The Corset

The Roots of Constraint: The Juvenile Corset

According to historian Leigh Summers, “the corset was the first item of juvenile material culture to be sexualized” (63). Indeed, the juvenile corset became a necessary garment for female children and adolescents by the mid nineteenth century in order to properly mold the female body during its crucial development. Thus, the seeds of the ideal Victorian woman, gender division, and control over female sexuality were planted at a very early age.

Yet, up until the middle of the nineteenth century, men and boys wore corsets not only for support, but for fashion purposes as well. Caricatures of the early nineteenth century, however, depict “dandy” men in corsets, indicating that the trend of wearing corsets for men was going out of style. Men who continued to wear corsets, however, wore them for medical purposes. Therefore, as male corsetry was going out of style, the female corset increasingly became a means of distinguishing gender. Juvenile corsets reasserted female gender roles and were used to control the perceived fluidity of the female gender. As early feminists continued to threaten the concept of the traditional female identity, the juvenile corset reinforced gender division and in effect limited “the physical behavior of girl children to that considered appropriate to their gender” (Summers 68). Essentially, Juvenile corsetry reflected gender anxiety in the nineteenth century concerning male fears of female power and independence.

Juvenile corset advertisements also reflect the concept of physical and moral support that girls would gain in wearing corsets. The idea of providing women and young girls with moral support was directly related to the ideal Victorian woman, and the corset was used in order to prevent the perpetuation of “loose” morals. Thus, the corset not only physically prevented young girls from developing loose and unstructured bodies, but the corset also represented the symbolic process of formulating strict and contained moral constitutions of young women. In the corset advertisement shown to the left for an 1880 Ferris’s Good Sense Corset Waists, a “sensible (corseted) mother” is holding up a mirror to her young daughter who is wearing a “Good Sense” corset. The advertisement not only appeals to the health and comfort of the corset, but it also promotes conceptions of female beauty. As the advertisement states (not pictured), “Beautiful children (which is bolded and in large type font) wear Good Sense.” The fact that the mother is showing her daughter’s reflection in the hand mirror indicates a perpetuation of the emphasis on female beauty. This young girl in the advertisement is being taught to value her beauty, a beauty that can only be obtained through the use of a corset.

However, the juvenile corset continually sexualized the young female body and became the topic of much debate and interest within Victorian society. Although girls and young women did not possess breasts or hips, the corset objectified the waist the juvenile and pre-pubescent girl “naturally and generally possese[d]” (Summers 79). In order to maintain the sexual desirability of their daughters, mothers were encouraged to lace their daughters at a young age as evidenced from the advertisement above. Yet, the juvenile corset at the same time was used in many ways as a “chastity belt” in order to suppress what was thought to be a rampant sexual desire among young girls. In fact, the sexual and moral constitutions of girls and young women reached an almost hysterical proportion during the second half of the nineteenth century. Prevention of sexual desire and female masturbation was a major concern for mothers in the protection of their daughters’ moral constitutions. Clitoridectomy was even practiced in order to “cure” masturbation and mollify male fears of female sexuality (Summers 84). The corset, however, became an alternative means to suppress female sexuality other than clitoridectomy. Consequently, the aim of the juvenile corset was paradoxical in that it was used to promote female sexual objectification and admiration while at the same time attempting to contain and suppress female sexuality and sexual desire among girls and pre-pubescent women.