The Corset in Our Collective Consciousness: Exotic, Erotic, or Other?

Abstract

This chapter looks at clothing as a multiple signifier, with a garment never simply representing itself but also representing the culture within which it exists and the intentions of the woman wearing it. This multiple signification is determined by an interplay between what is shown, what is meant, and what is perceived—so the form of the garment interacts with the wearer and the viewer to create sociocultural meanings, and these meanings are often both intentional and incidental. Gibson begins with a look at what fashion historians say about uses of the corset. The current conversation highlights a certain subset of letters to magazines or journals, which are a combination of reader-titillation and writer-exhibitionism, but also can be read as the way in which women, who were supposed to be nonpublic, participated in the public sphere. The intended readership was male, though both men and women would have read the letters. Additionally, women felt compelled to respond to societal outcry against the corset, detailing a thoroughly unerotic use of the corset. In this subgenre of the letters, the women wrote about everyday wear, and about the support and comfort of a well-fitted corset. They were intent on setting the record straight, and a few of the letters were so detailed as to be downright boring. The intended audience was, again, male—in this case, in order to counteract the imprecations of “bad” corset use, to remove the focus from sexuality and refocus the attention on how normal corseting actually was.