WEBVTT - How Corsets Work 0:00:01.200 --> 0:00:04.640 Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff Works 0:00:04.680 --> 0:00:13.760 dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh 0:00:13.840 --> 0:00:18.959 Clark with Charles W. Charles Chuck Bryant, and Jerry Jerome Roland. 0:00:19.560 --> 0:00:23.120 So it's stuff you should know. Yeah, Jerry wore her 0:00:23.160 --> 0:00:25.919 Swan Bill corset today. Yes, she looks like a freak 0:00:25.960 --> 0:00:30.440 of nature. I'm nervous about this one. It's gonna go 0:00:30.480 --> 0:00:35.360 ahead and say that, don't be really, Yeah, I'm nervous. Well, 0:00:36.000 --> 0:00:39.200 here I am to relax. You chuck me, pat your beard, 0:00:40.080 --> 0:00:44.440 give you a little nap. That didn't help making things worse. Yeah, 0:00:44.479 --> 0:00:46.560 this one, I don't know. I mean the history and 0:00:46.600 --> 0:00:48.760 stuff is interesting, which I assume we'll talk to you first, 0:00:48.760 --> 0:00:52.400 since we don't plan this stuff out. But um, you know, 0:00:52.440 --> 0:00:54.640 we're all with a live and let live thing. And 0:00:54.640 --> 0:00:57.560 I certainly have no problem with a lady or a 0:00:57.640 --> 0:01:00.880 dude that wants to wear a corset or anybody. Okay, 0:01:00.920 --> 0:01:04.760 what's wrong? But when I started reading about the the 0:01:05.080 --> 0:01:08.520 uh the Guinness Book lady and I went to her 0:01:08.520 --> 0:01:10.759 website and watch the YouTube, it just kind of freaked 0:01:10.760 --> 0:01:13.880 me out a little bit. Cathy Young, Yeah, yeah, and 0:01:13.920 --> 0:01:16.560 we'll talk about her later, but it kind of crossed 0:01:16.560 --> 0:01:21.480 the line to me to like weird obsessions with physical appearance. 0:01:22.440 --> 0:01:24.720 But then I think about, like, I'm not going to 0:01:24.800 --> 0:01:27.440 condemn anyone forgetting all the kinds of weird plastic surgery either, 0:01:27.520 --> 0:01:30.000 if that's your thing. I think that I just want 0:01:30.040 --> 0:01:32.640 people to be happy, you know, right, But I think 0:01:32.640 --> 0:01:36.280 the um extreme lacing is one thing. It's called also 0:01:36.800 --> 0:01:40.160 um well extreme lacing, I think is the general preferred term, 0:01:40.240 --> 0:01:45.959 right um tight lacing. Yeah, it's a perfect example of 0:01:46.600 --> 0:01:51.200 you're harming nobody. This is strictly your body. It's yours 0:01:51.240 --> 0:01:54.280 to do what you want with it, have at it. Yeah, 0:01:54.320 --> 0:01:57.000 but what if it's in the like because men say 0:01:57.000 --> 0:01:58.840 that's the only way a woman will be attractive, and like, 0:01:58.880 --> 0:02:01.520 what's different it's just been in footbinding. That to me 0:02:01.640 --> 0:02:04.640 is sad and and it's a that's part of a 0:02:04.760 --> 0:02:07.360 larger issue, you know what I mean, Like if you're 0:02:07.360 --> 0:02:10.200 doing it because you know you want to catch a 0:02:10.200 --> 0:02:13.320 man's attention or something like that, who knows, we're not 0:02:13.400 --> 0:02:16.280 pop psychologists, and it just all this makes me nervous. 0:02:16.360 --> 0:02:19.000 I did. Actually I had a conversation with um Holly 0:02:19.160 --> 0:02:21.600 from miss in History stuff. You miss in history class. 0:02:21.639 --> 0:02:23.840 She's probably one of course it in her time. Yes, yes, 0:02:23.919 --> 0:02:27.440 and she actually defends course it's too because I thought, well, 0:02:27.560 --> 0:02:31.080 it's like the the Western equivalent of footbody. She said, no, no, no, 0:02:31.200 --> 0:02:35.880 my friend. Uh, it lacks in reality and actuality, a 0:02:35.960 --> 0:02:42.519 lot of the um, a lot of the sexism associated 0:02:42.520 --> 0:02:44.480 with footbindinging. That makes me feel a little bit better. 