Volume 29, Number 3 · March 4, 1982
A Tight Squeeze
By Anne Hollander
Fashion and Fetishism: A Social History of the Corset, Tight-Lacing, and Other Forms of Body-Sculpture in the West
by David Kunzle
Rowman and Littlefield, 359 pp., $27.50
David Kunzle has chosen an awkward moment to write seriously and in detail about corsets and tight-lacing. We are living in a period when, as he allows in his preface, the practice is viewed 'as one of the quintessential Victorian social horrors, the forcing of young females into narrow corsets being regarded as morally and hygienically on a par with the forcing of small boys into narrow chimneys.' In the present feminist atmosphere the historical corset is associated almost entirely with the oppression of women, if it is taken seriously at all. Mention of it most often seems to conjure a vision of idle, neurasthenic ladies fainting on sofas and prevented by their stays from doing useful work or having serious thoughts.
Review, 2690 words
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