Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff Works
Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh
Speaker 1: Clark with Charles W. Charles Chuck Bryant, and Jerry Jerome Roland.
Speaker 1: So it's stuff you should know. Yeah, Jerry wore her
Speaker 1: Swan Bill corset today. Yes, she looks like a freak
Speaker 1: of nature. I'm nervous about this one. It's gonna go
Speaker 1: ahead and say that, don't be really, Yeah, I'm nervous. Well,
Speaker 1: here I am to relax. You chuck me, pat your beard,
Speaker 1: give you a little nap. That didn't help making things worse. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this one, I don't know. I mean the history and
Speaker 1: stuff is interesting, which I assume we'll talk to you first,
Speaker 1: since we don't plan this stuff out. But um, you know,
Speaker 1: we're all with a live and let live thing. And
Speaker 1: I certainly have no problem with a lady or a
Speaker 1: dude that wants to wear a corset or anybody. Okay,
Speaker 1: what's wrong? But when I started reading about the the
Speaker 1: uh the Guinness Book lady and I went to her
Speaker 1: website and watch the YouTube, it just kind of freaked
Speaker 1: me out a little bit. Cathy Young, Yeah, yeah, and
Speaker 1: we'll talk about her later, but it kind of crossed
Speaker 1: the line to me to like weird obsessions with physical appearance.
Speaker 1: But then I think about, like, I'm not going to
Speaker 1: condemn anyone forgetting all the kinds of weird plastic surgery either,
Speaker 1: if that's your thing. I think that I just want
Speaker 1: people to be happy, you know, right, But I think
Speaker 1: the um extreme lacing is one thing. It's called also
Speaker 1: um well extreme lacing, I think is the general preferred term,
Speaker 1: right um tight lacing. Yeah, it's a perfect example of
Speaker 1: you're harming nobody. This is strictly your body. It's yours
Speaker 1: to do what you want with it, have at it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but what if it's in the like because men say
Speaker 1: that's the only way a woman will be attractive, and like,
Speaker 1: what's different it's just been in footbinding. That to me
Speaker 1: is sad and and it's a that's part of a
Speaker 1: larger issue, you know what I mean, Like if you're
Speaker 1: doing it because you know you want to catch a
Speaker 1: man's attention or something like that, who knows, we're not
Speaker 1: pop psychologists, and it just all this makes me nervous.
Speaker 1: I did. Actually I had a conversation with um Holly
Speaker 1: from miss in History stuff. You miss in history class.
Speaker 1: She's probably one of course it in her time. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: and she actually defends course it's too because I thought, well,
Speaker 1: it's like the the Western equivalent of footbody. She said, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: my friend. Uh, it lacks in reality and actuality, a
Speaker 1: lot of the um, a lot of the sexism associated
Speaker 1: with footbindinging. That makes me feel a little bit better.
Speaker 1: And that course it's in in reality and truth. In
Speaker 1: the nineteenth century and before, we're um very much chosen
Speaker 1: to be worn by women for their own tastes, sometimes
Speaker 1: at the out of spy or not out of spite,
Speaker 1: but um, contrary to what the with the men in
Speaker 1: their life might want or desire. Okay, okay, so it's
Speaker 1: actually it's not necessarily a feminist article of clothing, although
Speaker 1: Madonna certainly made a case for that, so did Vivian Westwood. Um,
Speaker 1: but it's it's not as bad as you're thinking. I
Speaker 1: think I do feel better now, do you? Yeah? Good.
Speaker 1: I just don't want to, you know, I don't want
Speaker 1: to make people feel bad. I want people to feel
Speaker 1: good always. I want everyone to feel good. That's my problem. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and we should say, if you're wearing a courser right now,
Speaker 1: and it feels bad. Everything I've seen in my research
Speaker 1: says you need to loosen that thing because it's not
Speaker 1: supposed to hurt. Well yeah, and um even Cathy Young,
Speaker 1: who um again we will talk about. But she's againness
Speaker 1: record holder because she formed her waists into the size
Speaker 1: of a jar mayonnaise. Um. Literally, oh yeah, gallant size mayonnaise.
Speaker 1: It said the thing I had said, an average jar,
Speaker 1: But I don't think that's correct unless those photos on
Speaker 1: her site though look photo shopped. Okay, but she said that.
Speaker 1: All the advice she gave was you go slow. Don't like,
Speaker 1: you know, if you want to train your waists to
Speaker 1: be smaller, which you can do, um, don't you know,
Speaker 1: dive in and just start, you know, doing the extreme
Speaker 1: lacing right away. No, there's into it. There's something called
Speaker 1: um waste training, and that's kind of a uh it's
Speaker 1: not necessarily the ultimate goal of corseting, which can be
Speaker 1: a verb, but it is um a kind of a
Speaker 1: parallels subculture of the corseting culture, and waist training is
Speaker 1: simply where you are basically through the use of corsets
Speaker 1: and pretty tight course. It's over a period of time,
Speaker 1: usually about a decade. You are reshaping your body mechanically, right,
Speaker 1: you're not actually losing weight. Although a tight fitting corset
Speaker 1: acts something like a gastric bypass surgery without the surgery
Speaker 1: because you just can't put as much stuff in your
Speaker 1: stomach is normal UM. But the waste training itself, it's
Speaker 1: just it's a reshaping. It's not actually making you lose weight.