0:02:44.480 --> 0:02:47.360 And that course it's in in reality and truth. In 0:02:47.440 --> 0:02:51.920 the nineteenth century and before, we're um very much chosen 0:02:51.960 --> 0:02:57.480 to be worn by women for their own tastes, sometimes 0:02:57.600 --> 0:03:00.919 at the out of spy or not out of spite, 0:03:00.919 --> 0:03:03.600 but um, contrary to what the with the men in 0:03:03.639 --> 0:03:06.880 their life might want or desire. Okay, okay, so it's 0:03:06.880 --> 0:03:10.120 actually it's not necessarily a feminist article of clothing, although 0:03:10.480 --> 0:03:15.560 Madonna certainly made a case for that, so did Vivian Westwood. Um, 0:03:15.600 --> 0:03:18.320 but it's it's not as bad as you're thinking. I 0:03:18.360 --> 0:03:21.920 think I do feel better now, do you? Yeah? Good. 0:03:22.120 --> 0:03:24.480 I just don't want to, you know, I don't want 0:03:24.480 --> 0:03:25.959 to make people feel bad. I want people to feel 0:03:26.000 --> 0:03:28.840 good always. I want everyone to feel good. That's my problem. Yeah, 0:03:28.880 --> 0:03:31.160 and we should say, if you're wearing a courser right now, 0:03:31.360 --> 0:03:35.080 and it feels bad. Everything I've seen in my research 0:03:35.160 --> 0:03:38.080 says you need to loosen that thing because it's not 0:03:38.200 --> 0:03:42.119 supposed to hurt. Well yeah, and um even Cathy Young, 0:03:42.160 --> 0:03:44.760 who um again we will talk about. But she's againness 0:03:45.040 --> 0:03:48.200 record holder because she formed her waists into the size 0:03:48.240 --> 0:03:53.360 of a jar mayonnaise. Um. Literally, oh yeah, gallant size mayonnaise. 0:03:53.720 --> 0:03:56.040 It said the thing I had said, an average jar, 0:03:56.120 --> 0:03:58.840 But I don't think that's correct unless those photos on 0:03:58.840 --> 0:04:02.600 her site though look photo shopped. Okay, but she said that. 0:04:02.680 --> 0:04:05.920 All the advice she gave was you go slow. Don't like, 0:04:06.040 --> 0:04:08.400 you know, if you want to train your waists to 0:04:08.440 --> 0:04:11.760 be smaller, which you can do, um, don't you know, 0:04:12.360 --> 0:04:15.480 dive in and just start, you know, doing the extreme 0:04:15.560 --> 0:04:18.479 lacing right away. No, there's into it. There's something called 0:04:18.760 --> 0:04:23.960 um waste training, and that's kind of a uh it's 0:04:23.960 --> 0:04:27.560 not necessarily the ultimate goal of corseting, which can be 0:04:27.600 --> 0:04:30.640 a verb, but it is um a kind of a 0:04:30.680 --> 0:04:35.560 parallels subculture of the corseting culture, and waist training is 0:04:35.600 --> 0:04:39.640 simply where you are basically through the use of corsets 0:04:39.680 --> 0:04:42.640 and pretty tight course. It's over a period of time, 0:04:42.720 --> 0:04:48.360 usually about a decade. You are reshaping your body mechanically, right, 0:04:48.440 --> 0:04:52.040 you're not actually losing weight. Although a tight fitting corset 0:04:52.400 --> 0:04:56.800 acts something like a gastric bypass surgery without the surgery 0:04:56.839 --> 0:05:00.160 because you just can't put as much stuff in your 0:05:00.160 --> 0:05:05.279 stomach is normal UM. But the waste training itself, it's 0:05:05.320 --> 0:05:08.239 just it's a reshaping. It's not actually making you lose weight. 0:05:08.440 --> 0:05:12.680 So what it's doing is taking uh inches out of 0:05:12.720 --> 0:05:15.480 the middle and sliding them down to the hips and 0:05:15.560 --> 0:05:18.240 all of this the whole point for course, it's from 0:05:18.279 --> 0:05:21.520 the beginning of course, it's to um. The world record 0:05:21.560 --> 0:05:28.080 holding course at waste is to um amplify existing female 0:05:28.440 --> 0:05:33.359 UM body features. Yes, that's the point, that's right. The 0:05:33.440 --> 0:05:37.279 word uh comes from an old French word c o 0:05:37.480 --> 0:05:44.120 r s, meaning body and UM. Here's the history, which 0:05:44.120 --> 0:05:48.000 oddly came three quarters the way through this article. UH. 0:05:48.040 --> 0:05:50.160 If you go back in time and the way Back 0:05:50.160 --> 0:05:58.760 machine to the days of ancient crete, there were women 0:05:58.839 --> 0:06:01.000 who well I think he and before crete, there were 0:06:01.000 --> 0:06:04.160 women who tied ropes around their waist to make their 0:06:04.160 --> 0:06:10.080 