Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society - Corsets

Episode Date: May 31, 2022

Have you ever been told you’re bringing women’s rights back one-hundred years because of what you’re wearing?The guest on Betwixt the Sheets today has. And it was a corset.Dr Alanna McKnight has dedicated her career to researching the social and cultural history of corsets, and to challenging the idea that corsets were imposed on women as a tool of patriarchal control.Find out why people started wearing corsets, whether men ever wore corsets, what were they made of, and how they’ve paved the way for shape wear like Spanx and waist-trainers.Find out more about Alanna’s work here, and read her article on Kim Kardashian’s Met Gala corset here.*WARNING this episode includes some fruity language*Produced by Charlotte Long and Sophie Gee. Mixed by Seyi Adaobi.Betwixt the Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society. A podcast by History Hit.This episode includes music by Epidemic Sound and an archive clip from the Public Health Film Goes to War from the National Library of Medicine 1945. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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What do you think of when you think of a... corset? Do you think of tit-crushing, rib-ruchering, manacles of female oppression? But what if you're wrong? What if we're all wrong? What if the corset isn't that at all? And has been much maligned throughout history by snooty doctors and men trying to make fun of women for wanting to look nice? Because that is a new narrative that's emerging. When did people start to wear corsets? Who wore corsets? Did men wear What were they made of? And for goodness sake, what does Kim Kardashian have to do with any of this? Well, let's get betwixt the sheets to find out. What do you look for a man?

Oh, money, of course. You're supposed to rise when an adult speaks to you. I make perfect copies of whatever my boss needs by just turning a knob and pushing the funny. Yes, social courtesy does make a difference. Goodness, for beautiful time, goodness has nothing to do with it, Derry. I'm Kate Lister and you're listening to Betwixt the Sheets, The History of Sex, Scandal in Society. Have you ever worn an item of clothing that's prompted someone to come up to you and inform you that you are setting women's rights back by 100 years? Well, my guest today has, and lo and behold, it was a corset.

And this sparked off a whole new career researching the social and cultural implications of the corset, and to challenge the idea that corsets were imposed on women as tools of patriarchal. control. Dr. Alana McKnight is a historian and corset enthusiast with a PhD in communications and culture from Toronto Metropolitan University and she is here to help us debunk some of the misconceptions around corsetry and tell us the truth. Where did corsets come from? Who wore them? And how did they pave the way for modern-day shapewear like spanks and waist trainers? And because it would be rude not to, I want to know what it was like as a fashion historian to watch Kim Kardashian sachet down the Met Gala red carpet in Marilyn Monroe's actual dress. And I'll give you a clue. It wasn't well received. Hello and a huge welcome

to fashion historian Dr. Alana McKnight. Hello and thank you for joining me between the sheets. Hello, thank you so much for having me. I'm excited. I'm thrilled to have you here and the reason I'm so excited to have you here is you helped me out of a Twitter spad a couple of years ago. This was my first introduction slash bitch slap to corset history because I had put together a Twitter thread where I said of course it's really bad. They're really damaging that they cracked ribs. They did all this stuff. And very swiftly, very swiftly, I was informed that was not the case. And you. Yeah. It's a touchy subject. Wow, that was a trigger point. But I mean, I get that because if you're passionate about something and people keep misrepresenting it, you're going to be passionate. But you very

kindly messaged me and sent me links and to your work and to, there's a whole revision going on around the history of courses, including historians like myself, have that they were damaging and dangerous and suffocating is not true. Yeah, yeah. It's very long. held belief that this part of everyday life of women for hundreds of years was damaging and difficult. It's sort of assuming that women were stupid for that long to dress uncomfortably for that long. And I came into it sideways through wearing corsets as a teenager. And I didn't know this history until I was told that I'm bringing women's rights back 100 years by wearing corsets and that's when I started wondering what the history is what is this story and you know it's

