Corsets have been worn throughout the centuries by peasant ladies and queens like. It has only been in the latter half of the nineteenth century that women have scoffed at the positive qualities of the corset and dwelled upon the myths. Stays were actually not unhealthy for the female body if they were fitted correctly and worn in the right way. Opposite of what is popularly accepted as true (that they reduced the waist to the smallest impossible circumference), at one point corsets were measured at no less than twenty-one inches around the middle. Women in the 1940’s even begged for a larger fabric ration for these undergarments which reduced fatigue produced from working long hours in the factory on standing feet.

Today, corsets can do much for the posture and self-esteem: they can allow us to address the health issue of stooping shoulders; these pieces of underclothing can give women who think themselves unfairly “fat” a waist by encouraging the new welcome of slender-bodiced coverings (and the burning of baggy clothing) into a lady’s sense of fashion once again. The corset is an asset to femininity, not the underwear from the underworld as myth suggests, and it can be considered so by the presentation of important, genuine facts from history.

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