There can be no doubt, I am afraid, that many of you
wear your gowns much too tight, and in order to do this use
your stiff steel-boned corsets to obtain the small waists which
you think pretty and elegant. Now let me tell you where
lies your first mistake. Nothing is pretty which is unnatu-
ral, and as you well know small waists are not natural to
healthy, well developed women. Your waist, if you would
have a good and graceful figure, must be in proportion to
your height and the breadth of your shonlders, and a waist
of seventeen or eighteen inches upon a girl of average size,
is simply a deformity. Your small waists are obtained, then,
2 2 ON HABITS AND MANNERS.
at a sacrifice of the very grace for which you are seeking,
and that is not the sum of your folly. Do you realize when
you pull in that fatal corset-lacing of yours, what suffering
you are preparing for yourselves ?
You are squeezing in your stomach so that it cannot
digest food ; you are compressing your lungs so that they
cannot receive the air, which is your life ; you are stopping
the action of your busy heart ; you are doing a dozen things
which may ruin your health for life, and which at any rate
are giving you daily headaches, and very probably making
you irritable and unhappy. This is surely a senseless and a
wicked thing — a thing which any honest, God- fearing wo-
man ought to be ashamed to do ; and I assure you that you
must consider it, not as a trifling question of dress, but as a
matter of very great importance to you and to others. For
God has given you, in most cases, healthy, well formed bo-
dies, and the responsibility of injuring them is an awful
weight which must rest now and hereafter upon your own
shoulders.
As to the directly practical side of the question I can
perhaps make some suggestions which may be of use to you.
A waist made ot stout cotton cloth, firmly stitched and
corded, cut low in the neck, with sleeveless armholes, will
take the place of the corset in every respect, while in some
on Habits and manners. 23
particulars it is altogether preferable. It can be made with
a corset steel in front (to be removed when it is washed),
but should contain no other bones or steels. Your own back
bone is your proper and all-sufficient support, and you are
doing your spine and the wonderful nervous system so close-
ly connucted with it, no kindness when you rely upon the
artificial aid of whale bones to produce an erect figure. The
weight of the skirts, which can be made to button on to the
waist I am describing, is thus supported from the shoulder
by the band of the armhole ; there is no drag upon the hips,
no chance to tighten a lacing, no compression between stiff
bones, and none of that awkward and unnatural inflexibility
which comes from the wearing of corsets.
This matter is one which of course must be left to your
own consciences, but once more I ask you to think of it seri-
ously, ard to remember that you can sin against your bodies
as well as against your souls.
Page 8
Presented as published in 1888. Historical recipes may not meet modern food-safety standards. Cook from the modern interpretation, not the original instructions.
AI-modernized reading of the original text
There can be no doubt, I am afraid, that many of you wear your gowns much too tight, and in order to do this use your stiff steel-boned corsets to obtain the small waists which you think pretty and elegant. Now let me tell you where lies your first mistake. Nothing is pretty which is unnatural, and as you well know small waists are not natural to healthy, well developed women. Your waist, if you would have a good and graceful figure, must be in proportion to your height and the breadth of your shoulders, and a waist of seventeen or eighteen inches upon a girl of average size, is simply a deformity. Your small waists are obtained, then,
at a sacrifice of the very grace for which you are seeking, and that is not the sum of your folly. Do you realize when you pull in that fatal corset-lacing of yours, what suffering you are preparing for yourselves ?
You are squeezing in your stomach so that it cannot digest food ; you are compressing your lungs so that they cannot receive the air, which is your life ; you are stopping the action of your busy heart ; you are doing a dozen things which may ruin your health for life, and which at any rate are giving you daily headaches, and very probably making you irritable and unhappy. This is surely a senseless and a wicked thing — a thing which any honest, God- fearing woman ought to be ashamed to do ; and I assure you that you must consider it, not as a trifling question of dress, but as a matter of very great importance to you and to others. For God has given you, in most cases, healthy, well formed bodies, and the responsibility of injuring them is an awful weight which must rest now and hereafter upon your own shoulders.
As to the directly practical side of the question I can perhaps make some suggestions which may be of use to you. A waist made ot stout cotton cloth, firmly stitched and corded, cut low in the neck, with sleeveless armholes, will take the place of the corset in every respect, while in some
on Habits and manners. 23
particulars it is altogether preferable. It can be made with a corset steel in front (to be removed when it is washed), but should contain no other bones or steels. Your own back bone is your proper and all-sufficient support, and you are doing your spine and the wonderful nervous system so closely connected with it, no kindness when you rely upon the artificial aid of whale bones to produce an erect figure. The weight of the skirts, which can be made to button on to the waist I am describing, is thus supported from the shoulder by the band of the armhole ; there is no drag upon the hips, no chance to tighten a lacing, no compression between stiff bones, and none of that awkward and unnatural inflexibility which comes from the wearing of corsets.
This matter is one which of course must be left to your own consciences, but once more I ask you to think of it seriously, ard to remember that you can sin against your bodies as well as against your souls.