Editing Corset (section)

=== Corset controversy and dress reform ===
{{See also|Corset controversy}}
[[File:Le Corset de Toilette - 61 Fig.png|thumb|upright=0.6|A maternity corset, 1908]]

The new practice of [[tight-lacing]] instigated widespread controversy. [[Victorian dress reform|Dress reformists]] claimed that the corset was prompted by vanity and foolishness, and harmful to health. The reported health risks included damaged and rearranged internal organs, compromised fertility; weakness and general depletion of health. Those who were pro-corset argued that it was required for stylish dress and had its own unique pleasures; dress historian David Kunzle theorized that some enthusiastic fans of tightlacing may have experienced sexual pleasure when tightlacing, or by [[Frotteurism|rubbing]] against the front of the corset, which contributed to the moral outrage against the practice.<ref name="Kunzle-2006">{{Cite book |last=Kunzle |first=David |title=Fashion and Fetishism: Corsets, tight lacing, and other forms of body sculpture |publisher=History Press |year=2006 |isbn=0750938099 |language=en}}</ref>

The corset controversy was also closely tied to notions of [[social Darwinism]] and [[eugenics]]. The potential damage to the uterus, ovaries, and fetus was frequently pointed to as a danger to the race; i.e., the [[European peoples|European]] race. Western women were thought to be weaker and more prone to birth complications than the ostensibly more vigorous, healthier, "primitive" races who did not wear corsets. Dress reformers exhorted readers to loosen their corsets, or risk destroying the "civilized" races.<ref name="Summers-2001" />{{Rp|page=135}} On the other hand, those who argued for the importance of corsets cited Darwinism as well, specifically the notion that women were less evolved and thus frailer, in need of the external support of a corset.

The reformers' critique of the corset was one part of a throng of voices clamoring against [[tightlacing]]. Doctors counseled patients against it and [[journalists]] wrote articles condemning the vanity and frivolity of women who would sacrifice their health for the sake of fashion. Although for many, corseting was accepted as necessary for health, propriety, and an upright military-style [[human position|posture]], dress reformers viewed tightlacing, especially at the height of the era of [[Victorian morality]], as a sign of moral indecency.

American women active in the [[abolitionism in the United States|anti-slavery]] and [[temperance movement]]s, with experience in public speaking and political agitation, advocated for and wore sensible clothing that would not restrict their movement, although corsets were a part of their wardrobe.<ref>{{cite web |title=Woman's dress, a question of the day |url=http://www.canadiana.org/view/91023/0011 |archive-url=https://archive.today/20120730174714/http://www.canadiana.org/view/91023/0011 |url-status=dead |archive-date=30 July 2012 |access-date=26 March 2012 |work=Early Canadiana Online}}</ref> While supporters of fashionable dress contended that corsets maintained an upright, "good figure", and were a necessary physical structure for a moral and well-ordered society, dress reformers maintained that women's fashions were not only physically detrimental, but "the results of male conspiracy to make women subservient by cultivating them in slave psychology".<ref>Dress and Morality by Aileen Ribeiro, (Homes and Meier Publishers Inc: New York. 1986) p. 134</ref><ref>{{cite journal | last1 = Riegel | first1 = Robert E. | year = 1963 | title = Women's Clothes and Women's Right | journal = American Quarterly | volume = 15 | issue = 3 | pages = 390–401 | doi=10.2307/2711370| jstor = 2711370 }}</ref> They believed a change in fashions could change the position of women in society, allowing for greater social mobility, independence from men and marriage, and the ability to work for wages, as well as physical movement and comfort.<ref>{{cite journal | last1 = Riegel | first1 = Robert E. | year = 1963 | title = Women's Clothes and Women's Right | journal = American Quarterly | volume = 15 | issue = 3 | page = 391 | doi = 10.2307/2711370 | jstor = 2711370 }}</ref>

[[File:Eugène Atget, Boulevard de Strasbourg, Corsets, Paris, 1912.jpg|thumbnail|upright|Eugène Atget, Boulevard de Strasbourg, Corsets, Paris, 1912]]

In 1873, [[Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward]] wrote:

{{Blockquote|Burn up the corsets! ... No, nor do you save the whalebones, you will never need whalebones again.  Make a bonfire of the cruel steels that have lorded it over your thorax and abdomens for so many years and heave a sigh of relief, for your emancipation I assure you, from this moment has begun.<ref>{{cite book|last=Phelps |first=Elizabeth |url=https://archive.org/details/whattowear01phelgoog |title=What to Wear |location=Boston |publisher= Osgood |year=1873|page=[https://archive.org/details/whattowear01phelgoog/page/n86 79]}}</ref>}}

Despite those protests, little changed in fashion and undergarments up to 1900. The majority accepted corsets as necessary on some level, and relatively few advocated for it to be abandoned entirely.<ref name="Steele2" /> The primary result of the dress reform movement was the evolution, rather than elimination, of the corset. Because of the public health outcry surrounding corsets and tightlacing, doctors took it upon themselves to become [[corsetiere]]s. Many doctors helped to fit their patients with corsets to avoid the dangers of ill-fitting corsets, and some doctors even designed corsets themselves. [[Roxey Ann Caplin]] became a widely renowned corset maker, enlisting the help of her husband, a physician, to create corsets which she purported to be more respectful of human anatomy.<ref name="Summers-2001" /> Health corsets and "rational corsets" became popular alternatives to the boned corset. They included features such as wool lining,<ref name="Stevenson-2011">{{Cite book |last=Stevenson |first=NJ |title=The Chronology of Fashion |publisher=The Ivy Press |year=2011 |location=London}}</ref> watch springs as boning, elastic paneling, and other features purported to be less detrimental to one's health.

In the 1890s, [[Inès Gaches-Sarraute]] designed the straight-front corset in response to her patients' gynecological issues which were attributed to wearing corsets. The design was intended to reduce pressure on the abdomen and improve overall health. The new S-curve silhouette created by this design quickly caught on among fashion houses in the early 20th century.<ref name="Libes-2023">{{Cite web |last=Libes |first=Kenna |date=5 February 2023 |title=Inès Gâches-Sarraute and the Straight-Front Corset |url=https://fashionhistory.fitnyc.edu/ines-gaches-sarraute-corset/ |access-date=2023-12-27 |website=Fashion History Timeline}}</ref> The style was worn from 1900 to 1908.<ref name="Steele" />{{rp|144}}