Corsets in the late 19th Century
In the late 1800s, corsets started to be considered a dangerous moral ‘evil’, promoting promiscuous and superficial views of female bodies.
The obvious health risks, including damaged and rearranged internal organs as well as compromised fertility were blamed on excessive corsetry. While support for fashionable dress contested that corsets maintained an upright, “good figure” as a necessary physical structure for moral and well-ordered society, dress reformists argued that women’s fashions were not only physically detrimental but “the results of male conspiracy to make women subservient by cultivation them in slave psychology”.
They believed a change in fashions could change the whole position of Women, allowing for greater social mobility, independence from men and marriage, the ability to work for wages, as well as physical movement and comfort.
After these protests, little changed have been made in restrictive fashion and undergarments by 1900.
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In the picture 6 Princess of the House of Luxembourg at the end of the 19th century from Miss Mertens on Flickr.
