideal was to get rid of curves and get a conical shape or some other shape, but not an hourglass. While I personally have never noticed a problem with breathing while in a corset, I can well imagine that it would be harder to learn to breath in a conical corset than an hourglass corset, but … I’m not the best one to ask on this score. Oh. Let me do say this here, if you are wearing a Victorian corset and cannot breath, it doesn’t fit! There should be at least 2 fingers width between your chest at relaxation and the inside of the corset, just as you’d fit a dog’s collar. This allows for plenty of expansion room while not leaving an unattractive cavern for any clothing to fall down into.

Moving. People like to imagine that because you can’t move the waist, therefore you’re useless when you wear a corset. Poppycock! If one were to wear one every day for a week, you’d very quickly adjust. It’s only those folks who wear one occasionally, for only a few hours at a time, who face this limitation and inconvenience. Basically, I learned to shift all my bending motions from my waist to my hips. I could pick up a dropped pencil as easily as an uncorsetted classmate, I just bent (straight backed) from the hips, while she would bend at the waist. No biggie. Now, undulations were a problem. I was wearing this during the 80’s. The Dirty Dancing era? Yeah. That was out, but I could certainly move without a problem. In fact, I ran track, cross country and rode horses all while wearing the hard shell corset. When wearing the Elizabethan styles, I had no trouble moving but by then I was long used to not moving from the waist so I didn’t even notice any sort of constriction others may. Oh, as a note, the only places I found having a problem with restricted movement was when I could not bend from the hips. Sitting on horseback and reaching out to open a gate was much harder corsetted than un!

Long Term Effects 1. Wearing a corset for a weekend or even a week or a month does not compare to spending years in one. In Victorian times, young girls started corset training early so that by the time they were 15 their bodies were as dependant on their corsets as mine was on mine. What do I mean by dependant? I mean “core muscle atrophy.” Without doing deliberate exercises, your back and stomach and side muscles don’t need to do their job because the corset is doing it for them. While I went through several “100 situps a night” phase because I was nuts, Victorian girls were not encouraged to exercise. Even with the situps, it did not take long before my back muscles had deteriorated to the point that I could not hold myself upright for longer than an hour. When I started being weaned out of the brace, I was 18. I started with 2 hours, and I remember that by the end of those 2 hours I was in burning agony. Now Victorian women didn’t sleep in their corsets while I did, but since that’s laying down and not exerting the back overmuch, I imagine this difference wouldn’t particularly aid in the back strength. I would imagine that by the time a women was 25, trying to walk around without the corset for more than an hour would be extremely uncomfortable, but I can only go from my own experience. It took me 3 YEARS to get to the point where I could wear the brace only at night, and even then every night was blessed reflief from the low level pain. To this day, my back is still weak and causes me constant problems. Even though x-rays show that the scoliosis as calmed down dramatically (shockingly so!), the long atrophy of the back muscles during my formative years was never recovered from. In all fairness, that’s as much to do with my own personal laziness as to the corset!

Long Term Effects 2. Nerve damage. This isn’t one I hear overmuch, but it’s incredibly easy to cause. The Victorian corsets in particular tended to be longer than the waist. All my Victorian corsets stop just above the leg joint which allows you to sit down. In an poorly fitting corset, or sitting in seats which don’t allow proper support (like fluffy couches), the bones which almost always are right on either side of the body in the center front will hit the tender spot right where the crease appears when you sit down. There is a cluster of nerves going through this one spot that are very close to the surface. It is incredibly easy to irritate or damage these nerves because the bones are hitting them. In some versions of the Victorian corset you’ll see a small indentation or rounded crest to allow for the curve of the leg as the wearer sits down. This is specifically as a result of the irritation and pain caused by the bones hitting this nerve cluster. In my case, I ended up causing minor damage to those nerves. To this day, I cannot sit on the floor or in any seat which causes the leg joint to be at more than a sedate 90 degree angle. My legs go to sleep immediately, within moments, because the pressure of the style of sitting is hitting the now sensative nerves and cutting off sensation. Because most Elizabethan corsets don’t extend in this particular manner, I never had this problem, though some of the long center front ones do like to find their way into the groin when sitting and that’s not fun either.

