Victorian Dress Reform - Criticisms of Tightlacing

Criticisms of Tightlacing

It is not clear how many women, in either the Americas or on the Continent, wore these so-called "reform" bodices. However, contemporary portrait photography, fashion literature, and surviving examples of the undergarments themselves, all suggest that the corset was almost universal as daily wear by women and young ladies (and numerous fashionable men) throughout much of the 19th and early 20th centuries.

Eventually, the reformers' critique of the corset joined a throng of voices clamoring against tightlacing, which became gradually more common and extreme as the 19th century progressed. Preachers inveighed against tightlacing; doctors counseled patients against it; journalists wrote articles condemning the vanity and frivolity of women who would sacrifice their health for the sake of fashion. Whereas corsetting was accepted as necessary for beauty, health, and an upright military-style posture, tightlacing was viewed as vain and, especially at the height of Victorian Prudery, a sign of moral indecency. However, it was in many respects simply an intensification of ordinary Victorian fashions, and the ideal image of feminine attractiveness that a Victorian woman saw around her (in fashion plates, advertisements, etc.) was invariably of a wasp-waisted, firmly-corseted lady.