Why Did Women Wear Corsets for 300 Years?

For three hundred years, women laced themselves into whalebone. Doctors blamed the corset for more than sixty diseases and said it crushed ribs and squeezed livers. Then a historian took a tape measure to the corsets in museums, and most of the horror stories fell apart. Here's the true story of the corset: the 1500s "pair of bodies" and its carved busk, the Catherine de' Medici "13-inch waist" legend that no document backs up, the oldest corset in England, found in 1995 under a wax figure of Elizabeth I in Westminster Abbey, whalebone that was never bone, metal eyelets and steel busks, Empress Elisabeth of Austria's waist, The Lancet and the 60-plus diseases, the Rational Dress Society of 1881, Valerie Steele and her tape measure, Inès Gâches-Sarraute's "healthy" corset, O'Followell's X-rays, Paul Poiret, Dior's New Look, and the twist: who really chose? Chapters 0:00 Laced In 0:41 A Pair of Bodies 1:40 The Wax Queen 2:39 Whalebone 3:44 Everyone 4:26 Sixty Diseases 5:23 The Tape Measure 6:22 The Health Corset 7:13 Unlaced 8:12 Who Chose? Would you have laced in, or joined the Rational Dress Society? Comment below. Next on The Gilded Box: the bra. In 1914, a young woman in New York patented one she had made from two silk handkerchiefs and a ribbon. →    • Why Do Women Wear Bras? It Started With Tw...   Previously: Why Was the Bikini Named After a Nuclear Test? →    • Why Was the Bikini Named After a Nuclear T...   Every episode, in order:    • The Stories Behind Beautiful Things: Every...   Sources: Wikipedia: Metal corset, Corset, Empress Elisabeth of Austria, Rational Dress Society, 1820s in Western fashion; Westminster Abbey, funeral and wax effigies; Sarah A. Bendall, effigy bodies; Dictionary of Dry Goods (Whalebone); Smithsonian National Museum of American History; Collectors Weekly (Valerie Steele); Szentesi, Orvostörténeti Közlemények (2012); Bard Graduate Center (men's corsets); FIT Fashion History (Inès Gâches-Sarraute); Public Domain Review (O'Followell's corset X-rays); History of Royal Women (Empress Elisabeth). Illustrations: AI-generated. Narration: AI voice. No brand logos are shown.