been 20 years later and here I am fighting the good fight oh my goodness so who the hell told you that you were bringing women's rights back 100 who said that yeah this is my origin story as all good stories begin I was a teenage goth kid in the 90s and I was at a punk show at a bowling alley in the suburb I lived in and I was wearing a corset and my boyfriend's PVC pants and this friend of mine came up to me and was like, you're being a bad feminist and I'm like, oh, how is what I'm wearing affecting women's history? Wow. And it is a really, like when you think about it, and I've spent a lot of time thinking about this, I definitely have you, is the corset is emblematic of women throughout history, a very

particular type of woman. It's become like a byword, hasn't it, for women being oppressed? And we all still have this idea that they were hideous tools of oppression of the patriarchy. Yeah, absolutely. And I've noticed that it's in particular Victorian corsets. So like the late 19th century, you know, I've been in museums and I always take my headphones out and listen to the people around me at museums. And they'll complement all the other dresses and then they'll come to a Victorian corset and be like, oh, those poor women. And they'll like walk away on their six and shills and their skin tight jeans. And it's so true. I'm just sat here in like a pair of spanks going, oh, God, it's awful tools of the oppression patriarchy.

But they didn't start in the 19th century, did they? Corsets are much earlier than that. Yeah. So the theory is that it started with the Assyrians. You know, there's sculptures of women, snake goddesses with these tiny cinched wastes. But in terms of modern corsetry, we're looking at the 16th century. There's an excellent historian of early modern shapeware named Sarah Bendall. She just released a book called Shaping Femininity about that specific period.

And yeah, they've changed shapes. The area of compression has changed. The shapes have changed. I argue that corsets have, even in the 20th century, never went away. The materials changed and the site of compression changed. But yeah, it's a very long history that we're still part of. We're still working through it. I mean, I think we might call it like shapewear now, but it's basically doing the same thing, isn't it?

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And, you know, in the 1920s, the idea is that people stopped wearing corsets in the 1920s. But to achieve the garcin shape, the straight up and down shape, not everyone had that. So there were sort of breast binders and hip binders. And then you get the Dior New Look, which there's a British Pathay video that shows a new look model getting dressed. And it's the most extreme corset I've ever seen. And this is the 1940s.

Wow. And men wore corsets, didn't they, when they were the earliest ones? Mm-hmm, yeah. We're not sure how popular they were, but there are advertisements. And I found in the course of my research an article from the Toronto Star from 1905 advising men how to wear corsets and that, you know, it's not a feminine thing. Don't worry, guys. It's not feminine. It'll help you bring back your masculine figure. And it's really interesting within the Canadian context, too, because there's this idea of the Canadian man being, you know, the lumberjack, the fur trapper, the front. tearsmen. And by the turn of the 20th century, it's all blue collar and they've lost that masculinity. So corsets can hold in your stomach and push out your chest and make you this strong, firm. You know, the language used in the advertisements is like hard and straight and erect and it's very phallic. And yeah, it's this article from the Toronto Star from 1905 advises men, how to wear corsets, where to buy men's corsets, that it's not a lady's thing. It's not just for women.

men can wear corsets too. And we forget that men wore corsets because the language around them changed. So they started being called belts and trusses. So every now and then, you know, there's even a quote from the cartoon Futurama where the professor talks about getting his evening truss. So that's him putting on a corset. A corset, right? Yeah.

I think one of the reasons why this story that corsets dislodged ribs, that they crushed internal organs, that women fainted within five minutes and couldn't. breathe. I think one of the reasons why this has become so pervasive is because, and I'll explain what I mean, there's a lot of evidence for it. It's not like, there are other historical myths where it's just kind of like, well, that's just obviously nonsense. That just never ever happened. But like, you know, they do the rounds occasionally. But the corsets being damaging, this isn't like an internet thing that somebody just started blogging about and then it took off.

