During the Victorian era, the fashion of corsetting was widely spread among British women.
The so-called girdle is through a special clothing, outlining a more perfect body curve, this kind of underwear is mostly tailored according to their own figure.
Some spiral steel bars are placed in the fabric, and then the steel bars behind them are tightened to help women bind their waists and abdomen, so that when wearing a wider skirt, the woman's figure will be more perfect, close to the "X" shape.
After the advent of this kind of clothing, European women mostly wore girdle clothing, at first just to please themselves.
However, over time, all this has changed.
Of course, the method of corsetting did not only appear in the Victorian era, during the Renaissance, the Spanish aristocracy invented a corset called "Basque Inu", which can reflect female sexiness, and later introduced to England.
By the time of Elizabeth I, the girdle was supported by the queen and quickly spread in England, but because the early girdle was more expensive, the girdle existed mostly among noble women.
At this time, European aristocratic women were mostly proud of being able to tie their waist, in order to be able to make their bodies better, in addition to giggling, European aristocratic women also controlled their waist circumference through dieting and even hunger strikes.
Dieting coupled with girdling, European women's waist circumference has indeed changed a lot, and gradually it has become fashionable.
However, this almost perverted aesthetic made some people indignant, and in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, due to the violent impact of neoclassicism, the girdle temporarily left people's vision.
However, after a short departure, the girdle made a comeback, and the requirements for girdle became higher and higher in the Victorian era, Britain and even the whole of Europe.
In the 30s of the 19th century, there was an innovation in tight underwear, and there were metal buttonholes, and the appearance of metal buttonholes made the fabric of the corset no longer easy to be torn by the straps, so that the range of women who could bind themselves was expanded.
Because of the existence of a girdle, women need to keep straight and dignified when they go out.
In the eyes of European noblewomen, it is extremely sad for many people to take off their waists and have extremely loose postures, and they should pay attention to their own image outside.
In order to achieve perfection, some women often skip meals and take fruit belly, and in the long run, women's waists have indeed undergone obvious changes, but women's bodies have also suffered damage, and many women have died of starvation.
In the girdle, not only women die of starvation, but also women die due to the girdle, because they often bind the waist when they go out, there will be a long and deep wound between the two ribs, if there is a very obvious wound, still to over-compress the waist, the girdle may penetrate the ribs, and eventually stab the liver and die.
The reason why the girdle fashion is popular throughout Europe is women's own pursuit of beauty and the pressure exerted by society on women's bodies.
Even if the use of external forces to forcibly reduce the waist circumference, not only will bring discomfort to women, but also may affect women's physical health, but women still insist on waist binding.
According to relevant data, European women spent the most on corsets in the 19th century. The reason why women like to corset their waists so much is related to the following reasons.
First, by corsetting the waist, they can have a more perfect body and become the best of the same sex, which can help them attract more excellent members of the opposite sex.
In the era of women's waist-binding, women who insist on themselves will be ridiculed by others, thinking that they lack awareness of female beauty, and even call these women "tomboys" and "wild girls", in such a society, even if some women do not want to bind their waist, they cannot resist pressure.
There was once a European woman, in order to get the recognition of her classmates, she insisted on binding her waist when she was a student, endured exhaustion, pain and palpitations every day, paper and even fainting, everything she did was to be able to have a slimmer waist, and finally she fulfilled her wish to become the most slender girl in the class.
It was not only recognized by classmates but also praised by boys, and men in the 18th and 19th centuries were fascinated by women's slender waist, and during this period, many of the female figures in paintings had towering breasts, slender waists and flat abdomen.
Because men highly value slender waist, many parents will require their children to tie their waist when they are young, so it seems that waist binding is also a way for women to seek marriage.
Second, chastity is also symbolized in European culture, with Britain being the craziest.
As we all know, Paris is the capital of fashion, and it stands to reason that Parisian women's pursuit of girdles should be the craziest in Europe, but British women are much more crazy than Parisian women.
In traditional British culture, loose clothing symbolizes "loose morality", so the British believe that tight clothing is a sign of female virtue.
Loose clothes represent the decline of morality, and sometimes loose clothes also symbolize sexual liberation, under the influence of this idea, women will wear some tight clothes in order to express their chastity to the public.
In the 18th and 19th centuries and even before, women in Europe did not get real freedom and equality, there was still a certain gap between them and men, and society was extremely strict with women.
