Women Grow up in Corsets.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXVI, Issue XXIII, 8 June 1901, Page 1094

Women Grow up in Corsets.

The above assertion has an odd sound, but it is probably true that not ten women out of a hundred have the faintest concep tion of what it would feel like to have a natural unfettered body. Within a few weeks the writer has asked twenty-eight at what age they first put on corsets. Thirteen of them said they could not remember a time when they had not worn them. Their earliest recollection of themselves and their dress included corset waists and corset lacings. One physician estimates that city girls are corseted on an average when seven years old. Another says that inquiries would lead him to put it at nine years. Women grow up in corsets and harmonise with the environments. They put on corsets in the morning Ix-fore they do their shoes, and would not think they could comb their hair without stays. They live in corsets, and would lie thoroughly uncomfortable without them. They haven’t developed muscles to get along with ut support. And yet the corset might l.e made less obtrusive. It used to be the proper thing to wear an underbodice of shape and thickness to hide or disguise the outline of the contrivance of whalebone and steels. Nowadays, nothing of this sort seems to be thought necessary. The corset is as prominent as if paraded outside of the gou n. The fashion plate marks its top and its bottom .‘istinctly, and as for the woman herse f, look at the next one you see riding on a tramcar, and you ean sketch her corset very accurately on the margin of jour newspaper.