waistline look slimmer acentuate maybe the bust and the rear end. Uh. 0:06:10.120 --> 0:06:11.640 So they were doing that a long time ago and 0:06:11.680 --> 0:06:15.719 then an ancient create. Um people think that they are historians, 0:06:15.760 --> 0:06:18.480 think through the first women that actually wore something that 0:06:18.520 --> 0:06:21.159 you could call a corset. It was a garment that 0:06:21.200 --> 0:06:24.240 shaped the body more than three thousand years ago, right 0:06:24.320 --> 0:06:27.960 it um It covered the I think the waist and 0:06:28.000 --> 0:06:32.839 the hips and um crete and women went around um 0:06:33.080 --> 0:06:37.719 bare breasted, so they would have their breasts like saying, hey, everybody, 0:06:37.720 --> 0:06:41.680 how's it going? And then below that was the corset okay, 0:06:41.720 --> 0:06:44.919 And I would imagine um that it probably enhanced the 0:06:44.960 --> 0:06:49.720 breasts as well. Uh yeah, sure, if you're sent and 0:06:49.760 --> 0:06:52.920 everything up like that probably probably acted sort of like 0:06:52.960 --> 0:06:57.800 a pre brazier support and lift. See them so uncomfortable 0:06:59.040 --> 0:07:02.599 a man. We did one on female puberty that was easier. 0:07:03.920 --> 0:07:08.320 Oh really yeah, well that was science. This is I see, 0:07:08.360 --> 0:07:10.640 I see, you make a valid point. Uh So if 0:07:10.640 --> 0:07:12.640 you go forward a bit to the Middle Ages, they 0:07:12.880 --> 0:07:17.240 um for the first time, these undergarments came out in 0:07:17.360 --> 0:07:20.600 something called the heavy stay, and it was very much 0:07:20.640 --> 0:07:23.560 an outerwear, but it kind of accomplished the same goal. 0:07:24.280 --> 0:07:28.080 But it was you know, very decorative and and pretty um. 0:07:28.120 --> 0:07:30.040 But that I don't think that lasted too long. They 0:07:30.080 --> 0:07:33.760 went back under the garment in the eighteenth century, right, 0:07:33.760 --> 0:07:37.119 and then um, up until the eighteenth century, most things 0:07:37.200 --> 0:07:39.840 that were part of the Corset family tree or predecessors 0:07:39.880 --> 0:07:44.320 of course it's were conical. Um no, they were tubular, 0:07:44.760 --> 0:07:48.200 totally tubular. And then once we hit I think about 0:07:48.240 --> 0:07:50.800 the eighteenth century, what we start to see today as 0:07:50.840 --> 0:07:54.360 of course it began to emerge where that's conical, it's 0:07:54.400 --> 0:07:59.440 cone shaped, right, um. And from from I guess, yeah, 0:07:59.520 --> 0:08:02.600 the eighteen century on, of course, it's were like a 0:08:02.680 --> 0:08:07.520 pretty pretty much a mainstay of fashion, if not the 0:08:07.560 --> 0:08:11.560 basic ingredient of women's fashion from about the end of 0:08:11.600 --> 0:08:16.200 the sevres until World War One. Basically, yeah, it wasn't 0:08:16.240 --> 0:08:19.240 like some weird thing like today. Um. I mean they're 0:08:19.240 --> 0:08:22.000 still in fashion today, and if you know in certain 0:08:22.480 --> 0:08:27.240 um like cosplay and costumes in the fetish world and 0:08:27.640 --> 0:08:30.800 burlesque and stuff like that, or just you know, just 0:08:30.800 --> 0:08:36.240 playing sexy time. Sure, regular old sexy time. But um, 0:08:36.840 --> 0:08:38.480 the stuff I read said it was it was no 0:08:39.120 --> 0:08:41.600 like more of a strange thing than like a woman 0:08:41.640 --> 0:08:43.680 to wear a bra today, right exactly, it's just a 0:08:43.720 --> 0:08:46.079 regular fashion accessory. Yeah. And as we'll see, it was 0:08:46.160 --> 0:08:48.760 like kind of essential depending on the clos you're wearing, 0:08:48.800 --> 0:08:52.840 depending on the period. Yeah, that's true. Um, there was 0:08:52.880 --> 0:08:55.920 a a real movement. And when I was saying like 0:08:56.280 --> 0:08:58.880 some men were saying like, you shouldn't be wearing corsets, 0:08:58.920 --> 0:09:01.800 and women said, t s for you, Pal, I'm still 0:09:01.880 --> 0:09:04.920 wearing a corset. There was actually a big movement that 0:09:05.080 --> 0:09:09.000 was