Women need to remain stable and dignified at all times in the process of socializing, if women are not willing to tie their waist, it means that they break the rules of etiquette and will be ruthlessly driven out of the social world, and no noble lady wants to be driven out of the social world.
Therefore, in order to show that they abide by social etiquette, they are extremely morally noble and self-disciplined, and women will choose to tie their waist.
Third, the girdle is a symbol of women's social status.
The price of the girdle is more expensive, and the girdle itself originated from the aristocracy, so the girdle is often regarded as a symbol of noble blood, so middle-class women also choose to girdle, they want to gain social recognition in this way.
Of course, because the corset is a recognized rule in European society, ordinary working women will also choose to corset, but the corset they wear is different from that of European aristocratic women, and they will mostly wear a corset called "Japs", which is more loose and flexible than the corset of noble women, suitable for the needs of labor.
European society once said ironically: "A woman with a beautiful figure wears a delicate corset, and a rough and scruffy woman wears a japose." ”
From this point of view, European society mostly judges women by the tights they wear. In this way, women will naturally rely more on tights.
Although most women like to wear a tunic, there are still some women who do not like to wear a tunic, which binds both women's waists and women's thoughts.
Waist binding is the product of male power shaping the female body in a patriarchal society, and the existence of girdle means that there is a certain asymmetry between men and women.
Although men do not restrict women's freedom in dressing and body shape through violence, men use their own advantages to make women realize that men like to be slim, docile, and act consciously according to men's ideas.
A philosopher once commented on this phenomenon: "The woman whom men demand from their most intimate foundation is not a forced slave, but a willing slave... Therefore, they take all means to enslave their minds. ”
Because women are at a disadvantage in power relations, they voluntarily submit to men. Although Europe emphasizes freedom and equality, in real life, men and women are not equal, take Britain as an example.
In the traditional British concept, from the moment a woman enters marriage, it means the end of her civil rights, she loses all individual rights, and her husband becomes "a person", before 1882, married women in Britain did not have private property rights, and it was not until 1882 that married women obtained property rights after the passage of "Married Women's Property Rights".
After 1928, women in Britain enjoyed equal rights to vote and stand for election with men, and many women had to submit to men because of political and economic inequality, and they were willing to dress according to men's aesthetics in order to be able to do what they liked.
Women's waist binding is also a symbol of the different social division of labor between the sexes, under the patriarchal society, men need to go out to work, and women mostly need to be at home after marriage.
In this way, women are more focused on family and men, and they also have free time to dress themselves.
Of course, men also require women to dress up, and in the eyes of men, the appearance and figure of their wives can bring them a great sense of achievement.
Women put their own sense of achievement in other people's social interactions, women who have more free time will participate in various activities, in order to be able to show their slenderness and elegant beauty in activities, women choose to use the waist.
With the prosperity of girdling, more and more people are aware of the great harm of girdling, so many people in the West have begun to oppose girdling. The mainstream voice against girdling is from the medical community, who believes that girdling destroys the natural shape of human beings and is very harmful to women's health.
The strong pressure exerted by the corset will not only destroy the natural physiological shape of the human body, but also squeeze the human chest and abdominal cavity, and when the corset was popular in Europe, many European noblewomen died due to the compression of the chest cavity by the waistband.
In addition to the medical community, many feminists have also come out against corset.
Feminists believe that waist binding is not only a physical hazard for women, but also brings mental oppression to women.
In the late 19th century, as women's enthusiasm for public politics and sports increased, many women realized that corsetting would affect sports and should wear simpler, practical, and healthy clothes.
Of course, the reason why women's thinking will change, in addition to the call of feminists and the development of sports, is also because of the improvement of women's status, and then under the efforts of everyone, after the end of the First World War, European women's waist bound gradually came to an end.
bibliography
[1] LI Baohua,SHANG Hongjuan. The rise and fall of women's tunics and their shape characteristics in the Victorian period[J].Western Leather,2022,44(12):35-37.)
[2] SONG Xuening, LIU Jinyuan. A preliminary study on the phenomenon of female girdling in Victorian England[J].Issues in History Teaching,2017(04):87-93+22+140+126.)
[3] BLASCHYK MATHILDE, ANNE, MARIE. Foot binding and waist binding: Chinese and Western female image cognition from the perspective of body restraint[D].Zhejiang University,2016.)