Speaker 1: So what it's doing is taking uh inches out of
Speaker 1: the middle and sliding them down to the hips and
Speaker 1: all of this the whole point for course, it's from
Speaker 1: the beginning of course, it's to um. The world record
Speaker 1: holding course at waste is to um amplify existing female
Speaker 1: UM body features. Yes, that's the point, that's right. The
Speaker 1: word uh comes from an old French word c o
Speaker 1: r s, meaning body and UM. Here's the history, which
Speaker 1: oddly came three quarters the way through this article. UH.
Speaker 1: If you go back in time and the way Back
Speaker 1: machine to the days of ancient crete, there were women
Speaker 1: who well I think he and before crete, there were
Speaker 1: women who tied ropes around their waist to make their
Speaker 1: waistline look slimmer acentuate maybe the bust and the rear end. Uh.
Speaker 1: So they were doing that a long time ago and
Speaker 1: then an ancient create. Um people think that they are historians,
Speaker 1: think through the first women that actually wore something that
Speaker 1: you could call a corset. It was a garment that
Speaker 1: shaped the body more than three thousand years ago, right
Speaker 1: it um It covered the I think the waist and
Speaker 1: the hips and um crete and women went around um
Speaker 1: bare breasted, so they would have their breasts like saying, hey, everybody,
Speaker 1: how's it going? And then below that was the corset okay,
Speaker 1: And I would imagine um that it probably enhanced the
Speaker 1: breasts as well. Uh yeah, sure, if you're sent and
Speaker 1: everything up like that probably probably acted sort of like
Speaker 1: a pre brazier support and lift. See them so uncomfortable
Speaker 1: a man. We did one on female puberty that was easier.
Speaker 1: Oh really yeah, well that was science. This is I see,
Speaker 1: I see, you make a valid point. Uh So if
Speaker 1: you go forward a bit to the Middle Ages, they
Speaker 1: um for the first time, these undergarments came out in
Speaker 1: something called the heavy stay, and it was very much
Speaker 1: an outerwear, but it kind of accomplished the same goal.
Speaker 1: But it was you know, very decorative and and pretty um.
Speaker 1: But that I don't think that lasted too long. They
Speaker 1: went back under the garment in the eighteenth century, right,
Speaker 1: and then um, up until the eighteenth century, most things
Speaker 1: that were part of the Corset family tree or predecessors
Speaker 1: of course it's were conical. Um no, they were tubular,
Speaker 1: totally tubular. And then once we hit I think about
Speaker 1: the eighteenth century, what we start to see today as
Speaker 1: of course it began to emerge where that's conical, it's
Speaker 1: cone shaped, right, um. And from from I guess, yeah,
Speaker 1: the eighteen century on, of course, it's were like a
Speaker 1: pretty pretty much a mainstay of fashion, if not the
Speaker 1: basic ingredient of women's fashion from about the end of
Speaker 1: the sevres until World War One. Basically, yeah, it wasn't
Speaker 1: like some weird thing like today. Um. I mean they're
Speaker 1: still in fashion today, and if you know in certain
Speaker 1: um like cosplay and costumes in the fetish world and
Speaker 1: burlesque and stuff like that, or just you know, just
Speaker 1: playing sexy time. Sure, regular old sexy time. But um,
Speaker 1: the stuff I read said it was it was no
Speaker 1: like more of a strange thing than like a woman
Speaker 1: to wear a bra today, right exactly, it's just a
Speaker 1: regular fashion accessory. Yeah. And as we'll see, it was
Speaker 1: like kind of essential depending on the clos you're wearing,
Speaker 1: depending on the period. Yeah, that's true. Um, there was
Speaker 1: a a real movement. And when I was saying like
Speaker 1: some men were saying like, you shouldn't be wearing corsets,
Speaker 1: and women said, t s for you, Pal, I'm still
Speaker 1: wearing a corset. There was actually a big movement that
Speaker 1: was UM that came out of uh I guess the
Speaker 1: nineteenth century, late nineteenth century, that was spearheaded by two brothers,
Speaker 1: Ira and Lucian Warner Um. And they came up with
Speaker 1: an alternative too. They actually were anti corset crusaders. They
Speaker 1: were both doctors, and they Um basically said you can't
Speaker 1: beat them, join them, but let's try to create a
Speaker 1: corset that's less problematic for women. And the idea that
Speaker 1: corsets were problematic for women can actually be traced back
Speaker 1: to a sevente medical article by a guy named Dr
Speaker 1: Samuel Thomas von Sommering, and Um von Sommering basically made
Speaker 1: up a lot of the myths about corsets that we
Speaker 1: know today, that they can cause scoliosis, that they can
Speaker 1: mess up your liver, that they can lead to permanent
Speaker 1: deformation of your body and your internal or inns. Uh.