There's actual sources from the 19th century of doctors writing endlessly about how, awful they are, how they crush women. So what was going on there? Why were they writing this stuff? Well, it was, I should say, largely male doctors. There's actually one male doctor who referred to them as also being palpably ugly, as though that's a medical diagnosis. It's all stems from kind of a eugenics point of view. There was a theory that in the late 19th century, there was a decline in birth rate. So courses were pointed at as one of these causes. And there was a fear that women wearing corsets would lower the birth rate of specifically the white middle class. One doctor actually said that it would leave propagation to the coarse but healthy lower class,

as though the 19th century lower class was healthy. Yeah, so it's very much based in this eugenics point of view where women should remove their corsets, stay at home, have many babies. and they also said that corsets took, and fashion in general, not just corsets, but the dress of the period as well, in general, was too complicated and distracted women from improving their brains and taking care of their families. And, you know, it was this women's place to be kind of the natural woman. It's an interesting shift, isn't it? They suddenly, they're singled out, along with other items, actually, about like irrational, silly dress that silly women are wearing. because they're silly and they just want to look pretty

and that's what they're obsessed with and it's really bad for your health and it's just silliness. There's like a shift in the 19th century to that. Yeah. There's also fake news, if you'll excuse the term, was seriously a thing in the 19th century. I found one article that was published widely. I found it in the Toronto Star,

but it was also republished in England and it came out of Chicago about the first surgery on a malfunctioning pylorus sphincter, which is an opening between the intestines and the stomach. And the article said that it was because of tightlacing a corset. So if you just read that and carried on with your life, you'd think, oh, geez, that's horrifying. Maybe I should stop wearing my corset. I'm going to tell my wife to stop wearing her corset.

But the next week, there was a follow-up where the doctor said, no, I never said this. Now my name is attached to this claim that's gotten far and wide around the world. and I never said it was due to tight-lacing, and I'm sure the gentleman who I operated on would be horrified to hear this as well. So not only wasn't it a woman who was tight-lacing who caused this problem, it wasn't because of a corset at all,

but this was the news. And if you didn't catch the follow-up article, you would just left thinking that, of course, it's going to rupture your internal logins. And I've found articles, like, not just in newspapers, but in the Lancet, there were like medical people writing in medical journals about how horrendously dangerous these corsets were. Yeah, it's largely about trying to control women's bodies.

So it's the opposite of what we think, right? It's removing women's agency in dress. So it would be the equivalent of, you know, the Lancet today writing about the dangers of, you know, breast implants, which granted those do have dangers or, you know, some other cosmetic procedure that is perfectly safe. safe, but there's some small portion. You know, there's always risk with everything. You know, there's risk with walking down the street. There's no guarantee that you're not going to get hit by a bus. So it's just, there are risks to everything, but a lot of the corset claims are wildly overemphasized. And we also have to keep in mind the nature of Victorian medicine. No, it wasn't

exactly where we are today. No, no, it is very much, in many areas, driven by cultural attitudes and misogyny. Yes, absolutely. Yeah. And especially women's health in the 19th century. Especially women's health. So that's where we start to get the sort of the demonization of the corset as women being silly. And it almost uses a way to kind of make women look ridiculous. That if all these clever men are saying that it's so bad for your health and you're still wearing it, then you must be ridiculous. Yeah, exactly. And the laundry list of illnesses that they claimed corsets caused ranged from prolapsed uterus to stupidity.

Just put your corset on and suddenly you're just stupid. Because it just makes sense like when you start to unpack it, and especially like when you said, well, women just wouldn't have worn something for 300 years that they couldn't breathe in. That makes perfect sense. But what were the corsets made of? Because I've heard of whalebone corsets,

but what were they made off? Yeah. So originally in the 16th century to around the 18th century, they used reeds or wood or whalebone. and by the mid-19th century, the whaling industry started to decline, largely because the whales stopped being around. They just were hunted to extinction, and it was incredibly dangerous. So with the changes in technology, they developed steel bones, and those were popular for a long time.

And around the 1870s, boning innovations came into a resurgence, and they started being made out of other plant materials. Celluloid, their popular celluloid boning, turkey quills, there was a company, called feather bone where they wove the quills from turkey feathers together as boning. So there was a broad range of boning alternatives. There is a shift, at least I think there is, you might tell me that I'm talking complete nonsense, but there's a shift in the narrative from just wearing a closet to tight lacing, which seems to be the thing that's picked up on tight lacing. What is that exactly?