Long Term Effects 3. Nobody has better posture than a long term corset wearer!!! NOBODY. Unless, of course, they are not wearing their corset and the back muscles aren’t strong enough to do the job on their own. *shudder* As mentioned, I wore (and wear) my corset riding. At 15, everyone always exclaimed “wow! You are sitting so beautifully upright in the saddle!” Well, duh. It’s not like I have a choice! It was indeed particularly for this wonderful posture that I found myself in a corset in the first place, to fix all those alignment problems that I had. Even without a corset, the body knows the position. Shoulders back, chest out, back straight. It’s the only way to walk upright, without the shoulders being back I found the length of the corset forced me to lean forward in a most unbecoming manner.

Long Term Effects 4. What about all the health problems everyone talked about? Well, other than reduced lung and stomach capacity, and atrophied core muscles, the only other problems I found myself having were heart problems. Particularly when I was tired. When tired, I would try to slouch into the brace, causing the ribs to press in on the lungs even further, which in their turn pressed on the heart and the heart labored to the point where I realized I needed to sit up or lay down, one. But this was a temporary problem alleviated by moving positions. All the other medical problems I’ve read about concerning the corset are the result of: (a) abusing the device by tightening it too much — 18″ is a tiny waist but workable, 14″ waist causes some problems! That’s “extreme corseting”, not typical corseting; (b) really heinous corset designs, like that thankfully short-lived but incredibly damaging “S-bend” corset which caused the Pigeon Breasted look of the late 1800s. That horrible corset caused all sorts of back problems in the long term users; and (c) poorly fitting corsets. Apart from the nerve damage mentioned above, poorly fitted corsets can cause bruising where the bone points hit the edges (very common!), bad fit can cause deep deep bruising on the hip points, the bend point at the small of the back, compressed ribs, and damage to the sacro-illiac joint. In my case, I abused the corset and tightened it far too much, causing the SI joint to become slightly loose, which over time leads to a “sloppy” pelvic/spine joint which pops in and out of alignment with varying degrees of pain. I can’t blame the device, only my own stupid abuse of it because I was afraid I’d develop wide hips when I finished growing. Other damage included hitting the small of the back against the center back of the corset. In my case, the damage was highly exaggerated because it was a hard shell corset with zero give, rather than a cloth and bone version which does have some give. This area of my lower back swelled up to the point where I looked like a humpbacked whale. I had to cut a hole in the back of the corset (my cat at the time used it as a peephole when she sat in the warm brace after I took it off), and it took several years for this swelling to go down. When it did, I found the cells just under the skin had been crushed like used bubble wrap. There is now a permanent indentation just above the pelvis along the spine as a result of this poor fit. This area is still very sensative to touch because there is now nothing to pad the spine itself just underneath. Images of the organs being shoved hither and yon internally I can easily believe, particularly at the height of the extreme corseting era in the late 1800s. Fortunately, sometimes the price beauty extracts is too high and the trend is eschewed in favor of less damaging ones.

Random stuff 1. How do you scratch and itch under the corset while wearing clothes?? This was an interesting challenge to face. Corsets are never worn straight against the skin. This can cause all sorts of skin damage and rot, so … eeeu. Avoid it! In Victorian times, the chemise was the answer. For me? A “body sock”, which was knit tube of material that I could slide over my torso and was long enough to not fall into the corset. But when wearing clothes, there is very often an itch that develops somewhere along the waist as sweat starts to be absorbed by the material. Unpleasant thought, I know, but there is it. The easiest thing I found to do, other than run to a restroom and rip off everything so I could scratch it, was to put my hand over the itch (clothes and corset still on), press in and lean the other direction. This caused the material and that entire side of the body to stretch out. When at the height of the bend, I’d inhale to keep the stretch in the waist and then straighten up again before exhaling. This real quick movement was enough to shift the material and the skin around to alleviate the discomfort without having to strip to do it. This same move works in all directions, front side and back.