Speaker 1: It all kind of came from this and a hundred
Speaker 1: years after Von Summering wrote his article, UM, the Warner
Speaker 1: Brothers got in and said, we're gonna come up with
Speaker 1: a health health courset. Yeah, but they definitely can change. Um.
Speaker 1: There's something called uh viscer optosis or Glennard's disease, which
Speaker 1: if you do the tight lacing long term, you're your
Speaker 1: organs can actually sink and shift away from where they
Speaker 1: should be. Right. So, I mean that's that's something that
Speaker 1: can happen that there is a really good point, man,
Speaker 1: we should delineate here. Wearing a corset normally, even when
Speaker 1: you're doing waste training, should not result in that. There
Speaker 1: is a definite line where if you are getting into
Speaker 1: extreme corseting, then yes, all sorts of medical problems can happen. Um.
Speaker 1: But just about every corseting site out there on the
Speaker 1: Internet will warn you about going past that line. And
Speaker 1: in fact, there was a really there's a good um
Speaker 1: site by Orchard Corsets. They sell corsets. They have a
Speaker 1: really extensive site. You know, there's stuff about corsets. They
Speaker 1: actually say one of the ways that the body can
Speaker 1: be deformed. Is if you're an adolescent girl wearing a corset, Um,
Speaker 1: your ribs can develop improperly because you're wearing the course.
Speaker 1: As they say, girls under eighteen shouldn't wear corsets. Uh.
Speaker 1: So then along came this guy, um. And we should
Speaker 1: mention too that when these two the two uh Warner
Speaker 1: brothers within the United States. Yeah, they were out of Bridgeport, Connecticut.
Speaker 1: I was gonna say Wigner, but maybe a generation or
Speaker 1: two before probably so. Um they also changed around the
Speaker 1: same time at least Um. I think we have not
Speaker 1: mentioned yet that Uh, one of the you know, the
Speaker 1: the course it has to and we'll get into all
Speaker 1: the parts of the corset, but one of the things
Speaker 1: that keeps it rigid and stiff and the old days
Speaker 1: was baleen whale um. And it was actually it was
Speaker 1: a teeth, right even though called a whalebone. And they
Speaker 1: would use this to, you know, to make the corsets
Speaker 1: stiff in in place, keep everything where it should be.
Speaker 1: But around that time, in the late eighteen hundreds, is
Speaker 1: they were overhunted, became really expensive, so they said, all right,
Speaker 1: forget the whale teeth, let's put in steel in which
Speaker 1: I'm sure that was quite comfortable, right. Well, yeah, but
Speaker 1: and I mean women were wearing these like every day. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But I mean one of the as we'll see when
Speaker 1: we talk about manufacturing, course it's the UM. One of
Speaker 1: the points is to make it as comfortable as possible,
Speaker 1: this very uncomfortable contraption. Yea, but yeah, they started to
Speaker 1: use steel, and even today you'll find steel in corsets
Speaker 1: that are meant to for like waste training or something
Speaker 1: like that. Uh. And then, like I teased a moment ago,
Speaker 1: along came this guy named Charles Dana Gibson. He's a
Speaker 1: he was a graphic artist in the Victorian times, and
Speaker 1: he became very famous, and a lot of artists that
Speaker 1: came after him emulated his style. But he became very
Speaker 1: famous in the eighteen nineties for creating what was known
Speaker 1: as the Gibson Girl. So what he did was he
Speaker 1: he drew all these pictures of this, uh, these ladies
Speaker 1: who were I mean some say it was like the
Speaker 1: first ideal of of UM American attractiveness for for women,
Speaker 1: and it was they wore these swan bill corsets, which
Speaker 1: made I mean these were even more extreme. They would
Speaker 1: make you kind of stick the bust out and stick
Speaker 1: your your rear end back. And if you just look
Speaker 1: up Gibson girl. I mean, you've seen these drawings before.
Speaker 1: It's like America's first cheesecake drawings. I don't know what
Speaker 1: a cheesecake drawing is. It's like a Gibson girl, okay?
Speaker 1: Or a Vargus girl is another a little more modern one. Well,
Speaker 1: supposedly his American boy. You see them cheesecake girls, apparently
Speaker 1: as his wife and her sisters were his inspiration. And
Speaker 1: um m is it the sister it's weird. Yeah, they
Speaker 1: said they were all pretty okay, and he was celebrating.
Speaker 1: He said that this was not a woman, but it
Speaker 1: was a thousand women, is his quote. Got um. And
Speaker 1: supposedly the Gibson cocktail is named after him, but I'm
Speaker 1: not sure if that's true. Oh that's great, good for him.
