HUMAN HEAD ANATOMY

For hundreds of years women (and men) have employed restricting devices to mould their figure to the fancy of the day. In Queen Victoria's time, the corset reigned consummate - a body-shaping undergarment gripping the torso from bosom to hips. expected to de facto hold a woman up, it was stiffened with 24 steel or whalebone vertical stays. It accomplished at the front with metal fasteners and laced at the back as tightly as two maids or a strong husband could manage.

2) The Shape Must Undulate

While other centuries favoured the cone, the tube, the triangle, the Victorians went mad for the hourglass figure with a "wasp" waist, so tiny a man could circle it with his two hands. Remember Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind, so proud of her 17 inch waist? Well Scarlett fell short of the ideal 16 inch hand span and a 13 inch waist, according to legend, was sometimes managed, all, apparently, without the women's heads exploding.

3) For the Mechanical Engineers

The pressure applied to women's bodies to attain this result ranged from 20 to 80 pounds per quadrilateral inch.

4) Too Weak to Stand Up By Themselves

Since women were carefully too brittle and delicate to exist without help, the corset was carefully a healing necessity to retain the female body so that she could sit, stand and walk without falling over. Puny girls, as young as five, were put into corsets and kept there for the rest of there lives, their future contours dictated by this unforgiving underwear.

5) Guardian of Chastity

Respectable young ladies never left home without a chaperone. But, should their human chaperone fail, the corset proved a superior preventative to any disastrous fleshly impulses. Young ladies were very difficult to undress. By the time a seducer attempted to breach chemise, corset, corset cover, and some layers of petticoats, the impulse gave up and died. "Loose women" were those who did not lace tightly sufficient or, horrors, did not wear a corset at all.

6) Upper Class Stiffs

Since a firmly laced corset made it impossible for a woman to bend over, they were unfit for work, signaling that they had staff to care for their houses, nannies to scoop up their toddlers. They were bone fide members of the relaxation class. Corset rigidity also made sure the ladies didn't get ideas about independence themselves. It wasn't until the corset was truly shed that women were able join the work soldiery of the 20th century.

7) Scrambling The Female Body

The corset had needful result on the female anatomy. Internal organs were squeezed and displaced, the spine was pushed out of shape and lung capacity gravely reduced when the rib cage lost 3 to 7 inches to corset compression. With the least exertion, like dancing, tightly laced women could not get sufficient air. They grew dizzy and fainted so much that the "fainting couch" was invented to receive collapsing lovelies at the ball. Even doctors could not tell what a wholesome female body looked like as all the women they examined had been malformed by the corset.

8) The Dark Side

Since a genteel pregnant woman could not be seen out in society, women used the corset to squeeze down evidence of their condition, escaping their "confinement" as long as they could. Tight lacing, even of extra "maternity corsets" has been blamed for fetal deformities, miscarriages and still births. This fact did not flee women who needed a means to end a gravidity they didn't want.

9) The Corset's Unlamented Demise

With arrival of the flapper era and the flat-chested tubular figure, as well as the labour needs of the First World War, the killer Victorian corset disappeared. Its ghost today is the modern elastic girdle and other body shaping undergarments. modern women resort to diet and exercise for the slim grace the Victorian lady achieved so painfully with corset laces. I hope we can say we won.