UM that came out of uh I guess the 0:09:09.080 --> 0:09:13.760 nineteenth century, late nineteenth century, that was spearheaded by two brothers, 0:09:13.800 --> 0:09:17.400 Ira and Lucian Warner Um. And they came up with 0:09:17.440 --> 0:09:21.440 an alternative too. They actually were anti corset crusaders. They 0:09:21.440 --> 0:09:25.920 were both doctors, and they Um basically said you can't 0:09:25.920 --> 0:09:29.240 beat them, join them, but let's try to create a 0:09:29.240 --> 0:09:33.880 corset that's less problematic for women. And the idea that 0:09:34.120 --> 0:09:37.120 corsets were problematic for women can actually be traced back 0:09:37.559 --> 0:09:41.880 to a sevente medical article by a guy named Dr 0:09:41.920 --> 0:09:47.920 Samuel Thomas von Sommering, and Um von Sommering basically made 0:09:47.960 --> 0:09:50.560 up a lot of the myths about corsets that we 0:09:50.600 --> 0:09:53.439 know today, that they can cause scoliosis, that they can 0:09:53.480 --> 0:09:57.079 mess up your liver, that they can lead to permanent 0:09:57.200 --> 0:10:01.120 deformation of your body and your internal or inns. Uh. 0:10:01.160 --> 0:10:03.480 It all kind of came from this and a hundred 0:10:03.559 --> 0:10:08.000 years after Von Summering wrote his article, UM, the Warner 0:10:08.040 --> 0:10:10.960 Brothers got in and said, we're gonna come up with 0:10:11.000 --> 0:10:15.120 a health health courset. Yeah, but they definitely can change. Um. 0:10:15.160 --> 0:10:20.240 There's something called uh viscer optosis or Glennard's disease, which 0:10:20.320 --> 0:10:24.000 if you do the tight lacing long term, you're your 0:10:24.120 --> 0:10:26.880 organs can actually sink and shift away from where they 0:10:26.920 --> 0:10:30.000 should be. Right. So, I mean that's that's something that 0:10:30.080 --> 0:10:32.559 can happen that there is a really good point, man, 0:10:32.880 --> 0:10:39.280 we should delineate here. Wearing a corset normally, even when 0:10:39.280 --> 0:10:43.040 you're doing waste training, should not result in that. There 0:10:43.160 --> 0:10:46.120 is a definite line where if you are getting into 0:10:46.160 --> 0:10:51.800 extreme corseting, then yes, all sorts of medical problems can happen. Um. 0:10:51.840 --> 0:10:54.560 But just about every corseting site out there on the 0:10:54.559 --> 0:10:58.520 Internet will warn you about going past that line. And 0:10:58.559 --> 0:11:00.600 in fact, there was a really there's a good um 0:11:00.720 --> 0:11:05.080 site by Orchard Corsets. They sell corsets. They have a 0:11:05.120 --> 0:11:08.480 really extensive site. You know, there's stuff about corsets. They 0:11:08.520 --> 0:11:11.800 actually say one of the ways that the body can 0:11:11.840 --> 0:11:17.040 be deformed. Is if you're an adolescent girl wearing a corset, Um, 0:11:17.120 --> 0:11:20.880 your ribs can develop improperly because you're wearing the course. 0:11:20.920 --> 0:11:26.040 As they say, girls under eighteen shouldn't wear corsets. Uh. 0:11:26.200 --> 0:11:29.800 So then along came this guy, um. And we should 0:11:29.800 --> 0:11:32.160 mention too that when these two the two uh Warner 0:11:32.200 --> 0:11:37.000 brothers within the United States. Yeah, they were out of Bridgeport, Connecticut. 0:11:37.120 --> 0:11:40.719 I was gonna say Wigner, but maybe a generation or 0:11:40.760 --> 0:11:45.760 two before probably so. Um they also changed around the 0:11:45.800 --> 0:11:48.520 same time at least Um. I think we have not 0:11:48.559 --> 0:11:51.000 mentioned yet that Uh, one of the you know, the 0:11:51.120 --> 0:11:52.560 the course it has to and we'll get into all 0:11:52.559 --> 0:11:54.040 the parts of the corset, but one of the things 0:11:54.080 --> 0:11:56.360 that keeps it rigid and stiff and the old days 0:11:56.480 --> 0:12:00.280 was baleen whale um. And it was actually it was 0:12:00.320 --> 0:12:03.439 a teeth, right even though called a whalebone. And they 0:12:03.440 --> 0:12:06.200 would use this to, you know, to make the corsets 0:12:06.240 --> 0:12:09.160 stiff in in