Speaker 1: M gut him. Pickle onions? Yeah, put in Martini, call
Speaker 1: it after me. So what happened? He was actually um
Speaker 1: working from a corset that was invented by a doctor
Speaker 1: ines ghosh, so terrible Um who created this course at
Speaker 1: the straight front, also called the swan Bill corset and
Speaker 1: the whole problem with it was, and Charles Dana Gibson
Speaker 1: is criticized for popularizing this because it's so bad for you, Like,
Speaker 1: there's no question that the swan bill corset is really
Speaker 1: bad for your posture because the thing that it forces
Speaker 1: your spine into is just totally unnatural. And apparently that
Speaker 1: trend only last for about a decade during the Awardian
Speaker 1: period of first century of the just ten years, and
Speaker 1: then pretty much right after that, not right after pretty
Speaker 1: close of course, it's suddenly just went away because World
Speaker 1: War One had such a sweeping change on the world.
Speaker 1: It just it just it was. It created social upheaval.
Speaker 1: And one of the things that um came out of
Speaker 1: this was women said, you know what we're done. Of
Speaker 1: course it's I'm a flapper now I need to do
Speaker 1: the Charleston, can't do the Charleston and of courset um
Speaker 1: and the whole fashion was just different looking, you know
Speaker 1: it was, and the idealized body was different too. So
Speaker 1: prior to that and throughout basically history, the Venus body type,
Speaker 1: which is you know them, the fertile women curves type,
Speaker 1: was replaced by the Diana type, which is the more
Speaker 1: athletic type that's now has been in fashion basically ever
Speaker 1: since World War One. That basically kill the corset. But
Speaker 1: the modern bra and slip and all of that stuff
Speaker 1: came out of that the death of the corset, because
Speaker 1: they were like, we still need something, we still want
Speaker 1: to course it anymore. Okay. I think one of the
Speaker 1: reasons all this made me uncomfortable is just all the
Speaker 1: categorizations over the years, like this is the ideal women
Speaker 1: and she's called a Diana, and this is what they
Speaker 1: should look like. Yeah, that's mean that to me is
Speaker 1: like a whole other podcast, you know. I mean, like
Speaker 1: because plenty of women buy into that, and there they
Speaker 1: don't feel bad about themselves for buying into it. They say, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is what I find attractive to uh So. Anyway,
Speaker 1: during this time in the Roaring twenties, there were the
Speaker 1: corsetiers that were just like, oh no, well, how about
Speaker 1: this kind that you can still wear and it's not
Speaker 1: like the other course that you can actually dance on them,
Speaker 1: and you know, it's sunk and it. It basically stayed
Speaker 1: that way for the rest of the twentieth century. There
Speaker 1: was a brief resurgence. Christian Dior brought it back in
Speaker 1: the forties, um, and it was kind of akin to that, uh,
Speaker 1: that Swan Bill corset. Yeah. Uh. And then it went
Speaker 1: out pretty quickly. And then in two Vivian Westwood had
Speaker 1: a show called Buffalo Girls, her collection for two eighty three,
Speaker 1: and it brought corsets out. Vivian west Wood, she's a
Speaker 1: famous designer, kind of punk fashion, um, and she brought
Speaker 1: courses out from underneath the clothing and made it like
Speaker 1: basically into a shirt. It was Outerwhere now was that
Speaker 1: when Madonna got on the train? That was about six
Speaker 1: years later, And that was Jean Paul Gautier that designed
Speaker 1: that very famous corset with the conical bra that would
Speaker 1: take your eye clean out. Yeah. What was the what's
Speaker 1: the video? I don't remember. I can sing the song
Speaker 1: in my head, sing it. No, you know the one Vogue?
Speaker 1: It was okay, that was a Vogue video, right, I think? So, okay,
Speaker 1: Well we'll find out if it's not. Um, But that
Speaker 1: was Jean Paul Gautier. And uh. From that point on
Speaker 1: the course that has basically stuck a down, sometimes a
Speaker 1: little a little more predominantly, sometimes a little more in
Speaker 1: the background, but it's basically been a fashion accessory that
Speaker 1: you could conceivably wear out in public in the West
Speaker 1: ever since. Yeah, I mean it sticks around these days,
Speaker 1: like you see costumes and stuff like that. But um,
Speaker 1: and then occasionally, I guess if you're in a swinging nightclub,
Speaker 1: you might see a lady in a corset or maybe
Speaker 1: a man. Yeah, we'll talk about that after this. How
Speaker 1: about that? So chuck your teased men wearing corsets? Literally, Uh,
Speaker 1: I never tease a man for wearing anything except those
Speaker 1: dolphin running shorts. Those are great to get back in
Speaker 1: your time machine. I saw The Boy in the Bubble
Speaker 1: for the first time. Have you ever seen that movie
Speaker 1: here at Trivolta. Yeah, I never saw it, and I
Speaker 1: watched the riff Trecks version of it. Well that's the
Speaker 1: only way to pervde it a lot better. Yeah, where
Speaker 1: did that come from? Oh? I think he's wearing dolphins
Speaker 1: shorts on one of the scenes, and I was like,
Speaker 1: dolphins shorts. So, um, yeah, what we're talking about men
Speaker 1: wearing him? Yeah, So apparently this article makes it seem
Speaker 1: like it was fairly normal. But from what I saw
Speaker 1: in the nineteenth century and there, from what I saw
Speaker 1: in the nineteenth century was that if you were wearing
Speaker 1: a corset, and you were a man, you were probably
Speaker 1: suspected as being gay. And so here's where this kind
Speaker 1: of patriarchal view. Of course, it's does definitely hold fast. Um,
Speaker 1: if you were if you were like a straight establishment
Speaker 1: type male, Um, you probably did not cotton two men
Speaker 1: wearing corsets and didn't want to associate with any guy
Speaker 1: wearing corses because you didn't trust him he was probably gay.
