Ironically enough, that is how women's waists we're back then because of corsets. That's why corsets are unhealthy when used to the extremes that they were used to in the past.
Those are two huge myths to be honest. Women's waists were never that small, and corsets weren't/aren't unhealthy. The artist just chose to draw her waist quite small to reflect the stereotypes of the era. :)
Indeed. For more information on corsets and corsetry in the 1800's, might I suggest famous YouTuber Bernadette Banner's series on them?
She recreates extant corsets and other historical clothing as a hobby.
I learned this info from the royal college of surgeons where is was observed that women's skeletons would actually be deformed by tightness of corsets
https://www.rcseng.ac.uk/library-and-publications/library/blog/effects-of-the-corset/
but its just extremely tight lacing. Fashion historians have disproved the myth that all ladies tight laced during that time. Corset to them was supportive underwear rather than extreme shaping. So the manhwa is still showing these two Myths.
Your article is about tight lacing. Tight lacing was not the norm. It was an extreme fashion trend like wearing 8 inch heels daily or gaugeing your ears nowadays. Though admitedly more dangerous than either of those.
Most women did not tight lace. They couldn't and still go about their daily lives.
In fact, there is ample evidence that most women didn't even use a lot of strong boning in their corset, instead opting for softer materials like feather quill cording and creative construction to make the shape they wanted.
We have extant (existing from the period) corsets that don't have any boning at all and rely entirely on cotton cording and clever quilting to provide structure.
One of my favorite extant pieces has two busks in the front and two in the back and that's it. It's gorgeous as well, with beautiful embroidery. Not to mention, when fully drawn, has a 28 inch waist which is super reasonable considering corsets are not supposed to be worn with the laces fully drawn. You don't lace up the your shoes till the fabric touches do you?
I have a 34 inch waist. Properly wearing that period corset I might take 2 inches off my waist. Comparable to any modern shape wear.
These things were/are like bras. No one would wear one for long if they weren't comfortable unless you had a fetish.
The corsets with tight lacing was what I was talking about tho. Perhaps I should have clarified further so I do apologise for that but saying that there were no women's waists looked like this is a denial of the medical dangers of that time period. It is not a myth but after doing more research I do acknowledge that it is less common than I previously thought. However that does affirm the view that this was mainly a problem for the wealthy who had little physical activities to be done which is a much smaller percentage of the population in the first place. The second video, the video you linked, even acknowledged this around 2:08. So if Chloe wasn't a highborn, high-married, duchess and rather an average women, I'd say that tight lacing was impossible in this situation.
To bring the conversation back to the topic of this manhwa tho, Chloe visited a high fashion boutique after admitting that she herself wasn't aware of fashion trends, letting not only the maid's from earlier but also the fashion designer there do whatever they wanted with her. If you just take a look at the waists of the other women, which I assume everyone has hence the spark of this conversation, you can see the difference between their waists being more normal sized than Chloe's. I again do apologize for my misleading wording making it seem like I was talking about all women, but if you look at the difference in the two styles of dresses you can see that the artist was portraying the tight lacing corset there vs with everyone's else's dresses (including Chloe's earlier one). In addition to this, the artist adds puffier sleeves, shoulders, skirts, and even the bows to give the effect of everything else being larger to make the waist seem smaller. This is a direct homage to the latest fashions of the era which you can see just by comparing her style of dress to the other people attending the party. So with these in mind, it is not a stretch to say that the fashion designer dressed Chloe, a high class duchess, in what you yourself mentioned as an extreme fashion trend.
But also thank you for this and the other video. I was looking for more material on every day corsets. As you already likely know medical journals are few and far between on the subject compared to other things.
Lovely exchange.
Yes agreed. I love debates like this because you always get new scholarly material to learn new things from.
This type of exchange reconciles me a little bit with humanity. Where other so-called debates make my fear of conflict flare.
I agree! Very nice to read the polite discourse here.
i meant this as a joke but the information i got from this is very satisfying. thx for that
my dumb*ss learnt something today and i am glad for that. i am so close to either becoming a vegetable or an arsonist
she looks beautiful but like the waist honestly scares me so much (⊙…⊙ )