place, keep everything where it should be. 0:12:09.559 --> 0:12:11.560 But around that time, in the late eighteen hundreds, is 0:12:11.600 --> 0:12:15.079 they were overhunted, became really expensive, so they said, all right, 0:12:15.559 --> 0:12:20.360 forget the whale teeth, let's put in steel in which 0:12:20.760 --> 0:12:23.720 I'm sure that was quite comfortable, right. Well, yeah, but 0:12:23.880 --> 0:12:26.959 and I mean women were wearing these like every day. Yeah. 0:12:27.000 --> 0:12:28.679 But I mean one of the as we'll see when 0:12:28.679 --> 0:12:32.440 we talk about manufacturing, course it's the UM. One of 0:12:32.440 --> 0:12:35.199 the points is to make it as comfortable as possible, 0:12:35.280 --> 0:12:39.640 this very uncomfortable contraption. Yea, but yeah, they started to 0:12:39.760 --> 0:12:43.080 use steel, and even today you'll find steel in corsets 0:12:43.520 --> 0:12:46.000 that are meant to for like waste training or something 0:12:46.040 --> 0:12:49.000 like that. Uh. And then, like I teased a moment ago, 0:12:49.040 --> 0:12:51.960 along came this guy named Charles Dana Gibson. He's a 0:12:52.520 --> 0:12:56.800 he was a graphic artist in the Victorian times, and 0:12:56.920 --> 0:12:59.480 he became very famous, and a lot of artists that 0:12:59.520 --> 0:13:03.360 came after him emulated his style. But he became very 0:13:03.400 --> 0:13:06.800 famous in the eighteen nineties for creating what was known 0:13:06.840 --> 0:13:10.160 as the Gibson Girl. So what he did was he 0:13:10.160 --> 0:13:13.160 he drew all these pictures of this, uh, these ladies 0:13:13.200 --> 0:13:15.160 who were I mean some say it was like the 0:13:15.200 --> 0:13:21.360 first ideal of of UM American attractiveness for for women, 0:13:22.160 --> 0:13:25.320 and it was they wore these swan bill corsets, which 0:13:25.360 --> 0:13:27.720 made I mean these were even more extreme. They would 0:13:27.720 --> 0:13:30.240 make you kind of stick the bust out and stick 0:13:30.280 --> 0:13:33.880 your your rear end back. And if you just look 0:13:33.920 --> 0:13:36.360 up Gibson girl. I mean, you've seen these drawings before. 0:13:37.000 --> 0:13:40.400 It's like America's first cheesecake drawings. I don't know what 0:13:40.400 --> 0:13:43.800 a cheesecake drawing is. It's like a Gibson girl, okay? 0:13:43.920 --> 0:13:47.280 Or a Vargus girl is another a little more modern one. Well, 0:13:47.360 --> 0:13:53.000 supposedly his American boy. You see them cheesecake girls, apparently 0:13:53.040 --> 0:13:55.720 as his wife and her sisters were his inspiration. And 0:13:55.880 --> 0:14:01.600 um m is it the sister it's weird. Yeah, they 0:14:01.600 --> 0:14:04.239 said they were all pretty okay, and he was celebrating. 0:14:04.280 --> 0:14:06.200 He said that this was not a woman, but it 0:14:06.320 --> 0:14:10.400 was a thousand women, is his quote. Got um. And 0:14:10.440 --> 0:14:12.920 supposedly the Gibson cocktail is named after him, but I'm 0:14:12.920 --> 0:14:16.520 not sure if that's true. Oh that's great, good for him. 0:14:16.720 --> 0:14:22.120 M gut him. Pickle onions? Yeah, put in Martini, call 0:14:22.200 --> 0:14:25.520 it after me. So what happened? He was actually um 0:14:25.560 --> 0:14:29.760 working from a corset that was invented by a doctor 0:14:29.960 --> 0:14:36.240 ines ghosh, so terrible Um who created this course at 0:14:36.240 --> 0:14:40.320 the straight front, also called the swan Bill corset and 0:14:40.360 --> 0:14:42.600 the whole problem with it was, and Charles Dana Gibson 0:14:42.720 --> 0:14:48.720 is criticized for popularizing this because it's so bad for you, Like, 0:14:48.800 --> 0:14:52.120 there's no question that the swan bill corset is really 0:14:52.160 --> 0:14:55.320 bad for your posture because the thing that it forces 0:14:55.360 --> 0:14:59.040 your spine into is just totally unnatural. And apparently that 0:14:59.120 --> 0:15:02.120 trend only last for about a decade during the Awardian 0:15:02.120 --> 0:15:06.920 period of first century of the just ten years, and 0:15:06.960 --> 0:15:10.920 then pretty much right after that, not right after pretty 0:15:10.960 --> 0:15:15.040 close of course, it's suddenly just went away because World 0:15:15.080 --> 0:15:20.440 War One had such a sweeping change on the world. 