Speaker 1: But if you were in favor of your wife wearing
Speaker 1: a corset, she'd better be wearing a corset or else
Speaker 1: she wouldn't be viewed as a proper woman in normal,
Speaker 1: polite society. So it's it's not fair to say like
Speaker 1: that myth about the corset being a part of the
Speaker 1: patriarchy is not true. It is true in some ways,
Speaker 1: but not It's not like women were forced to wear
Speaker 1: corsets throughout history. They donned it in particular on purpose.
Speaker 1: And one of the reasons why women wore corsets was
Speaker 1: because it also served as a basically the thing that
Speaker 1: held up all of their really heavy clothes. Yeah, like
Speaker 1: you couldn't you couldn't just slip into one of those
Speaker 1: dresses in Victorian times. No, Um, it had a certain
Speaker 1: shape that required a certain uh form to put it on,
Speaker 1: and you know that course it would help your body
Speaker 1: like morph into that form basically, you know, it was
Speaker 1: a low there was a load bearing structure that you
Speaker 1: wore under her clothes, a load bearing beam. So I
Speaker 1: don't think we've really described the how these things were
Speaker 1: kind of came you know, how they came together. There's
Speaker 1: some people out there are like, what is a corset? Well, geez,
Speaker 1: do we not even say that? And not in so
Speaker 1: many words? All right, Well, it's a garment and it's
Speaker 1: usually pretty short, uh, and it's like a it's like
Speaker 1: a belt, like a a not a wide belt, but
Speaker 1: a towel, a tall belt. It's like a vest that
Speaker 1: doesn't go over your shoulders. Yeah, but some of them
Speaker 1: could go over your shoulders. Well that was the health coursets.
Speaker 1: I think that did that, all right. Um, they lace
Speaker 1: up in the back. We mentioned the whale own, which
Speaker 1: was actually the teeth of the baleen as these reads,
Speaker 1: and they were put in what we're called boning channels,
Speaker 1: which were just a little sheaths basically where they would
Speaker 1: slip these things down in and um, it's like you know,
Speaker 1: if you've ever had to wear a back brace or something,
Speaker 1: it's very much like that. And like Andy Warhol had
Speaker 1: to wear one of these after he got shot by
Speaker 1: Valerie Salon. Yeah, for the rest of his life, who
Speaker 1: went on to write the Scum Manifesto. You ever read that? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I thought she wrote it before she shot him, Now
Speaker 1: did she? We should do one on that whole scene, Yeah,
Speaker 1: we should. All right, we'll get that, uh. And then
Speaker 1: they were made out of this um cotton fabric, fabric
Speaker 1: called kutial c o U t I l um and
Speaker 1: it's still used today. In course it's because it um
Speaker 1: doesn't stretch, has very high thread count, keeps all those
Speaker 1: boning channels and rib or I guess bones in place.
Speaker 1: And you you have to understand, like this whole thing,
Speaker 1: this whole mechanism that is the corset, is basically defying
Speaker 1: physics at any given point in time. So you have
Speaker 1: to have some really strong stuff involved in the manufacture
Speaker 1: of it. So what else you got? You got on
Speaker 1: on the front part where it meets you have a
Speaker 1: busk Yeah, and um that's actually needs to be pretty
Speaker 1: strong as well, right, So usually that's um wood or
Speaker 1: metal maybe bone originally, and it was two flat pieces
Speaker 1: that um that basically went up and down alongside a scene.
Speaker 1: And most people are I don't want to say most people.
Speaker 1: I for a very long time thought that you put
Speaker 1: the corset on and then laced it up, and that
Speaker 1: you put it on and then laced up the back, right,
Speaker 1: you put it around your stuff like that. It's actually
Speaker 1: not the case. You, um, you were doing it all wrong.
Speaker 1: I had it all wrong. When you put on the corset, um,
Speaker 1: you've already got it laced and you're putting the front together.