Random stuff 2. Fat redistribution. What?! Yes. Shoving all your extra meat out of the waist area doesn’t mean it magically goes away. It goes somewhere! In fact, it goes to the edges of the garment. This, again, is only for long term wearers. I didn’t notice this problem until after a few YEARS in the corset. In my case, everything went to the hips just below the lower edge of the corset. I knew it was due to the corset because I could snap a line there. It wasn’t normal looking at all! I had to do months of leg lifts in all directions as well as reduce wear time to smooth out this unflattering blubber bulge. The more tightly the waist is constricted, the more this is a problem. I do have to concede, it’s possible that this became a problem for me because my corsets were all hard shell, whereas the other near-lifer corset wearers I’ve talked who wear clothe versions are surprised to hear of this. I am not sure if that’s the culprit or more that the few women I’ve talked to didn’t have a spare fat cell on their bodies.

Random stuff 3. Chiggers. Unfun. That’s all I have to say about that. It seems even chicken pox prefer the dark, compressed skin under a corset than other skin. I woke up one morning at 16 with chicken pox (not a fun image to confront first thing in the morning). Tearing off the brace, I looked at the skin only to see it covered so densely with the little red bumps it literally made me gag. And the itching… *shudders*

Talk to me about pain…. Fortunately, the brain has a wonderful way of blocking out pain. I’ve heard it said that without this, women would never have more than 1 child. heh. For me, the pain nowadays comes primarily in the form of muscular protests. In my case, my muscles still really really want to pull the spine out of alignment such that the right side is too tense and yanks the spine that direction. When I wear a corset these days, now that the muscles can hold me up all day, it takes anywhere from 2 to 6 hours, depending on tightness, before the right side back muscles are getting irritated into pain because they want to pull to the spine but aren’t being allowed. This also means I tend to crunch down sideways just a smidge into the corset, so my ribs get compacted uncomfortably on one side only and are fine on the other. When the muscles finally do get to the point where they’ve had enough, I can’t get out of the corset fast enough. Until then, it’s 99% heaven! I absolutely adore the sensation of being beautifully armoured! Some hate it, but then, I mostly grew up wearing it so I rather prefer it. I’m just too lazy to wrestle with the real corset strings for continued daily wear, which is why I’m working on a modified design which has a front velcro enclosure, just as the brace did. *thinks* All the other pain that I endured while wearing it came from poor fit or deliberate abuse and, in the latter case, can blame only myself. Besides, much of my pain was tied to the fact my corset was hard plastic and not a cloth and bone version. Nowadays, my cloth and metal bone versions cause me pain only when it fits poorly or I’ve worn it too long and muscles get crotchety. A well made, custom fitted corset should NOT HURT! I loathe reading novels in which the wearer does nothing but complain about her corset that she’s supposedly been wearing since puberty. Bullcrap. You literally get so used to it that you don’t notice it anymore than I notice wearing my jeans. Any limitations the long familiar garment causes have been compensated for to the point that you do it without thinking.

Oh. About the creaking noise for a corset. That means the bones are sliding in the channels, just as a creaking board is caused by a loose nail. Generally, you can hear poorly made corsets creaking when the person tries to bend at the waist and the straining bones are trying desperately to slide around in their channels enough to allow this. You’ll often hear the creaking during lacing, but other than that, you shouldn’t be hearing it if the corset is truly well made. I have plenty that I’ve made which creak, but none of my professionally made ones would dare do so once laced. heh.

I think that’s it. Those are the things I recall from my many years of day-in-day-out year-after-year wearing of a hard-shelled underbust Victorian style corset/back brace.

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