06 August 2010

Corsets for children

Did children really wear them?  Or was this just the marketing hype of the time?

Advertisement found at Fuck Yeah Corsets, via Fuck Yeah Victorians!

6 comments:

  1. Health? I doubt it. Comfort? Definitely not. Perfect fit? Sure, just lace it up till your body fits it.
    I sincerely hope that children weren't made to wear these things. I expect that it would ruin their spine for life.

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  2. I've seen children's "training corsets" in museums before, so apparently they were made to wear them.

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  3. I looked through some of my costume books in hopes I would find a specific evidence. It does appear that children at least wore some sort of training corset, especially the girls. I also found this little tidbit on snopes.com that confirms this:
    http://www.snopes.com/horrors/vanities/ribs.asp
    There's a little blurb about 3/4 of the way down the article regarding children wearing corsets.

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  4. Philadelphia's Mutter Museum has a display of corsets, including children's corsets and an adult female skeleton with corset-molded ribs.

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  5. Many chiropractors advocate spinal manipulations for children for no good reason I can discern, so children's corsets aren't much of a stretch. (pun not intended)

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