Speaker 1: You're putting it around yourself and then fastening the front
Speaker 1: at the buss. Yeah, but then you tighten the lacens
Speaker 1: like you don't lace it tight and try to put
Speaker 1: it on exactly. You just have it kind of pre
Speaker 1: lace like your shoes. And the lacing kind of confused
Speaker 1: me to Actually we'll get into that. Well. First of all,
Speaker 1: we need to finish the front. There was a flattened
Speaker 1: part on the stomach. A lot of times it was
Speaker 1: decorative called the stomacher. Yeah. It was very lovely designs
Speaker 1: and embroidery and stuff, and that had the added benefit
Speaker 1: if you were trying to adjust your shape of keeping
Speaker 1: your stomach flat. That's right, just person all it. So, uh,
Speaker 1: what else? Are there any other components to the corset
Speaker 1: that we haven't mentioned? I don't think so. Um, just
Speaker 1: the the the lacing. Okay, so we'll talk lacing now
Speaker 1: then you're ready. Yeah. So, traditionally in the in the
Speaker 1: Western Europe, the the method of lacing was we're basically
Speaker 1: like you would lace the shoe. Okay, it's called bidirectional lacing,
Speaker 1: where you just alternate from one hole of the other diagonally. Right. Um,
Speaker 1: that's typically what you think of when you see of course,
Speaker 1: it's probably what you're seeing is bidirectional lacing. If you
Speaker 1: look at Italian paintings from the medieval era, you're probably
Speaker 1: gonna see what's called ladder lacing. It's all right angles, right,
Speaker 1: so you go from one hole down and then over
Speaker 1: and then maybe up and then down again, then over,
Speaker 1: then down and then over, and it forms a ladder.
Speaker 1: The name is pretty appropriate for that one. And I wonder,
Speaker 1: was this just to make it look different? I would
Speaker 1: guess that had something to do with it, But I
Speaker 1: would also imagine that it had to do with you know,
Speaker 1: if somebody was like this actually, this doesn't loosen during
Speaker 1: the day very much. Because I also saw with the
Speaker 1: bi directional what you would create in the not at
Speaker 1: the bottom at the top, it's sort of in the
Speaker 1: middle of where it laces these bunny ears. And that
Speaker 1: was for women because a lot of times in the
Speaker 1: movies you've seen like the you know, the like down
Speaker 1: and be like the the lady holding the bed post
Speaker 1: and then her valet or I guess where the females
Speaker 1: called valets was valley girl. The lady who helps them
Speaker 1: dress would be like, you know, cinching this thing down
Speaker 1: so tight, and they'd be like, breathe in, you know,
Speaker 1: sucking your breath. But these bunny ears allowed women to
Speaker 1: that didn't have a personal dresser to tighten it themselves. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and apparently that was fairly normal. Um for women wearing courses.
Speaker 1: They usually put them on themselves more often than not.
Speaker 1: And those those bunny ears were just two loops of
Speaker 1: lacing at about the thinnest part, the narrowest part where
Speaker 1: you had some slack, and then when you put your
Speaker 1: corset on, you wrap it around you. You um fasten
Speaker 1: the busk the little the buttons on the bus the
Speaker 1: front and then you just pull back tighten it done right.
Speaker 1: And this is again ideally after you have visited your
Speaker 1: uh course a tear because apparently, like buying a braw,
Speaker 1: guys don't know this stuff. It's apparently tough to get
Speaker 1: one that like fits just right, and so you need
Speaker 1: to get like professionally fitted and um, like the off
Speaker 1: the shelf thing doesn't work for a lot of ladies, right,
Speaker 1: And that was the case for of course it's for
Speaker 1: a very long time. You had to go to a
Speaker 1: corsetier to to be fitted for one, um and it
Speaker 1: was expensive from what I understand right, Um, today there
Speaker 1: I guess because of mass manufacturing, UM, it's a lot
Speaker 1: easier to make coursets that are fairly close to what
Speaker 1: a large number of people would use. But the fit
Speaker 1: is still extraordinarily important. And apparently from what I well,
Speaker 1: I should say, from what orchard course, it says, um,
Speaker 1: women tend to miss uh or to underestimate the length
Speaker 1: that they need, so that leads to a lot of
Speaker 1: discomfort there of course it's too short for their body.
Speaker 1: So I mean, I don't mean to buzz market or anything,
Speaker 1: but just based on my research orchery, of course, it's
Speaker 1: if you're getting into corsetting, there might be a pretty
Speaker 1: decent place to start. Wow, you might get a little
Speaker 1: treat in the mail. Uh, let's take another break and
Speaker 1: we'll talk a little bit more about Cathy Young and
Speaker 1: some of the myths about corsetting. So I think we
Speaker 1: didn't mention after corsetting went out of fashion. Uh, girdles
Speaker 1: came along, like everything has kind of been replaced by
Speaker 1: something else that does something similar, you know, and like
Speaker 1: men these days have those. Uh. It was like, I
Speaker 1: guess spanks for men almost like these tummy tummy shirts
Speaker 1: the dudes can wear Marino that suck everything in and uh,
Speaker 1: and it's all fools gold because what lies beneath is
Speaker 1: still there, right, I guess if you're trying to impress
Speaker 1: people who will never see you without your shirt on,
Speaker 1: go nuts. Um. But Cathy Young, we mentioned a few
Speaker 1: times she is a Guinness record holder and she started
Speaker 1: waste training at the age of forty eight. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: seems a little late to get into it. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: thought so too, But she got into a big time.
