Introduction
People today show their personalities primarily via their fashion sense, setting themselves apart from the general populace. Depending on the individual, trends change rapidly, and ideas are ever-evolving (Barrington 196). Fashion depends on various factors, including clothing selections, body proportions, shoes, accessories, cosmetics, haircuts, lifestyle, and lifestyle choices. Corsets are a popular item that can assist persons in meeting cultural standards for body proportion. While the corset has historically represented both beauty and oppression, modern corsetry has been reclaimed by women who are strong and proud of their sexuality.
Background
Corsets are divisive articles of clothing that may be worn repressively or empoweringly. In the 1600s, women used the gadget to help them face their fears (Love 33). These fears include their dread of illness, fear of sagging bodies, anxiety over a lost figure, stress over seeming shiftless in the most beautiful dress, and fear of a sallow complexion.
The corset has become a status and fashion symbol in higher society. Corsets were once thought to be associated with virtues including respectability, social position, self-control, creative aptitude, beauty, youth, and romantic appeal. As a result, women’s fear of losing their femininity is acknowledged, which encourages them to wear corsets.
Fashion has been shown to play a vital role in defining female identity through contentious undergarments. After the item lost its appeal, Hollywood used the corset to reintroduce images of femininity (Kayne 28). The historical associations were developed by Hollywood, which also showed how the corset represented more than what it already did. Understanding how the corset has been depicted in Hollywood and re-invented into popular fashion demonstrates how its form and application via spatial dispersion of style expresses female servitude and violent sexuality (Kayne 28). Because women continue to use undergarments to express themselves in the modern world, fashion has given them a fresh perspective.
How the Corset Defines Femininity
Throughout the years, several changes have been made to what is considered feminine beauty. The beauty trend revolved around the thought of excess fat before the Greeks popularized the idea of a muscular form (Kim 198). Women wanted to become skeletal to be more feminine as society moved toward modernity.
Women today are adamant about getting big busts, round bottoms, and tiny waists. In other words, today’s corsets are designed to emphasize women’s curves (Barrington 211). The corset has been demonstrated to be the catalyst for developing ideal bodies that women should strive to achieve through fashion design.
In the 1500s, according to Love (33), Catherine de Medici created the corset out of wood and metal, which gradually reduced the size of the human body. Males once wore corsets to conform to social standards regarding their body types (Love 33). They got a large chest and a flat stomach due to the corset. They asserted that women used clothing more frequently. The women could dramatically change their natural shapes and achieve a human silhouette with this attire, which was untypical of female bodies.
Corsets have returned to mainstream fashion but have also been reintroduced into society as a mark of better status and refined taste. Ensuring that women’s clothing conveys the impression of being shy and flirtatious while showing indicators of femininity is the primary emphasis of mainstream fashion for women (Geertsen 16). In other words, they are ensuring that women achieve the snatched waist to let them reclaim sexual expression and feel strong. Fashion designers achieve this goal by using the woman’s midriff to be constricted and nipped in. This is then set off by all the mechanical and visual occult procedures that form the courier’s magic, as shown in Figure 1 below.
Social Importance of Corsets
Women had worn garments for a long time to symbolize their societal position. Since their creation, corsets have been the only clothing that can give women the confidence they need to express themselves in society (Kayne 28). Women mainly wore corsets to signify their social position.
Because of the mobility restrictions caused by corsets, their social standing implied that they could afford to enslave people. However, the garment has been determined to go far beyond its former restrictive usages and negative overtones, as today it has become a popular item in the fashion business and preferred by famous icons worldwide, according to critics who have examined the fashion statement.
Cultural Importance of Corsets
Due to their usage and transformation in Western culture and literature through the politics of the body, corsets have cultural significance in women’s lives. Through the study of corsets, researchers have shown how corsetry contributes to the development of oppressive ideas that cooperate with fashion to define beauty standards and assist in producing the idealized female image as a cultural construct in Western culture (Barrington 194).
Ultimately, it was demonstrated that clothing idealizes and restricts the female body as an object of dominating ideology. After all, the outfit has been deconstructed as a component of subcultural fashion. In conclusion, the acceptance of corsets in society shows that Western patriarchal culture still has a lot to shape and correct when it comes to choosing what is attractive, suitable, and accepted, and what is not.
In the 19th century, according to Love (33), corsets gained popularity, and they have recently had a remarkable resurgence. For many years, the corset was the sole item of clothing that helped women view themselves by achieving a synthetic shape mimicking socially idealized beauty (Love 33). They finally gained a reputation for being the most crucial factor in helping women develop their sense of femininity. By intensifying sexual expressiveness in Hollywood entertainment, actresses like Anna Held and Mae West underlined how corsets were utilized to identify women (Love 33). As a result of the actors demonstrating to other women how the contraption may assist them in discovering their feminine identity and acquiring authority, they essentially let the corset enter Hollywood history.
Analysis
According to Geertsen, corsets were popularized by fashion designer Jean-Paul Gaultier, who observed women’s desire for a sensual, artificially enhanced feminine figure through Parisian fashion (15). Since corsets have been used for millennia to help women convey their strength, Jean decided to cater to their needs (Geertsen 15). Consequently, Jean-Paul Gaultier was compelled to rethink corsets. The corset tops became his best-sellers due to the redesign’s popularity. Jean wanted to use lace in his corset design. He thinks lace makes women more sensual and romantic, which would enable them to express themselves.
Conclusion
Corsets were revived in contemporary culture by fashion designer Jean-Paul Gautier, who changed the fabric and reconstructed the item to make it more wearable for daily activities. The corset tops encouraged women to be more open to exhibiting their sexuality after the remake reached the market. The woman was able to feel shapely and submissive as a woman because of Jean-Paul Gautier’s solid and creative abilities.
In light of this, corsets have evolved into a form of female imprisonment for women since they provided them with the social control they craved. In conclusion, there will always be a sexual appeal to the corset. Additionally, corsets idealize, contour, aggrandize, and exalt the feminine figure. They have evolved through time from a means of restraint to a symbol of feminine identity, from lingerie to armor.
Works Cited
Barrington, Mandy. Stays and Corsets. Volume 2: Historical Patterns Translated for the Modern Body.5th ed, Routledge, 2019, p.274.
Geertsen, Lauren. “The Invisible Corset.” Break Free from Beauty Culture and Embrace Your Radiant Self-True. Sound True, 2021, p.240.
Kayne, Andrea. Kicking Ass in a Corset: Jane Austen’s 6 Principles for Living and Leading from the Inside Out. University Of Iowa Press, 2021, pp.22-85. Web.
Kim, Eun-Sung. “The Material Culture of Korean Social Movements.” Journal of Material Culture, vol. 22, no. 2. 2017, pp. 194–215. Web.
Love, Suzi. Corsets 1900s History Notes Book 21. Suzi Love, 2021 p.77.