0:15:21.160 --> 0:15:24.080 It just it just it was. It created social upheaval. 0:15:24.080 --> 0:15:26.840 And one of the things that um came out of 0:15:26.920 --> 0:15:28.960 this was women said, you know what we're done. Of 0:15:29.000 --> 0:15:31.360 course it's I'm a flapper now I need to do 0:15:31.440 --> 0:15:35.080 the Charleston, can't do the Charleston and of courset um 0:15:35.280 --> 0:15:37.200 and the whole fashion was just different looking, you know 0:15:37.680 --> 0:15:40.680 it was, and the idealized body was different too. So 0:15:40.960 --> 0:15:45.160 prior to that and throughout basically history, the Venus body type, 0:15:45.200 --> 0:15:51.520 which is you know them, the fertile women curves type, 0:15:52.320 --> 0:15:54.480 was replaced by the Diana type, which is the more 0:15:54.560 --> 0:15:57.920 athletic type that's now has been in fashion basically ever 0:15:57.960 --> 0:16:01.160 since World War One. That basically kill the corset. But 0:16:01.280 --> 0:16:04.560 the modern bra and slip and all of that stuff 0:16:05.040 --> 0:16:08.040 came out of that the death of the corset, because 0:16:08.040 --> 0:16:09.800 they were like, we still need something, we still want 0:16:09.800 --> 0:16:12.360 to course it anymore. Okay. I think one of the 0:16:12.400 --> 0:16:14.360 reasons all this made me uncomfortable is just all the 0:16:14.360 --> 0:16:18.040 categorizations over the years, like this is the ideal women 0:16:18.120 --> 0:16:20.640 and she's called a Diana, and this is what they 0:16:20.640 --> 0:16:23.960 should look like. Yeah, that's mean that to me is 0:16:24.000 --> 0:16:27.280 like a whole other podcast, you know. I mean, like 0:16:28.560 --> 0:16:31.320 because plenty of women buy into that, and there they 0:16:31.320 --> 0:16:34.160 don't feel bad about themselves for buying into it. They say, oh, yeah, 0:16:34.160 --> 0:16:38.000 this is what I find attractive to uh So. Anyway, 0:16:38.040 --> 0:16:40.160 during this time in the Roaring twenties, there were the 0:16:40.200 --> 0:16:43.600 corsetiers that were just like, oh no, well, how about 0:16:43.680 --> 0:16:46.120 this kind that you can still wear and it's not 0:16:46.160 --> 0:16:48.240 like the other course that you can actually dance on them, 0:16:48.800 --> 0:16:53.120 and you know, it's sunk and it. It basically stayed 0:16:53.160 --> 0:16:55.080 that way for the rest of the twentieth century. There 0:16:55.160 --> 0:16:58.160 was a brief resurgence. Christian Dior brought it back in 0:16:58.200 --> 0:17:03.120 the forties, um, and it was kind of akin to that, uh, 0:17:03.480 --> 0:17:07.760 that Swan Bill corset. Yeah. Uh. And then it went 0:17:07.800 --> 0:17:12.360 out pretty quickly. And then in two Vivian Westwood had 0:17:12.400 --> 0:17:16.520 a show called Buffalo Girls, her collection for two eighty three, 0:17:16.880 --> 0:17:20.280 and it brought corsets out. Vivian west Wood, she's a 0:17:20.359 --> 0:17:24.320 famous designer, kind of punk fashion, um, and she brought 0:17:24.359 --> 0:17:27.640 courses out from underneath the clothing and made it like 0:17:27.840 --> 0:17:30.199 basically into a shirt. It was Outerwhere now was that 0:17:30.240 --> 0:17:33.040 when Madonna got on the train? That was about six 0:17:33.119 --> 0:17:35.720 years later, And that was Jean Paul Gautier that designed 0:17:35.720 --> 0:17:38.600 that very famous corset with the conical bra that would 0:17:38.640 --> 0:17:42.680 take your eye clean out. Yeah. What was the what's 0:17:42.720 --> 0:17:44.960 the video? I don't remember. I can sing the song 0:17:45.000 --> 0:17:48.280 in my head, sing it. No, you know the one Vogue? 