I mean, it's tight lacing, but just explain what the... So there is absolutely a massive difference between the regular practice of corset wearing and tight lacing. So your average person would wear a corset as primarily it started as support for the breasts and to provide a nice shape for the dress. So it would be like wearing a bronze bank. Tight lacing is an extreme version of corset wearing, which can be compared to a body modification. It takes years of training and dedication, very custom, specially made corsets to whittle down. I compare it to having your ears pierced. Most people have their ears pierced today, but not everyone has them. stretched into gauges. So it's not as common or popular as people think, but it definitely did happen and being proven that it's fine, there have been x-rays of modern tight-lacers and their

organs, and the human body is incredibly malleable. The danger comes if you try to tight-laced too quickly, if you don't train your body down. Okay, because I was even reading an article recently about the actors in Bridgeton, I don't know if you're aware of Bridgeton, like a period drama, and some of the actresses in it were saying that they'd nearly passed out because the corsets were laced up that tightly. The funny thing is they're wearing regency corsets, which are the sports bra of historic underwear. There's no reason that they should be tight lacing at all in a regency corset. The primary function of those was absolutely to lift the breasts. So that, I think, is down to bad costuming.

And I actually did make a corset once for a film. And I didn't take the measurements. I was given a set of measurements from their costume department. And when I went for a fitting with the actress, she wasn't there. So I have no idea if this corset fit her at all. So this is how the film industry often does things. But I've heard that their corsets were made by Mr. Pearl, who is like the high fashion corset maker. You know, he's collaborated with Mugler and, you know, Dita Vantes is a big fan of his.

So for them to have uncomfortable corsets, it makes no sense to me. But it sells copies. That's, or I guess in the modern parlance, it gives them clicks. I mean, do you think that it might be like a kind of like a self-fulfilling prophecies? The myth of the corset being tight-laced at the point you can't breathe is so pervasive that people thought that that's what they should be replicating. Mm-hmm, yeah, and, you know, it's a far better story than breaking news. Woman is comfortable in her dress.

Yeah, that's a shit story. No one's going to be interested in that story. Corsets are fine. And this is why it's been so pervasive is because this idea of the damsel who needs to be saved from her clothing. it's a good story. It's sexy, it sells. It's a good story, isn't it? Yeah.

I'll be back in a moment to talk more corsets with Alana after this short break. So how do you go about disproving this then? Because given that there is scientific, I say scientific in inverted commas, but there's articles in scientific journals and everything, and how do you go about proving that actually corsets weren't that damaging? How do you do that? I've been researching them for years at this point, So I started my first degree in costume studies in 2001 and sort of went from there four degrees later.

I have a PhD in it. And my argument is that corsets are a site of feminist agency. So I've looked at advertisements to see what sizes were available. I've read fashion advice articles. I've realized that women owned the corset factories. They worked in them. They sold the corsets. They bought them.

The people who were the loudest people against corsets were men and dress reformers. And just the fact that you couldn't buy the tiny corsets that they claimed people were wearing off the rack. You know, at least in Toronto, you would have to have them specially made. It's circumstantial evidence, I guess, at this point. But it just piles up. When you actually start to break it down, it is quite circumstantial. I mean, like you said, they wouldn't wear it if they couldn't breathe and couldn't walk. for 300-odd years.

There are people at the moment doing kind of experimental history where they are wearing corsets and just kind of cracking on with stuff. Yeah, and there were also different types of corsets, right? It's not just a static garment. They changed shapes, they changed materials. There were corsets I was actually spent last night

with some patents for elasticated corsets with elastic panels in the 1890s. And you have cycling corsets, You have corsets for white collar women who are working in offices so that they're comfortable all day at their desks. You have swim corsets, pregnancy corsets, yep. And people are horrified by pregnancy corsets. They're just like, oh my God, woman corseted while pregnant. But when you see them, the shape of them actually is to support the belly from underneath.

