Unbearable pressure: corsets, medicine, and advertising in the making of the white female body in England, 1850-1900

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to examine the ways in which language and material culture controlled women’s bodies in such a way as to see white, British women of most socio-economic classes discipline themselves into buying and wearing corsets. I was curious to examine why white British women in the nineteenth-century wore corsets. I was especially interested in the ways in which advertisements and medical discourse influenced this. Through examination of advertisements in the British magazine, Woman, as well as numerous articles in The British Medical Journal it is possible to discern some of this information. This study concludes by calling to light the legacy left by corsets on twenty-first century women.