0:17:49.119 --> 0:17:52.080 It was okay, that was a Vogue video, right, I think? So, okay, 0:17:52.160 --> 0:17:54.879 Well we'll find out if it's not. Um, But that 0:17:54.960 --> 0:17:58.000 was Jean Paul Gautier. And uh. From that point on 0:17:58.359 --> 0:18:01.720 the course that has basically stuck a down, sometimes a 0:18:01.720 --> 0:18:06.320 little a little more predominantly, sometimes a little more in 0:18:06.320 --> 0:18:08.480 the background, but it's basically been a fashion accessory that 0:18:08.560 --> 0:18:11.200 you could conceivably wear out in public in the West 0:18:11.240 --> 0:18:13.840 ever since. Yeah, I mean it sticks around these days, 0:18:13.880 --> 0:18:17.359 like you see costumes and stuff like that. But um, 0:18:17.400 --> 0:18:20.600 and then occasionally, I guess if you're in a swinging nightclub, 0:18:20.960 --> 0:18:25.359 you might see a lady in a corset or maybe 0:18:25.359 --> 0:18:28.760 a man. Yeah, we'll talk about that after this. How 0:18:28.720 --> 0:18:55.600 about that? So chuck your teased men wearing corsets? Literally, Uh, 0:18:55.880 --> 0:18:58.920 I never tease a man for wearing anything except those 0:18:58.960 --> 0:19:02.800 dolphin running shorts. Those are great to get back in 0:19:02.840 --> 0:19:05.639 your time machine. I saw The Boy in the Bubble 0:19:05.720 --> 0:19:07.800 for the first time. Have you ever seen that movie 0:19:07.800 --> 0:19:10.600 here at Trivolta. Yeah, I never saw it, and I 0:19:10.640 --> 0:19:12.960 watched the riff Trecks version of it. Well that's the 0:19:12.960 --> 0:19:17.920 only way to pervde it a lot better. Yeah, where 0:19:17.920 --> 0:19:20.920 did that come from? Oh? I think he's wearing dolphins 0:19:20.960 --> 0:19:22.760 shorts on one of the scenes, and I was like, 0:19:23.320 --> 0:19:29.080 dolphins shorts. So, um, yeah, what we're talking about men 0:19:29.119 --> 0:19:32.600 wearing him? Yeah, So apparently this article makes it seem 0:19:32.640 --> 0:19:35.520 like it was fairly normal. But from what I saw 0:19:35.560 --> 0:19:39.640 in the nineteenth century and there, from what I saw 0:19:39.680 --> 0:19:42.600 in the nineteenth century was that if you were wearing 0:19:42.640 --> 0:19:45.480 a corset, and you were a man, you were probably 0:19:45.520 --> 0:19:49.640 suspected as being gay. And so here's where this kind 0:19:49.680 --> 0:19:57.439 of patriarchal view. Of course, it's does definitely hold fast. Um, 0:19:57.480 --> 0:20:01.640 if you were if you were like a straight establishment 0:20:01.720 --> 0:20:07.760 type male, Um, you probably did not cotton two men 0:20:07.800 --> 0:20:10.200 wearing corsets and didn't want to associate with any guy 0:20:10.240 --> 0:20:12.880 wearing corses because you didn't trust him he was probably gay. 0:20:12.920 --> 0:20:16.440 But if you were in favor of your wife wearing 0:20:16.440 --> 0:20:18.920 a corset, she'd better be wearing a corset or else 0:20:18.960 --> 0:20:21.560 she wouldn't be viewed as a proper woman in normal, 0:20:21.640 --> 0:20:25.119 polite society. So it's it's not fair to say like 0:20:25.200 --> 0:20:29.280 that myth about the corset being a part of the 0:20:29.320 --> 0:20:33.119 patriarchy is not true. It is true in some ways, 0:20:33.520 --> 0:20:37.040 but not It's not like women were forced to wear 0:20:37.160 --> 0:20:42.680 corsets throughout history. They donned it in particular on purpose. 0:20:43.119 --> 0:20:46.000 And one of the reasons why women wore corsets was 0:20:46.160 --> 0:20:51.040 because it also served as a basically the thing that 0:20:51.119 --> 0:20:54.840 held up all of their really heavy clothes. Yeah, like 0:20:54.920 --> 0:20:57.120 you couldn't you couldn't just slip into one of those 0:20:57.200 --> 0:21:01.199 dresses in Victorian times. No, Um, it had a certain 0:21:01.240 --> 0:21:06.520 shape that required a certain uh form to put it on, 0:21:07.320 --> 0:21:09.440 and you know that course it would help your body 0:21:10.040 --> 0:21:14.159 like morph into that form basically, you know, it was 0:21:14.200 --> 0:21:16.840 a low there was a load bearing structure that you 0:21:16.880 --> 0:21:21.320 wore under her clothes, a load bearing beam. So I 0:21:21.359 --> 0:21:25.080 don't think we've really described the how these