So it's not a compression. It's a support. A support, which actually might, you know, if you've spoken to anyone who carried a baby, it might actually be nice to have a bit of, you know, help. with that. I have a friend who's a corset maker who has two children and she said absolutely like that support is spectacular. See that's incredible. Actually these are garments that have really helped women out and been beneficial and these are the ones that demonise. You mentioned there about the rational dress reform society because it wasn't just doctors just dismissing silly women

but the corset became emblematic with emerging feminist movements who campaigned for quote unquote rational dress. And the corset it became like you experienced, I suppose, it's kind of bad feminist. If you're wearing one, it's bad. It's because you tell us a little bit about the rational dress society, which sounds like a right laugh. Yeah, there was a movement, you know, starting in the 1850s and carrying into the 20th century to reform women's dress. And there are various branches. There were some were concerned with the types of materials, so only wearing wool, having no pressure on the shoulders, having no pressure on the waist, having shorter dresses to not bring gross stuff from outside,

inside, which that makes sense, because Victorian streets were yucky. We'll give them that one, yeah. Yeah, we'll give them that one, as well as, you know, dyes, there were some nasty dyes used in the 19th century as well. And they had some great talking points, and I will fully admit that there are people who just do not want to wear corsets. They don't find them comfortable, and that's absolutely fine. And that was their point.

If we don't wear corsets, women can do more and be more active and be, you know, smarter since, of course, it's caused stupidity. And this actually led to a whole range of health corsets. So people started advertising health wastes and hygiene wastes. And they were less tight because, again, you know, you need the bust support. Less boned. They had cording instead of boning. And it was an alternative to women who didn't want to. stop wearing corsets because not everyone had that luxury to not dress to the status quo.

You want to dress to this artorial norm. And also like, you know, you've got to think about boobs in this because like the wonder bra, the support bra, the sports bra were a long time coming. And if you are blessed with an ample bosom, any woman with giant knockers will tell you pretty quickly that it's not as much fun as you think it's going to be. Yeah. Yeah. And that the primary function was to support the breast. support the boobs, right? Yeah. And eventually the focus shifted from the bust to kind of the waist and hips. So at the first decade of the 20th century, you sort of get this from below the bust down to the hips.

And then you get different kinds of bust support happening then. And I love what you were saying about the course that is still very much with us. It absolutely is. And I think that we're kind of entering into a similar contested areas. with the subject of waste training, which you see on Instagram. And that seems to have quite similar narratives swirling around it than it did in the 19th century. Yeah. What's your take on that?

Yeah, the kind of Kardashian-approved late text waste trainers, you know, wear them at the gym and you'll lose weight. They're a bit of a snake oil. If you're at the gym, you're going to be working out and losing weight and you're going to see results. That is an excellent point. Of course, yes, you're quite right. And, you know, you can't overeat. And of course, it necessarily can eat, but your stomach can't expand. So you can't overeat. You can't drink carbonated beverages necessarily. So if you're wearing them for a weight loss purpose, it already, just by nature of what it is, limits over eating and bad consumption habits. And they're encouraging wearing it at the gym. So yeah, you're going to start seeing this change. But to really change your body, you need to have a proper tight lace and corset and take years to practice. And while on the subject of Kim Kardashian, she wore that Muglier dress to the 2019 Met Gala, the one with the impossibly tiny waist, and that was corseted. And I didn't realize that until I saw the little footage of her getting ready backstage and everything. Yeah, that was a Mr. Pearl Corset. Was it? Oh, yes, you said. That's, yeah, tell me about your take on that outfit and on the corset.

Yeah, so this actually is an interesting point too, because she is quite diminutive. She's, I think, five. foot three and has very wide hips and large breasts. And this is a very 19th century thing is to create an optical illusion with your body. So in the 1890s, they'd have massive sleeves and padded hips and the waist looks smaller. And Kim Kardashian sort of took that and, you know, took it to an extreme. And I think she likes to play up the media. So, you know, saying that she couldn't sit down or she couldn't pee in it and all of these things. It's she's saying these things to get media attention and people will talk about her.

