Fashion has had many eras. We’ve had the flapper dress, the bias cut of Hollywood, ’80s workout attire and more, but the corset came long before.
The corset takes us back to 1,000 B.C. on the island of Crete, 200 miles south of mainland Greece.
Small waists were desired, so Crete’s Minoan and Grecian women utilized corset-like pieces to achieve the desired small-waisted look.
Flash forward to the 1500s and 1600s: the women of the French court had reclaimed the clothing piece lost in the Middle Ages when the body was seen as sinful.
This idea of the body being “sinful” stemmed from religious and social beliefs that associated women’s natural processes with impurity, moral weakness and shame, writes Gail Kern Pester, author of “The Body Embarrassed: Drama and the Disciplines of Shame in Early Modern England.”
While corsets inevitably changed in material and shape throughout the following centuries as social norms changed, they remained popular until World War I when styles became looser and simpler.
From World War I to the Women’s Movement in the late 1960s, women had a half-a-century break from the confinement of corsets.
Then came shapewear.
Now, why is this significant?
Some sources say men may have worn corsets throughout these eras; however, the corset was not the same cultural phenomenon or expectation for men as it was for women.
History has shown a pattern of forcing women’s bodies to fit into a mold, both metaphorically and physically.
The creation of shapewear is another example of this as it was advertised to women with, again, the intention of reconstructing their bodies.
Now, this is not to say it is shameful if a woman chooses to wear shapewear. Women should wear what they want.
The issue, however, is the societal pressures that push women to conform to unrealistic body standards that have the potential to make them feel that their natural bodies are inadequate.
In the early 2000s, women were expected to be extremely thin and fashion was constructed to fit this body type.
The 2005 film “The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants,” discussed the body standard of the 2000s often, as the movie followed a friend group of four girls spending the summer apart but connected through a pair of jeans that fit them all perfectly.
Carmen, played by America Ferrera, struggles with her body image.
Carmen’s struggles open up a greater conversation about body image and societal pressure, not unlike the pressure the women wearing corsets faced centuries before her.
Fashion, especially women’s fashion, has always dictated the ideal body type, often placing women in a cycle of molding themselves to fit a certain standard, whether through corsets, shapewear or other constricting clothing items.
The corset is more than just a cyclical fashion trend, evolving and sometimes showing likeness to its precursor. It symbolizes the long-standing pressure on women to adhere to impossible body standards.
So, the question still stands: how much progress have we truly made in the fashion world if the molds we’ve “escaped” have simply been replaced by new ones?
Cecilia Wallace can be contacted at wall1238@stthomas.edu