Speaker 1: And you were saying earlier. I think at the beginning
Speaker 1: of the episode that you this is not something that
Speaker 1: happens overnight. If you're doing waste training, it can usually
Speaker 1: take it seems to me, about a decade before you
Speaker 1: get the results you're looking for, which is a waste
Speaker 1: that the average five year old could put two fingers around. Well.
Speaker 1: She said that her goal was never to earn an
Speaker 1: award and Aguinness called her uh And she holds that
Speaker 1: record now at fifteen inches thirty eight point one centimeters,
Speaker 1: So that's for living on a living person. There's actually
Speaker 1: a woman who holds the record for the narrowest waist ever,
Speaker 1: narrowest corpse thirteen inches. Who was she? Her name, my
Speaker 1: friend was as follows Ethel Granger. Thirty three centimeters thirteen
Speaker 1: inches in nineteen thirty nine was what her waist was
Speaker 1: measured at. And she obviously trained her waist yeah over
Speaker 1: again about the course of a decade. So did you
Speaker 1: go to Cathy Young's website? Did you see the YouTube's? No?
Speaker 1: I think that's where I got a little freaked out
Speaker 1: because on her website she has like a she has
Speaker 1: an f a Q section and people were writing in
Speaker 1: and a lot of people were just like, you know,
Speaker 1: I think you look great, and you know, give me
Speaker 1: some tips here and there, and that was all well
Speaker 1: and good, but then there was one where this husband
Speaker 1: was like, I'm waist training my wife and just hearing
Speaker 1: that made it sound like a dog bowl. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: made it seem like something that he was making her
Speaker 1: do right, which may not been the case. It may
Speaker 1: have been the wording, but it just freaked me out.
Speaker 1: And he says, right now, I've got her up to
Speaker 1: eighteen hours a day, but I'm really looking looking forward
Speaker 1: to seven, and can you give me some tips on
Speaker 1: how we can accomplish this because she does seven except
Speaker 1: for when she showers. Cathy Young does okay, always in
Speaker 1: a courset right, and you know, she gave tips and everything,
Speaker 1: and like I said, it, just the way this guy
Speaker 1: was talking, it just seemed a little creepy. Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: that is creepy. Sounds like a huge jerk who needs
Speaker 1: to be set straight. Probably get his butt kicked by
Speaker 1: a larger dude. Right, But it also chuck. You may
Speaker 1: also be witnessing, um a B DSM couple coming up
Speaker 1: for tips or whatever. That's just the reality. And if
Speaker 1: the if they're both equally into it, and the into
Speaker 1: that like dynamic, neither one is psychologically suffering or physically
Speaker 1: suffering from it, then hey, but it could also probably
Speaker 1: even more likely be just the guy's a jerk. That
Speaker 1: was my instinct, but you never know. And the other thing,
Speaker 1: if you go to YouTube, there's parts Cathy Young, parts
Speaker 1: one through six, and they are five minute videos of
Speaker 1: her in different lingeries standing in front of a white
Speaker 1: backdrop while her picture was being taken and her husband.
Speaker 1: She's silent the whole time and just kind of turning
Speaker 1: around and stuff, and her husband is just sort of
Speaker 1: very calmly talking about it and describing her waist and
Speaker 1: what she did and the techniques used. And he's an
Speaker 1: orthopedic surgeon, so there's a chilliness to it, and it's
Speaker 1: just creepy man on the subject. Like go watch one
Speaker 1: of those videos and yeah, that's exactly how it sounds.
Speaker 1: And you just hear the photograph going to keep and
Speaker 1: that's the only other thing you hear. It's got like
Speaker 1: a houseplant. It was just all just weird. But then again,
Speaker 1: she feels great about herself and that's what she wanted
Speaker 1: to do. I'm not saying he forced her, because there
Speaker 1: were rumors because she was he was an orthopedic surgeon
Speaker 1: that she he had removed some of her ribs, which
Speaker 1: is one of the big myths of supposed myths um
Speaker 1: of back in the day. Uh. And I believe it
Speaker 1: was a myth because they said back then like surgery
Speaker 1: was very dangerous. You would have to be one of
Speaker 1: the um one of the least risk averse people on
Speaker 1: the planet to undergo elective surgery to removed in the
Speaker 1: nineteenth century, you know. So that's by all accounts, very
Speaker 1: much a myth. Yes, same with Marilyn Manson, I think too.