But yeah, I think the dress was spectacular. I mean, I wrote a whole article on it. It was the most incredible. And I think what blew my mind about it was the fabric that had been used on it. It just looked see-through. Like I didn't even realize she had a corset on. I don't think anybody did until everyone was just like, oh my God, like him, that's like her tiny, tiny waist.

I always say if something looks impossibly small, if somebody's waist looks impossibly small, it's probably impossible. And people point to photographs from the 19th century and early 20th century of people in corsets saying, oh my God, look how small her waist is. And we forget that they were master Photoshoppers in the 19th century. And you can retouch photos and make the waist look smaller. So I found that pictures where people go, oh, my God, that's an impossibly small waist. Yeah, there's a mysterious black shadow circle just at her waist, just there, nowhere else.

So, you know, it's been retouched. I mean, even if Kim Kardashian was telling the truth that she couldn't bend over and she couldn't pee and she couldn't walk in it, I think that that's probably an argument that supports the fact that people weren't doing that on a regular basis because she couldn't function. It's like nobody's going to do that. Yeah, and then on the other side of the spectrum, you have people like Ethel Granger who had the world record for smallest waste at 13 inches. 13 inches? Yeah, she died in 1982 and she was very famous tightly.

and she worked all day with her 13-inch waist. She rode her bike, but she had children, but she spent years. I think she started waist training in the 1920s, so she was a very young woman, and she kept going and training down, and so it is possible your body needs to get used to it. It's like anything, right? It's like I can't walk in high heels because I've never gotten used to it. 13 inches.

I don't think that my wrist is 13 inches. That's wild. My neck is 13 inches. While you're here, and because this is a hot topic at the moment, and because you're a fashion historian and because we're talking about her, I'm going to veer off corsage just slightly. What did you think about Kim Kardashian wearing the Marilyn dress to this year's Met Gala? Can I swear?

Is that... Oh, please, help yourself. Fucking travesty. The people at Ripley's who allowed her to borrow that dress have to review their ethics. I don't think there's a fashion historian on the planet who didn't bang their head against the wall repeatedly when they saw that. I mean, when I first heard that she was going to do it, my first reaction was like, oh my God, the Marilynne dress.

And I was quite excited to see it. And then I actually sat with it and thought with it. And from a historian's point of view, like that's what you tell us about the ethics of fashion historian and why that was such a travesty. I mean, this is an iconic dress that was made for her. It was sewn onto her at the event that she sang happy birthday to President Kennedy. so that is a cultural moment.

I'm not even American in that moment is imprinted in my brain. I'm in the UK and that's a moment. Yeah, exactly. And so it was made to fit her exactly. She didn't wear underwear underneath it so that it created this perfect new delusion. The fabric was meant to match her skin tone. And it's a moment.

And then Kim Kardashian comes along and doesn't fit into it. So the fabric is strained. The fabric is something called French souffle and is not made anymore. So it's literally irons. replaceable. You can't even repair it with the same fabric. And having old textiles in light is bad for it. She's probably sweating. She's probably wearing perfume. She's covered in makeup. And having that laundered afterwards is going to be an expensive... You can't bung that in on a boil wash coming. Exactly. And she only wore it for like a brief second. I think she changed out of it immediately after

being on the red carpet. And just for the ego boost. And it sets a horrible precedent. I've seen conservators at museums. Actually, I follow a conservator from the Met on Twitter and she said that she has fought for years against even Anna Winterer saying, can you let so and so borrow this historic dress for the event? And they're like, no, no, they can't. But this sets up a precedent of, well, Kim Kardashian did it. Why can't I borrow something? Yeah. Like, and even if you managed to push past the fact that, well, she will have never, I know Kim Kardashian doesn't sweat, she glowed. She'll have glowed in it, right? Quite a lot. And she wore it and it had been perfume Even if you managed to get past the fact that there would have been damaged to it,

from a historical point of view, from a conservative conservation point of view, the last person to wear that dress was Marilyn Monroe when she sung happy birthday to the president. Yeah. She was the last person to wear it. And now the last person to wear it is Kim Kardashian. Yeah. She's taken this legacy away from this other iconic woman, you know. And I know that she's obsessed with Marilyn Monroe. And if you want to cosplay as a celebrity, fine, you know, she had a reproduction made. why couldn't she have just worn the reproduction?

