Corset Myths Quiz

Fainting (syncope) is caused by many different factors, including low blood pressure, low blood oxygen, dehydration, overheating, or a shock/ startle reflex.

Some of these things a corset may contribute to - for instance, if your corset is laced far too tight and doesn't fit right, you may breathe in a shallow manner. If you wear a non-breathable black PVC corset under the hot sun for 8 hours, you may become overheated or dehydrated.

But these situations are unrealistic when it came to Victorian women, who largely did not tightlace, their corsets were more often loose around the bust and hips (to add padding) rather than too tight, and their corsets were usually cotton or linen which were breathable and moisture-wicking (PVC didn't even exist at the time).

And you may be surprised to learn that corsets can actually regulate the blood pressure of some wearers so that they faint less often, if they suffer from chronic low blood pressure or POTS (sudden bp drops after sitting or standing up).

But one of the big reasons that Victorian women fainted so much was because... it was expected of them! It was a great way to get out of awkward social situations. Read more about "feigning" about fainting in Lucy's blog here.

At one point or another in time, corsets have been wrongly accused of causing any and all of these issues. Of course, none of them are true.

The the “medical condition” of hysteria is a long, winding, somewhat convoluted history, which you can learn more about in Lucy's video here. In the 19th century, at the height of Victorian fashion, hysteria became a blanket term for women’s emotional, sexual or mental disorders - and while some people blamed quintessentially “feminine” objects and garments for the disease (like corsets!), some people now believe that the “hysteria” covered up dissociative disorders and post traumatic stress disorders suffered by female survivors of abuse - sadly, when Freud came along, his suggested ‘cure’ for hysteria involved yet more sexual misconduct.

Peritonitis is a description of inflammation of the "pocket" that encases your abdominal organs, and it can be caused by any number of issues, usually the introduction of bacteria through a burst appendix, hole in the intestines, surgery or stab wound, etc. Inflammation can also spread from other organs, say liver damage from drug or alcohol abuse. While a swift punch to the liver can cause injury that leads to inflammation, this kind of blunt force trauma occurring from corsets is so rare that we have no peer-reviewed literature on it.

Cancer is caused by a complicated series of events, that typically starts with a cell that has a mutation in its DNA. This mutation can be caused by radiation, a mutation caused by a virus inserting itself into your genome, or this mutation can be hereditary. There have also been studies that suggest that cancer can also grow from inflammation, toxins, and extreme stress. To blame corsets for cancer would be the same school as blaming bra underwires and tightie-whities for cancer as well - highly dubious.

Most respiratory infections are caused by viruses or bacteria, and a corset cannot create these types of infections.

The most famous cause of lung infection in the Victorian era was likely Tuberculosis, which has always been caused by bacteria. The corset fell out of fashion in the mid 19teens, while the discovery of penicillin had occurred just 10 years later, in 1928. It would be easy to presume a correlation between abandoning the corset and a decline in infectious disease, but this is simply a coincidence.

There are reports that more men contracted TB than women, and some theorized that because corsets promoted more shallow breathing, the bacteria could not spread down to the lower lobes of the lungs to cause a deep infection! However, more likely the higher infection rates among men were due to men working outside the home more and enlisting in the army, where they were more exposed to other infected people.

However, to apply this to today's corset wearers: whether an infection is caused by a virus or a bacteria strain - once a respiratory infection occurs, we recommend removing the corset right away so that the lungs can expand fully and one can cough with full force to expel any built-up sputum. If your corset prevents you from coughing efficiently, it could possibly lengthen the amount of time that you're sick, or cause a worsening of symptoms - so it's better to remove the corset until you're well again.

This is true, but not "ribs" in the sense as we know them today!

When you look back at primary source historical literature (especially the journals, diaries, and letters of women), you may read the occasional lament of a broken rib while wearing a corset - but more often than not, it’s the “rib” or the boning of the corset that has broken as opposed to the rib bone of the human.

Prior to the industrial revolution (~1830s), corset bones were most often made from “whalebone” (more accurately, the cartilage of the “teeth” and jaw of a baleen whale). Sometimes reed and bamboo were used as well, as they could be easily stripped into long, thin pieces. However, all of these components - whale cartilage, reed, bamboo - only remain supple when they’re in their natural, wet environment. When you process it, dry it out and put it into a high-tension garment, they become brittle over time and prone to snapping.  When a corset bone snaps, this can not only be startling to the wearer, but splinters and shards may stick through the corset and poke the wearer!