Speaker 1: Oh sure, I remember hearing that one. Uh. But she
Speaker 1: said that you know, no, my husband didn't remove any
Speaker 1: of my ribs and it's all natural, and um, you know,
Speaker 1: she's into it, she's very proud of it. So I
Speaker 1: don't want to It's the same thing with with corseting
Speaker 1: in general. I think like just to assume that men
Speaker 1: made women do that really takes a tremendous amount of
Speaker 1: agency away from women, you know, like they're just completely
Speaker 1: vapid shells that are bost around by their husbands regardless,
Speaker 1: you know. Sure, so you want busts a couple more myths.
Speaker 1: That's what we do. We're known as myth busters. So
Speaker 1: one of the things that I saw. It's hilarious. In
Speaker 1: this article, um, it says that there's the myth of
Speaker 1: the Victorian waif who fainted at the drop of a
Speaker 1: hat because of a lack of oxygen from wearing a corset.
Speaker 1: And at the bottom of this paragraph the author says, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: it wasn't that. It was malnutrition and not being able
Speaker 1: to breathe very well because of the Yeah. Uh that
Speaker 1: are there any other myths? Yep, that's it. Those are
Speaker 1: all the myth Now, there's plenty of other ones. There's
Speaker 1: actually a pretty cool article on Collectors Weekly written by
Speaker 1: Lisa Hicks about um corset myths. Uh. And again you
Speaker 1: should probably if you're getting into this kind of thing,
Speaker 1: go check out UM well a bunch of sites, but
Speaker 1: also check out Orchard Course. It's again I have no
Speaker 1: financial stake in them whatsoever, but check it out. Uh.
Speaker 1: And it's as I said, go to orchard Orchard of
Speaker 1: course its dot com slash josh um. Since I said
Speaker 1: Orchard course, it's it's time for a listener mail. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna call this. Thank god that episode is over. Hey, guys,
Speaker 1: it just finished episode on pain scales, and I find
Speaker 1: it fascinating when humans try to put an objective score
Speaker 1: on something very subjective. I'm not sure if he came
Speaker 1: across this info and your research, but I thought you'd
Speaker 1: be interested to know that we use pain scales and
Speaker 1: veterinary medicine as well. It's even more challenging because obviously
Speaker 1: our dogs and cats can't tell us verbally and certainly
Speaker 1: can't draw happier sad faces. And that's the saddest thing
Speaker 1: of all. Um our assessment is based completely on behavioral
Speaker 1: behavioral cues and body language. For instance, I'm sure everyone
Speaker 1: but know a happy, pain free puppy. Uh you saw
Speaker 1: one sitting square looking you in the eye, ears perked up,
Speaker 1: wagging his tail. Because dogs are very stoic, higher pain
Speaker 1: tolerance than even chuck it can all, it can be
Speaker 1: very hard to tell when they are feeling pain. Um My,
Speaker 1: both my dogs got sick recently, so I got to
Speaker 1: see this in action, like they didn't act sick for
Speaker 1: a long time, and then I was like, you guys
Speaker 1: are sick. That's why they recommend, like if your dog vomiting,
Speaker 1: take them to the vet, because it's really tough to
Speaker 1: tell if your dog's bad off norm just by looking
Speaker 1: at their behavior totally um or if they like don't
Speaker 1: eat all of a sudden, because that's you know, most dogs,
Speaker 1: or at least all the dogs out had eat like,
Speaker 1: you know, voraciously, or if their head comes off that too.
Speaker 1: As recently the nineteen eighties, it was why we believed
Speaker 1: the animals didn't feel pain at all, And isn't that crazy.
Speaker 1: In fact, you would still encounter veterinarians who don't believe
Speaker 1: in giving pain meds for surgery and other injuries and animals.
Speaker 1: Do you remember what kind of talks about that in
Speaker 1: the animal rights episodes? Oh yeah, that's nuts. It is.
Speaker 1: This line of thinking is obviously known to be wrong now,
Speaker 1: and we have come a very long way in the
Speaker 1: last twenty or thirty years giving better pain control to
Speaker 1: animals in our care. Google dog pain scale you'll find
Speaker 1: a large variety of different pain charts for animals. Keep
Speaker 1: up the great work. We are eagerly, eagerly awaiting a
Speaker 1: live show in St. Louis and now it's from Michael Richards.
Speaker 1: Thanks a lot, Michael Richards. We appreciate you writing it.
Speaker 1: We come into St. Louis. Maybe all right, it's on
Speaker 1: the table. Yeah, I think we've got some We're gonna
Speaker 1: do some shows this year, folks, So look out in
Speaker 1: the future. Look out. Maybe we'll see you there. If
Speaker 1: you want to get in touch with us, you can
Speaker 1: tweet to us on s YSK podcast and at josh
Speaker 1: um Clark. You can hang out with Chuck on Facebook
Speaker 1: at Charles W. Chuck Bryant and uh Facebook dot com
Speaker 1: slash Stuff you Should Know. You can send us an
Speaker 1: email the Stuff podcast to how Stuff Works dot com
Speaker 1: and has always joined us at our home on the web,
Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know dot com for more on this
Speaker 1: and thousands of other topics. Is it how Stuff Works
Speaker 1: dot com? Mhm