things were 0:21:25.160 --> 0:21:27.280 kind of came you know, how they came together. There's 0:21:27.320 --> 0:21:31.400 some people out there are like, what is a corset? Well, geez, 0:21:31.440 --> 0:21:35.160 do we not even say that? And not in so 0:21:35.200 --> 0:21:37.320 many words? All right, Well, it's a garment and it's 0:21:37.440 --> 0:21:40.800 usually pretty short, uh, and it's like a it's like 0:21:40.800 --> 0:21:45.080 a belt, like a a not a wide belt, but 0:21:45.760 --> 0:21:48.280 a towel, a tall belt. It's like a vest that 0:21:48.480 --> 0:21:51.160 doesn't go over your shoulders. Yeah, but some of them 0:21:51.160 --> 0:21:55.000 could go over your shoulders. Well that was the health coursets. 0:21:55.040 --> 0:21:57.920 I think that did that, all right. Um, they lace 0:21:58.000 --> 0:22:00.880 up in the back. We mentioned the whale own, which 0:22:00.920 --> 0:22:04.160 was actually the teeth of the baleen as these reads, 0:22:04.200 --> 0:22:06.320 and they were put in what we're called boning channels, 0:22:06.320 --> 0:22:09.520 which were just a little sheaths basically where they would 0:22:09.520 --> 0:22:12.720 slip these things down in and um, it's like you know, 0:22:12.760 --> 0:22:14.720 if you've ever had to wear a back brace or something, 0:22:15.240 --> 0:22:17.600 it's very much like that. And like Andy Warhol had 0:22:17.600 --> 0:22:19.200 to wear one of these after he got shot by 0:22:19.280 --> 0:22:21.640 Valerie Salon. Yeah, for the rest of his life, who 0:22:21.640 --> 0:22:24.600 went on to write the Scum Manifesto. You ever read that? Yeah? 0:22:24.640 --> 0:22:26.280 I thought she wrote it before she shot him, Now 0:22:27.440 --> 0:22:29.680 did she? We should do one on that whole scene, Yeah, 0:22:29.720 --> 0:22:32.680 we should. All right, we'll get that, uh. And then 0:22:32.760 --> 0:22:35.800 they were made out of this um cotton fabric, fabric 0:22:35.840 --> 0:22:39.720 called kutial c o U t I l um and 0:22:39.760 --> 0:22:42.080 it's still used today. In course it's because it um 0:22:42.119 --> 0:22:45.119 doesn't stretch, has very high thread count, keeps all those 0:22:45.440 --> 0:22:49.359 boning channels and rib or I guess bones in place. 0:22:49.960 --> 0:22:52.960 And you you have to understand, like this whole thing, 0:22:53.119 --> 0:22:58.280 this whole mechanism that is the corset, is basically defying 0:22:58.480 --> 0:23:01.439 physics at any given point in time. So you have 0:23:01.480 --> 0:23:05.240 to have some really strong stuff involved in the manufacture 0:23:05.280 --> 0:23:07.959 of it. So what else you got? You got on 0:23:07.960 --> 0:23:09.879 on the front part where it meets you have a 0:23:10.400 --> 0:23:15.639 busk Yeah, and um that's actually needs to be pretty 0:23:15.680 --> 0:23:19.040 strong as well, right, So usually that's um wood or 0:23:19.080 --> 0:23:23.440 metal maybe bone originally, and it was two flat pieces 0:23:24.000 --> 0:23:28.119 that um that basically went up and down alongside a scene. 0:23:28.800 --> 0:23:31.160 And most people are I don't want to say most people. 0:23:31.200 --> 0:23:33.560 I for a very long time thought that you put 0:23:33.600 --> 0:23:36.240 the corset on and then laced it up, and that 0:23:36.480 --> 0:23:38.960 you put it on and then laced up the back, right, 0:23:39.080 --> 0:23:41.200 you put it around your stuff like that. It's actually 0:23:41.240 --> 0:23:44.320 not the case. You, um, you were doing it all wrong. 0:23:44.359 --> 0:23:47.680 I had it all wrong. When you put on the corset, um, 0:23:47.760 --> 0:23:50.560 you've already got it laced and you're putting the front together. 0:23:50.640 --> 0:23:53.119 You're putting it around yourself and then fastening the front 0:23:53.200 --> 0:23:56.000 at the buss. Yeah, but then you tighten the lacens 0:23:56.080 --> 0:23:58.080 like you don't lace it tight and try to put 0:23:58.119 --> 0:23:59.840 it on exactly. You just have it kind of pre 0:24:00.080 --> 0:24:03.360 lace like your shoes. And the lacing kind of confused 0:24:03.359 --> 0:24:06.200