How the Victorians Faked Tiny Waists (without fainting!)

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RESEARCH ASSISTANT | Heathcliff McLean

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⤠ NOTES ⤟
[1] English School, 19th century. 1870s. Portrait of a Woman and Her Greyhound, C.1870. Oil on canvas. Private Collection.
[3] Miss Poe, Portrait of a Young African American Woman. n.d. Photograph. An African American Album: The Black Experience in Charlotte and Mecklenburg County (Charlotte, NC: Public Library of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County, 1992).
[5] Wedding Photograph. 1889. Photograph. Private Collection.
[14] as [11]
[20] Pennell, Joseph J. 1902. Portrait of a Well Dressed African American Young Woman Identified as Marie Watson. Photograph. Lawrence, KS. Kenneth Spencer Research Library, University of Kansas.

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[DeniseSkidmore]

Another factor in survivorship bias, is that it's much easier to reuse a large dress to remake into a smaller size than the reverse. You can totally take your plus size cousin's debutante ball gown and remake it for your size 10 self and have spare fabric to alter the style slightly. Meanwhile your size 4 cousin's dress is too nice to make into aprons or children's clothes, we'll just keep it in storage a bit longer in case.

[katerrinah]

So one lady I know from a sewing group went to a historical dress display and said "all the waists were so tiny, no wonder they would faint all the time" and I was so overwhelmed with how much I would need to cover in one sentence to quickly disprove that statement I just sat there with my face twitching.

So thank you. I now have nice video to share instead of having an anyurism.

[Grace-msun]

So all of us that stuffed our bras with socks in high school were actually being historically accurate 😂

[paulwomack]

It's probably worth mentioning (for completeness) that all the pencil sketches and paintings are what the artist wanted the subject to look like, not always what the subject actually looked like.

A hand-made image can always have a fashionable figure!

[alissameeker]

I like how you pointed out that modern actresses who've had to wear very uncomfortable versions of corsets had legitimate reasons to be uncomfortable, and that they're not just being dramatic. It's because they were done dirty by being made to tight lace to reduce their waist instead of padding up the bust and hips to make the illusion of a tiny waist, which would have been how it was done historically. A+ content as always!!

Also I love your ads lmao

[boomeracres]

I was working as a museum volunteer and dressed in the 1870s style complete with bustle and corset. The worst disagreement I had was with a male staff member who informed me that women did have ribs removed to have smaller waists. Even after pointing out that the medical proceedings of the time would have made such a thing nearly lethal, he continued to insist it was commonly done. I told him if he could show me medical records of the time period that supported his stance I would eat my corset.

I still have the corset. 😉

[TheValerieMeachum]

I feel like the "movies are full of bodies with limited compressible tissue" aspect has been largely overlooked in the corsets-in-media discourse to date, so THANK YOU for putting it front and center.

[spirit__fox]

Museum bias is totally a thing too. Museums make a choice of what to keep and what to display as well. A very worn plus sized jacket isn't as displayable as a very good condition but tiny dress.

[fynn]

I love how Bernadette at this point has the complete impression of a history professor giving an online lesson to their students when lounging in her office chair. Including the fact that history professors are absolutely the type of people who would climb into a pot just to make some (?) point.

[helgacucumber]

Re: proportion - I am a fat person with a lot of my fat in the front part of my belly. When I wear a corset a lot of fat gets pushed to the sides which creates a more dramatic hipspring than I naturally have which makes it look like I'm cinching much tighter than I am. So even without being padded out in the bust and hips, it appears that I'm "tightlacing" when I'm really only laced just as tightly as necessary to keep the corset on. So, even if you look at a corseted body in person - no padding, no photographs - you can't tell how tightly it's laced. Only the wearer can judge if the corset is too tight.

[BlackCanary]

I remember how people freaked out about how tiny Lily James's waist looked in the Cinderella dress, and the production folks had to say very loudly and slowly, that her waist wasn't cinched down or altered with CGI, it just looked tiny because of the giant skirt and big poofy bertha.

[HoJu]

Recently, while preparing a History class, I came across an extant corset worn by queen Isabella II of Spain. The interesting part is that she was wearing it the day in 1852 (she was 21) when she was attacked with a stiletto by a disgruntled priest. The corset probably saved her life when the blade struck a baleen and only made a small wound, and the garment still bears the small puncture and bloodstains. So you can add body armour to the list of functions of 19th century corsets.

The piece can be seen in the webpage of the MAN (Museo Arqueológioc Nacional) if anyone is interested.

[kirstenpaff]

I was at the Smithsonian National History Museum last month with my family and my mom and aunt were freaking out about how tiny a pair of stays were that they had on display. I tried explaining that 1) those stays could have belonged to a young teenager who hadn't finished growing, 2) they wouldn't have been worn completely laced shut like they were being displayed, and 3) they probably survived in pristine condition because they were so freaking tiny and couldn't be worn by anyone else.

[naminova]

Learning about the survivorship bias with small dresses really helps me. I love buying vintage clothing, and even clothes from the 50's, many many MANY vintage shops have these teeny tiny dresses, and while I'm an XS in modern clothes, I feel inadequate next to these tiny dresses. But knowing that oh, these are *really* the dresses that got left behind, got left unworn, *because* they were outliers, reframes it a lot.

I do still want a corset, maybe even more now haha. I love snug clothes, it makes me feel secure. And realizing that women have been padding their busts for 100's of years, there really is no shame in it.

[Ustolemymusterd]

Survivorship bias reminds me of a 1950 dress I tried on in an antique shop. I came in hoping to make said dress my prom dress, the clerk told me it was made for "skinny people". (BTW I'm pretty average, 130, 5'6). My mom who is insanely skinny couldn't fit into it. So in conclusion, that dress only survived cause no one can fit in it!

[sandrab]

I remember that time when my friends and I wore kimono's in Japan. We were dressed by this incredible lady who explained to us all the history of kimono and name of different garments and layers. And the "fashionable" silhouette in kimono is looking very tubular. No thin waist, no hips, no bust, just a big cylinder. Because I am the curvier, I am the one who had to wear the most padding... to fill all the gaps and "erase" my shapes when my slimmer friends wore very little padding. Its really impressive how it can change all your body proportions to give you the good silhouette.

[rizzystardust]

The most important part of this video to me was seeing the same outfit with and without supporting undergarments. I've never seen it so clearly demonstrated just how big of a difference that really makes. Thank you for your fabulous and educational content~

[jaeellis]

I find it quite amusing as an hourglass shaped autistic woman, that so many actors find corsets tight, uncomfortable, restrictive etc. even to the point one ‘jokes’ about panic attacks… I wear corsets basically everyday because the pressure of a well fitted, made for me (by me) corset helps me to regulate emotions and prevent panic attacks. Thanks to Chanel’s like Bernadette and other (Abby Cox, Nicole Rudolph, Morgan Donner et all) I braved teaching myself how to sew and then sew a corset, something I never thought I could do! They have quite literally changed my life. Bring back the corset!!!❤❤❤ ⌛️

[alexandrasmith]

My Grandmother was a 1920's flapper. She naturally had a 20" waist before she wore her corset. She explained that the corset was never to make you smaller but to create a neat line and also because it kept you warm when you wore lightweight silk. As an aside - she was 5' 1" and by her own admission had anorexia and weighed 80lbs.

[laurenragle]

The survivorship bias of smaller extant pieces makes sense when you consider that larger gowns could easily be taken in for different / changing aesthetic but smaller gowns could not. Another excellent video! ❤