Thankfully, these bones have been almost exclusively replaced with steel bones which don’t become brittle or prone to splintering over time.

While women with 18” corseted waists were certainly not impossible, they were few and far between. In the Met Museum (in New York), most of the smallest corsets are around 20” and the larger ones around 32”, and we must also consider that women usually wore these corsets with a 2-4 inch gap in the back (so someone may boast that they wear a 20” corset, but may be wearing it at 24 inches). Many surviving dresses from this time period are said to have an average waist measurement of about 26 inches.

Also remember that the clothing that is good enough quality to end up in a museum have typically not been worn very often, so what we see may be “survivorship bias” - these clothes may have been saved for special occasions, or only worn briefly by a small-waisted debutante, possibly still in their teens - the idea to cinch a little smaller than usual for balls and such wasn’t out of the ordinary, just as we may wear heels a little higher than usual for special events. The "daily wear" corsets and dresses with larger waists may have ended up too shabby to be saved in a museum, but also, Victorians also constantly altered, mended, and repurposed their old gowns - and more often than not, it's easier to alter a dress for a smaller person than let it out to fit a larger one, so over the years as garments were handed down, a 34" waistband skirt can gradually be cut away until all that's left is a 22" skirt.

This is true, but it's a good example of correlation without causation.

There are many stories as to the reason why corsets supposedly caused women to die in labor - some believed that the corset prevented a woman’s pelvis from properly widening during the last trimester of pregnancy, so a baby would not be able to move properly down the canal. However, no corsets or stays prior to the 20th century were designed to compress or immobilize the hips. In fact, corsets and shapewear only started to lengthen to the hip and thigh area around the 19teens/1920s and onward, which had the specific aim of preventing that hourglass shape in favor of a more boyish shape!

In reality, more Victorians died during a long labor (or shortly after) due puerperal sepsis (“childbed fever”) - these were the days before germ theory and it was not unheard of for a doctor to run from the morgue to the maternity ward without so much as washing their hands, so infections ran extremely high! Another major cause of death was blood loss, and remember that blood-type was not discovered until 1900, so blood transfusions were a game of roulette. The next-highest cause of maternal death is pre-eclampsia (and related complications like stroke, seizures, etc) which is still a major concern today.

This is true with the operative word being "might".

Minor fat pad migration has been heavily discussed not only in the corsetry community, but in the bra-fitting community as well. Many believe that an ill-fitting bra may lead to fat or breast tissue shifting to under the armpit or around the back. What we do know to be true is that a bra that's very tight can leave deep, semi-permanent grooves around the ribs and on the shoulders, suggesting that these grooves are not just from interstitial fluid/ lymph moving out of the way, but the constant pressure on these areas can cause the subcutaneous adipose tissue (the fat cells under the skin) in these areas to either shift laterally out of the way, or the cells are damaged over time such that they flatten and don't fill like their neighbors.

Many iconic corset wearers throughout the 1950’s (like pin up Bettie Page) also often seem to have a permanent “indentation” at the waistline, where seemingly their subcutaneous fat has been sculpted.

Whether or not these theories are true and minor fat migration is possible, wearing a corset will not shift fat as far as up into the breast tissue or down to the buttocks, as that’s quite a long way to travel and it would have to move through connective tissues. Any shifting would likely be less than an inch or so, not deposited to a completely different part of the body.

While rib resection is possible today (usually to cure thoracic outlet syndrome or to use the rib a as a graft in reconstructive surgery for other areas of the body), the idea that millions of women in the 1800’s removed their floating ribs for the sake of vanity is absurd.

This was a time before anesthetic was regulated (depending on the amount of ether or chloroform administered to the individual, they may either wake up in the middle of surgery, or they would never wake up); and before the time of accepted germ theory or antibiotics, so post-surgical infections were extremely high.

Surgical procedures were so feared that even of those who needed life-saving surgery, many opted for death instead - so elective surgery was virtually unheard of.

While some atrophy is possible with use of a corset, you will never get to the point where your muscles waste to nothing and your torso will flop over without the support of your corset. Even in the most accomplished, life-long waist trainers like Cathie Jung and Ethel Granger are able to hold themselves upright without a corset’s assistance, but they become fatigued after a shorter time than someone who doesn’t wear a corset. Tendons, ligaments and fascia also keep your organs inside and prevent your spine from “snapping”, so this worry has no basis.