Think for a moment about what you know about corsets. Restrictive! Designed by men to put women down! Fainting and falling off of cliff sides! Holding onto a bedpost while a maid laces a woman so tight that she can’t breathe! The horror! If that’s what you thought of, you’re part of most of the world population, thanks to the wonders of the modern film industry. It’s okay really, but you’ve probably been lied to about most of the things you believe about the practice of Corsetry. These crimes of fashion that run rampant through the media aren’t just bad for historians, but harmful to feminism as a whole and need to be understood.
Movie crimes of fashion
The film industry is notorious for this misrepresentation of historical women’s garments. Bodice rippers of the 19th century that inspired “historical” movies create a massively skewed image of history. My personal favorite offender is the iconic scene in Pirates of the Caribbean in which Elizabeth Swann is laced so tightly into her corset that she cannot breathe and falls off a cliff. There are so many things wrong with this scene, it’s almost funny. Firstly, her father claims that the corset is “the latest fashion from London,” as if English people hadn’t been wearing structured undergarments for literal centuries. I’ve seen people try to excuse the inaccuracy by claiming that the ladies’ maids that lace her up simply didn’t know any better. That’s why they laced it too tight. This isn’t enough for me. Realistically, those maids would be wearing structured underclothes themselves! Even more so, Elizabeth would have been wearing undergarments with boning in them since childhood. She would have been wearing it in the first scene when she alerted the adults of the “boy in the water!” If it had been real, not only would she have been completely used to corsetry as a practice, but nobody in that room would have been expecting her to squeeze herself into it so much that she can’t breathe. But of course, in that case, Johnny Depp would not have had the opportunity to rip open the front of Kiera Knightley’s dress and that was the real goal there.
There’s plenty of other examples of this across the media too! In Bridgerton, when they are lacing up a corset so tight that the poor Prudence Featherington needs to brace her arms on a maid, the writers seemed to have completely neglected the fact that regency clothing was empire waisted! An hourglass shape in which the waist is cinched so tightly that a woman can’t breathe wouldn’t have made any sense! While I’m on the subject of things not making sense, another iconic corset scene exists in Gone With the Wind. Scarlett, played by Vivian Leigh holds onto her bedpost while she is relentlessly squeezed into her corset. Again, nonsensical. Corsets don’t lace up by pulling back, but by pulling to the sides. The way they are doing it, it’s honestly good that she’s holding on to something or she’d be yanked backwards. I also want to point out that both of these scenes portray the day to day life of a historical woman as dependent on staff to help them put their underwear on. While I’m sure that some upper class women at some point in history had a ladies’ maid helping them to dress, it’s simply unrealistic to believe that assistance was necessary to get ready in the morning. Lacing up a structured undergarment by oneself is incredibly easy, especially in a world where women are wearing some form of it since childhood.
These representations in film and television don’t just make my life harder when I’m trying to convince people I’m right about corsetry but they create a false view of women of the past as a whole. It turns them into these helpless creatures that sit around on fainting couches all day long struggling to breathe in their patriarchy cages. Believing movies that present themselves as historical erases the plethora of women in the past that worked and owned property (if they were single). Women of the past were so much more powerful than we give them credit for. While yes, it was harder for women in society. I’m in no way saying that the women of past centuries were given equality, but to say that they did nothing but sit around obediently for their whole lives is not only wrong but arguably insulting.
So why should you care today?
All of this may seem insignificant to the modern day. Who cares if the movies are lying about women from centuries ago? It’s not like they’re alive anymore. Not to mention that it’s not super cool to make fun of and lie about those who are no longer able to defend themselves, but those women built some of the basics of feminism that women today live on. It’s as if they laid down a concrete foundation that skyscrapers of feminism could have been built on. However, when the film industry and the patriarchy came in and bulldozed that foundation, we built a little wooden shack on the bare ground and called it progress. If that foundation hadn’t been there, sure, maybe the shack would be impressive, but it was there. We could have been so much farther if we hadn’t spent so long discounting the women that gave us a start.
Really think about this for a moment. Would an entire society of women keep wearing corsets and other structured underclothes for literal centuries with little to no mention of it in their writings if it was that big of an issue? Wouldn’t some form of clothing revolution have formed? Do we really think so little of half of the population that they would lie down and submit to the control over something so intimate as their underwear for that long?
Women were not wearing corsets for men. They weren’t wearing this kind of garment so that men could better enjoy them, but because it supported their fashion that could show off the money they control in their own right. It supported their work that included plenty of physical labor. It supported their lives! But modern media has elected to forget that in the name of the male gaze; In the name of seeing Vivian Leigh gasping for air in her underwear and Kiera Knightley getting her top ripped open. This need of the modern media to misrepresent women’s clothing has a much bigger impact of misrepresenting women as a whole. When you move the starting line backward in this way, it makes it seem like you’ve come so much farther than you have.