I saw your earlier corset discourse and I'd like to add: my great-grandmother was born in 1897. She wore a corset her entire adult life, even after they stopped being 'fashionable'. Doctors told her she should stop wearing them, but she was like "nah" and was in good health until she died at 92 in 1990. She outlived two husbands and an adult child.
Oh that's really interesting!
I've heard stories like that, about young Victwardian women who grew up in a corset-normative world and just. Kept wearing them for the rest of their lives. Some out of habit, some because their abdominal muscles had atrophied a bit (not enough to make them flop over at the waist, as in some pop history myths, but enough to cause moderate pain if they went without an external support for too long while upright). Mostly things posted online by their granddaughters, who are now themselves elderly.
And in many of those cases, yes, the women in question lived long, full, active lives. Shocker.
