How the Victorians Faked Tiny Waists (without fainting!)

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Another factor in survivorship bias, is that it's much easier to reuse a large dress to remake into a smaller size than the reverse. You can totally take your plus size cousin's debutante ball gown and remake it for your size 10 self and have spare fabric to alter the style slightly. Meanwhile your size 4 cousin's dress is too nice to make into aprons or children's clothes, we'll just keep it in storage a bit longer in case.

So one lady I know from a sewing group went to a historical dress display and said "all the waists were so tiny, no wonder they would faint all the time" and I was so overwhelmed with how much I would need to cover in one sentence to quickly disprove that statement I just sat there with my face twitching. So thank you. I now have nice video to share instead of having an anyurism.

It's probably worth mentioning (for completeness) that all the pencil sketches and paintings are what the artist wanted the subject to look like, not always what the subject actually looked like. A hand-made image can always have a fashionable figure!

I like how you pointed out that modern actresses who've had to wear very uncomfortable versions of corsets had legitimate reasons to be uncomfortable, and that they're not just being dramatic. It's because they were done dirty by being made to tight lace to reduce their waist instead of padding up the bust and hips to make the illusion of a tiny waist, which would have been how it was done historically. A+ content as always!! Also I love your ads lmao

So all of us that stuffed our bras with socks in high school were actually being historically accurate 😂

Museum bias is totally a thing too. Museums make a choice of what to keep and what to display as well. A very worn plus sized jacket isn't as displayable as a very good condition but tiny dress.

I cried several times watching this video. I am a naturally round person, and generally have given up on pursuing several of my dreams because of it. You mentioning that a surviving dress had a waist measurement of 37.5 inches blew me away, because that is my waist when wearing a comfortable corset. I rarely see myself in fashion, both modern and historical, but knowing that people like me have always existed, it's so freeing.

I love how Bernadette at this point has the complete impression of a history professor giving an online lesson to their students when lounging in her office chair. Including the fact that history professors are absolutely the type of people who would climb into a pot just to make some (?) point.

I feel like the "movies are full of bodies with limited compressible tissue" aspect has been largely overlooked in the corsets-in-media discourse to date, so THANK YOU for putting it front and center.

I was working as a museum volunteer and dressed in the 1870s style complete with bustle and corset. The worst disagreement I had was with a male staff member who informed me that women did have ribs removed to have smaller waists. Even after pointing out that the medical proceedings of the time would have made such a thing nearly lethal, he continued to insist it was commonly done. I told him if he could show me medical records of the time period that supported his stance I would eat my corset. I still have the corset. 😉

My Grandmother was a 1920's flapper. She naturally had a 20" waist before she wore her corset. She explained that the corset was never to make you smaller but to create a neat line and also because it kept you warm when you wore lightweight silk. As an aside - she was 5' 1" and by her own admission had anorexia and weighed 80lbs.

Re: proportion - I am a fat person with a lot of my fat in the front part of my belly. When I wear a corset a lot of fat gets pushed to the sides which creates a more dramatic hipspring than I naturally have which makes it look like I'm cinching much tighter than I am. So even without being padded out in the bust and hips, it appears that I'm "tightlacing" when I'm really only laced just as tightly as necessary to keep the corset on. So, even if you look at a corseted body in person - no padding, no photographs - you can't tell how tightly it's laced. Only the wearer can judge if the corset is too tight.

I remember how people freaked out about how tiny Lily James's waist looked in the Cinderella dress, and the production folks had to say very loudly and slowly, that her waist wasn't cinched down or altered with CGI, it just looked tiny because of the giant skirt and big poofy bertha.

I was at the Smithsonian National History Museum last month with my family and my mom and aunt were freaking out about how tiny a pair of stays were that they had on display. I tried explaining that 1) those stays could have belonged to a young teenager who hadn't finished growing, 2) they wouldn't have been worn completely laced shut like they were being displayed, and 3) they probably survived in pristine condition because they were so freaking tiny and couldn't be worn by anyone else.

Learning about the survivorship bias with small dresses really helps me. I love buying vintage clothing, and even clothes from the 50's, many many MANY vintage shops have these teeny tiny dresses, and while I'm an XS in modern clothes, I feel inadequate next to these tiny dresses. But knowing that oh, these are really the dresses that got left behind, got left unworn, because they were outliers, reframes it a lot. I do still want a corset, maybe even more now haha. I love snug clothes, it makes me feel secure. And realizing that women have been padding their busts for 100's of years, there really is no shame in it.

Survivorship bias reminds me of a 1950 dress I tried on in an antique shop. I came in hoping to make said dress my prom dress, the clerk told me it was made for "skinny people". (BTW I'm pretty average, 130, 5'6). My mom who is insanely skinny couldn't fit into it. So in conclusion, that dress only survived cause no one can fit in it!

I find it quite amusing as an hourglass shaped autistic woman, that so many actors find corsets tight, uncomfortable, restrictive etc. even to the point one ‘jokes’ about panic attacks… I wear corsets basically everyday because the pressure of a well fitted, made for me (by me) corset helps me to regulate emotions and prevent panic attacks. Thanks to Chanel’s like Bernadette and other (Abby Cox, Nicole Rudolph, Morgan Donner et all) I braved teaching myself how to sew and then sew a corset, something I never thought I could do! They have quite literally changed my life. Bring back the corset!!!❤❤❤ ⌛️

My grand mother, who is now 92, and my grandpa were photographers. Officially, it was HE, the artist. Because, men, sexism, 'but women have only home making skills', etc... But. In reality, he took the photos, and she did the manipulations. She'd even skin tones, touch up textures, etc. And, she'd "contour correct" silhouettes. It's funny that we forgot it now, when it was still used but a few decades ago. It's as if we assume anything before the age of the computer was not capable of such wizardry.

Watching this I realized I’ve quite literally never seen larger women from this time period and I cannot tell you how the entire segment on reduction healed something DEEP in my psyche. Especially realizing I could definitely achieve that “ideal” Victorian body type with my current physical body if I just laced up a properly made corset… I know what I’m getting myself for my birthday…