Thursday, April 19, 2007
Confining Undergarmets and the women who love them
Anyone who has read/seen Gone with the Wind knows that Scarlett O'Hara had a 16 inch waist. Mami laced her up into her corset and she bragged about her Scarlett's waist all over the county. Scarlett was even somehow able to maintain her girlish figure after she had two children and grew about twelve years older. (The book describes her horror that her waist had ballooned up to 20 inches. I have zero sympathy).
I wonder what a sixteen inch waist looks like today. I am not talking about the jeans waist because good luck finding anything smaller than 23 inches (blue cult makes the smallest). In my opinion, the "waist" measurement on jeans really measures the hips and the measurement that purports to measure the hips just measures the breadth of the butt.
In the ante bellum south it was to notice a woman's waist because her corset pushed any extra skin to her chest and hips, making the middle look smaller. Everyone knows the many flaws in the corset concept (ie: their tendency to cause women to faint, sometimes deform ribcages, decrease lung capacity, not to mention the length of time and amount of effort it took to put them on)
Obviously women do not have to wear corsets today. We don't even have the option. In fact, the closest thing we have to a corset is a girdle -- which I personally would not want to have the hot paramedic pulling me out a car wreck see me in. The other modern substitute are those terribly uncomfortable nylons, called Spanx, which are nothing like the cute little underwear that cheeleaders wear under their skirts. Spanx are life draining torture devices that take at least ten minutes to pull up properly and do not look any more attractive than the aforesaid girdle. (Yet I wear them, I hate them and they humiliate me in front of myself, but I wear them.)
How wonderful for us.
Instead of faking a sixteen inch waist with a corset, sometimes it feels like we are supposed to have a naturally (or surgically) cinched waist. In other words, what Scarlett attained through the strength of a very determined nurse maid, whale bones, and sturdy fabric, the modern woman is expected to attain through shear force of will. We are supposed to look that good naked.
Totally unfair.
As much as I complain about the nefarious spanx whenever I make the mistake of wearing them (ie on Monday), I think I would much prefer to wear binding undergarmets than have to appear as if I wear binding undergarmets, but in reality, not actually wear them. I would like to fake it just a bit, so that I could not fake liking to exercise or feeling better not eating bread.
I do not necessarily advocate returning to an era where a woman must wear a corset in order to be considered decent. However, I am pretty sure that I am not a huge fan of insisting that a woman maintain the shape of a corseted/starved female figure without non-surgical and/or socially acceptable aids.
(Okay, this post is kind of old but I am going to post it anyway)
I wonder what a sixteen inch waist looks like today. I am not talking about the jeans waist because good luck finding anything smaller than 23 inches (blue cult makes the smallest). In my opinion, the "waist" measurement on jeans really measures the hips and the measurement that purports to measure the hips just measures the breadth of the butt.
In the ante bellum south it was to notice a woman's waist because her corset pushed any extra skin to her chest and hips, making the middle look smaller. Everyone knows the many flaws in the corset concept (ie: their tendency to cause women to faint, sometimes deform ribcages, decrease lung capacity, not to mention the length of time and amount of effort it took to put them on)
Obviously women do not have to wear corsets today. We don't even have the option. In fact, the closest thing we have to a corset is a girdle -- which I personally would not want to have the hot paramedic pulling me out a car wreck see me in. The other modern substitute are those terribly uncomfortable nylons, called Spanx, which are nothing like the cute little underwear that cheeleaders wear under their skirts. Spanx are life draining torture devices that take at least ten minutes to pull up properly and do not look any more attractive than the aforesaid girdle. (Yet I wear them, I hate them and they humiliate me in front of myself, but I wear them.)
How wonderful for us.
Instead of faking a sixteen inch waist with a corset, sometimes it feels like we are supposed to have a naturally (or surgically) cinched waist. In other words, what Scarlett attained through the strength of a very determined nurse maid, whale bones, and sturdy fabric, the modern woman is expected to attain through shear force of will. We are supposed to look that good naked.
Totally unfair.
As much as I complain about the nefarious spanx whenever I make the mistake of wearing them (ie on Monday), I think I would much prefer to wear binding undergarmets than have to appear as if I wear binding undergarmets, but in reality, not actually wear them. I would like to fake it just a bit, so that I could not fake liking to exercise or feeling better not eating bread.
I do not necessarily advocate returning to an era where a woman must wear a corset in order to be considered decent. However, I am pretty sure that I am not a huge fan of insisting that a woman maintain the shape of a corseted/starved female figure without non-surgical and/or socially acceptable aids.
(Okay, this post is kind of old but I am going to post it anyway)
E 1:57 PM
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