Sometimes A Cat Is More Than That

#i dont like bras! some people just dont #the thing is authors overlook really thinking about what that says about their charicter because theyre thinking about corsets less #as a garment and more as a symbol #maybe theyre hypermobile or have slipping rib syndrome #maybe theyre lactose intolerant and spend their lives feeling ill all the time #maybe they have sensory issues or tight clothes make them feel clostrophobic #maybe theyre dysphoric! #maybe its a hand me down that doesnt quite fit #my charicter doesnt like corsets should be the begining of asking what your charicters sensory world is

This is a really good point/set of points. I've gone on and on before about why most women wouldn't have been that bothered by their corsets so I don't want to bother rehashing it, but this is the flipside of that aspect.

you can use not liking corsets to say something about your character! You just have to get past the idea that not liking corsets is a default state of any woman with a brain!

Even if she dislikes them on principle or for proto-feminist reasons, there has to be something about the sensation of them that she finds impeding to her life (which not all women did). Is it about difficulty bending at the waist, and if so, what about her life means that she needs to bend at the waist so badly and hasn't adapted her wardrobe to do so? Is she making and selling a patented corset alternative and therefore has a financial as well as possibly a philosophical stake in the question? Does she wear one of the many alternatives that were on the market in real life? Does she not experience any particular discomfort from corsets, but has a purely principled objection to them? If so, why? What does she think women should do for breast support instead? Or is she very small breasted and doesn't understand the discomfort many women experience in going without support? 

When i wrote the tags i was thinking specifically of personal objections to corsets, but these responces have made me think of political ones too!

As op has discussed elsewhere, if the story is set when tightlacing is in fasion she could be on favour of corsets as bust support but be against this newer form of body shaping, similar to feminists in the 70s who objected to padded bras specifically

She could be passionate about womens athletcisim and reading studies about corset wear resulting in weaker stomach and spine muscles.

There was a feminist clothing movement in the Victorian era that talked about corsets (among other things), and it's commonly referred to as Victorian Dress Reform, or the Rational Dress Movement (either term will get you there).

they were women who were trying to encourage women to dress more out of practicality than by the whims of fashion. they were against tightlacing, and they actually came up with their own corset replacement called 'emancipation waists' (this was not, within the movement universally accepted. as people have said above, opinions on this varied, and some women liked their corsets, but felt tightlacing went to far, and probably women who had heavier busts would not like the emancipation waist, which looks like it offers no real support). there were also liberty bodices, which were a similar garment and related to the movement.

this movement also helped shift views on corsets, to some extent, and doctors became involved in corset fitting and design, to make sure they were less harmful to women. this led to what is known as the 'hygenic' corset (or the health corset or a dozen other names) which is a much less rigidly boned structural garment. instead of boning it would often just cording (cord run through tight channels, it provides some of the structure of boning, and offers a lot more flexibility), maybe with a little boning, and usually didn't have the steel busk that many older corsets did. this was a little more towards the Edwardian era, and I think these were suggested specifically for pregnant women and young girls, in particular, but I won't swear to it.

there were also arguments about whether a corset was ever healthy for a pregnant women, and so on, and every argument under the sun about tightlacing

here's my favorite fun fact about the rational dress movement- you know those red flannel pajamas with the buttflap? that's called a union suit, and it was originally a women's undergarment and arose as part of this fashion movement.

okay but maybe you the rational dress movement's clothes are kind of... ugly.

that's alright! let's go now to our good friend, the Artistic Dress movement! That's right, I've got, not one, but two clothing movements that sought to get away from the rigid fashions of the Victorian era. this was not about feminism and women's independence per se, and more an aesthetic movement (and is also referred to as the Aesthetic Dress movement). However, it's not unrelated to the Dress Reform Movement, there's shared DNA for sure.

And, as the name implies, arose among the artistic set- it's said to have arisen from the Pre-Raphaelites in particular (that's a whole other conversation, we don't have time for that right now, but here's the wiki for them), who chose medieval subjects and put their models in medieval style dress (as interpreted by Victorian artists) which the models, artists' wives and the artists themselves all adapted into more wearable every day clothing. It was popular among artists and gained popularity in intellectual circles, and spread out from there.

For women, the styling of the movement moved towards simple, elegant, flowing but unstructured (or far less structured, anyway) dresses that were meant to evoke an older style of dress. it was a lot about discarding all of the underthings- the bustle and the corset and the crinoline and all that. This movement more argued from an aesthetic sensibility that those underthings ruined the more natural way people should dress, rather than a feminist one- but, as I've said, the movements shared DNA between them, and someone who had agreed with rational dress but thought the Bloomer Suit was ugly (even Amelia Bloomer stopped wearing them, they never really caught on, we didn't even really have time to talk about the Bloomer Suit because I was focused on underwear but here's a link if you want to know more) this would probably be a much more appealing movement.

there were also no set rules for the Aesthetic movement, it was kind of more about what you found pretty, so Aesthetic dresses vary a lot.

this is FAR from comprehensive (even though I've gone on and on and on) but yeah for sure there were people who had all kinds of objections to corsets at the time and they made up a whole alternative fashion movement about it (I am vastly oversimplifying for comedic effect), not once, but twice!

Until Grace slips out a sentence along the lines of "could you give me a little grace here" and Rocky immediately points out he used a word wrong so Grace has to explain that yeah, grace means elegance but it can also mean mercy sometimes too.

A while back I was doing a what if Anna Valerious became a bride of Dracula and took a while to design a dress that would suit her but fit with the style of the other brides. This is what I came out with