I know. And there was a photo of her later on wearing another Marilyn dress, wasn't there? Yes. Yeah, there was for the after party. It's... See the rage in you. This is like a real emotional thing.

And you're not the only person, actually, that I've seen this from. And if anyone's on fashion history, TikTok or social media, the rage is... Yeah. Because this is a real no-no. This is like, I can't just drop an email to the British Museum

and ask if I'd be all right to wear the Sutton Who helmet because I've got to go... to play bingo tonight. It's like you just don't do that. And I've seen so many comments on social media people being like, well, it's just a dress. If it was just a dress, then why was she wearing it? If it's just a dress. Exactly. And this is a problem that fashion historians have of, well, it's just fashion. People's inability to see fashion as artifacts and having cultural importance because it's just a dress. The general population doesn't see fashion history as being a legitimate form of history.

But that dress represents so much. It's not just a historic item. And if you're a Marilyn fan, as you know, there's a particularly dark time in her life when she wore that, and that it was custom. And it is, it's iconic, you know? Yeah. But what?

But on my, did Marilyn wear corsets? You know, everybody did in the 50s. Okay. That's just the shapeware of the 50s was very corset-like. You know, they were called waist cinchers or girdles. And, you know, you see someone like Malia Nermi, Van Perala, who she absolutely did. Oh, of course. And this is also when it became kind of solidified as a fetish item, the corset,

in the 1950s with people like Betty Page. So people in popular fashion were wearing waist-insures and girdles. The fetish scene was wearing corsets. Corsets. And they still have that kind of quite punky goth fetish. I probably wouldn't pop down the supermarket just in a corset without raising a few eyebrows because it's not an item that people expect to see. Yeah.

Well, again, that would be the type of. tight lacing. You could wear a corset under your clothing and nobody's going to notice. Good point. See, I'm crap at wearing corsets. That's basically the problem here. So I think that you have smashed the myth of the rib-crushing corset. And now anyone else who's listening can join Corset TikTok and social media. If anyone says that it does and you can also jump in there and go, no, no, no, no. I heard Dr. Alana McKnight. But the last question that I would like to ask you, And I know that we have just explained why it's a travesty to wear historical garments and that you shouldn't do it. It's terrible to do it.

But if you could, if you were allowed as a fashion historian to try on one item of historical clothing. And I wouldn't tell anybody, but what item would you go for? Oh, there's the first historic dress that I ever fell in love with is a Charles Worth, 1901, black and white, kind of art nouveau swirly number. I would absolutely wear that. And just to be completely transparent, I have worn in 1880s. corset. I got yelled at. I was in my first undergrad in costume studies. The professor came into the room while they were lacing me into it and they lost their mind. So I have not done that since. You didn't wear it to the Met Gala. I didn't, no. It was in a back room in Halifax. Yeah, I would

wear the Charles Worth. And anyone who knows dress history knows exactly the dress I'm talking about. I'm going to go and look it up. If anybody would like to find out more about you and your work, Alana, where can they find you? I'm on Twitter atelana. MCK have just recently started an Instagram account since I have a book that will be released in the next couple of years. So that's Dr.dnight.machian on Instagram. And I think that's largely where you can find me. That's amazing. And for the people that did the fashion on Bridgeton, this is where you can find Alana to get a bit more detail on what you're doing. Alana, thank you so much for joining me. You have been a revelation. Thank you. And I would like to just

conclude by saying that no one has ever had a rib removed for the sake of course. What a great place. That's never happened. That's never happened. Hopefully it never will. Thank you so much for sharing your knowledge. Thank you so much for having me. Thanks for listening to today's podcast. And thank you so much to my guest, Dr. Alana McKnight, for her time today.

How great was she? If you've enjoyed our podcast, please don't forget to like, review and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. We've got episodes on the history of BDSM and Poppers also coming up. This podcast was produced by Charlotte Long and Sophie G. music by Epidemic Sound.