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Title: The Corset: A Cultural History by Valerie Steele ISBN: 0-300-09953-3 Publisher: Yale Univ Pr Pub. Date: May, 2003 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 5 (5 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: in depth history
Comment: Love the book!! Its a must have for any corset lover! Detailed history and pictures.
Rating: 5
Summary: corset history
Comment: I found this book to not only be informative about the origin of corsets, but beautifully illustrated with period photographs and poetry concerning corsets throughout the centuries.
I am very pleased with this book!
Melissa Hawes.
Rating: 5
Summary: An Unrestricted History
Comment: Women, rejoice! You have given up your corsets, thrown off the painful cinches which restricted your natural form into a warped male ideal, and refused to comply with yet another imposition of male domination. Except... you haven't. We might think of the corset as being an outdated fashion accessory that has no place in the twenty-first century, but according to Valerie Steele in _The Corset: A Cultural History_ (Yale University Press), the corset is still here after hundreds of years. Her book is a large-format work with plenty of beautiful illustrations (not many that have a direct erotic appeal), but it is also a well-referenced text that gives a broad history of a controversial garment. It isn't just controversial now; a writer in 1731 wrote, "The Stay is part of modern dress that I have an invincible aversion to, as giving a stiffness to the whole frame, which is void of grace and an enemy of beauty." Steele reproduces many funny satirical pictures of tugs-of-war to get the stay cinched up tight (and everyone remembers Scarlett O'Hara's comic fight for a smaller-corseted waist in _Gone with the Wind_). Corsets were blamed for cancer, circulatory diseases, asthma, ugly children, and death. Probably corsets did not distort the body permanently; once undone, everything shifted back to natural positions. Corsets worn for workaday use were probably not very restrictive. It seems that, despite a wide belief to the contrary, fashionable "wasp waisters" did not have their lower ribs surgically removed; there is no written evidence of such a procedure, which would have to be performed without anesthesia and antibiotics.
Corsets have gone in and out of fashion in response to changes in styles, deliberate dress reform, and historical and economic forces. Steele shows that insisting that men were responsible for inflicting corsets on women is simply incorrect, and how the French Revolution, the industrial revolution, and both world wars affected corsetry. A rebound after the Second World War was cut short by the hippies and women's liberation. After that, Steele argues, we have had a run of exercise corsetry, shaping the body by aerobic exercise and weight training, an ideal that still holds sway. Surgical corsetry via liposuction continues the centuries of bringing women's bodies into agreement with the ideal of beauty, whatever that is.
Through all the centuries, corsets have had an erotic and a sadomasochistic pull. Corseting girls, and even boys, was a theme in literature having to do with their boarding schools, although it is doubtful that such corseted academies actually existed except in fevered imaginations. One can count on fashion designers to continue to include corsets on their most showy productions. Such lights as Madonna have taken advantage of the fetishistic potential of corsets, and they seem still to be desired under bridal gowns, reinforcing a sexual link. Steele has a dry sense of humor to enliven a sometimes academic text; she laments, "Admittedly, we know nothing about underwear in the premodern period," or puns "The English especially believed that a straitlaced woman was not loose," and she deadpans her research within a periodical titled _The Corset and Underwear Review_. One can look at the impressive illustrations she has gathered in this book (the often hilarious Victorian advertisements are the best) and see easily that men and women are going to have to change into entirely different creatures before they have corsets no more.
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Title: Fetish Fashion: Undressing the Corset by Larry Utley, Autumn Carey-Adamme ISBN: 1931160066 Publisher: Green Candy Press Pub. Date: 25 March, 2002 List Price(USD): $21.95 |
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Title: Support and Seduction: The History of Corsets and Bras by Beatrice Fontanel ISBN: 0810982080 Publisher: Harry N. Abrams Pub. Date: 01 March, 2001 List Price(USD): $19.98 |
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Title: Fetish: Fashion, Sex, and Power by Valerie Steele ISBN: 0195090446 Publisher: Oxford Press Pub. Date: January, 1996 List Price(USD): $45.00 |
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Title: Lingerie: A Lexicon of Style by Caroline Cox ISBN: 0312271417 Publisher: St. Martin's Press Pub. Date: January, 2001 List Price(USD): $29.95 |
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Title: Corsets and Crinolines by Norah Waugh ISBN: 0878305262 Publisher: Theatre Arts Books Pub. Date: December, 1990 List Price(USD): $32.95 |
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