History Main / OfCorsetHurts

* Empress Elisabeth of Austria was (in)famous for tight-lacing, to the point that her waist was 40 cm (16 inches) at its smallest, and 18 1/2 –- 19 1/2 inches at the time of her death. Coupled with her sleeping issues and eating disorder, this made her "inhumanly slender" -- she was unusually tall (172 cm or 5'8'') and only weighed 50kg (110 lbs). Ironically, it initially kept her alive after the stabbing with a stiletto knife that eventually caused her death, and it was only after her corset was removed that she bled out.

* The inconvenience and discomfort of corsets were one of the major complaints of the mother and eldest daughter in ''The 1900 House''. See Real Life, below. Similarly, some of the women in ''Frontier House'' refused to wear them after a while (and, in the hot weather, wound up wandering around in their underwear).

* In one segment of an episode of ''Series/OneThousandWaysToDie'', a tango dancer wears a corset to correct his increasingly bulging stomach but winds up breaking one of his ribs and bleeds to death.

* Mary Halliday dropped dead in 1903 for no apparent reason. During her autopsy, it was discovered that two pieces of corset steel had become lodged in her heart.

* Lampshaded in ''LightNovel/HaruhiSuzumiya'' when in chapter 7 of the original light novel (adapted into the sixth episode of the anime and first story arc), Haruhi complains about her PlayboyBunny corset complicating the effects that the summer heat is having on her, but she admits that at least her arms and shoulders are feeling better.

Corsets can be painful. Squeezing four or more inches from your waist in order to get that [[ImpossibleHourglassFigure perfect figure]]? Dear ''god'', that must be torture--however will you be able to breathe? This perception has been carried into fiction: if corsetry is mentioned in a period drama, it is often in the form of a woman's complaint about the pain caused by being squeezed--usually against her will--into the garment.

Corsets can be painful. Squeezing four or more inches from your waist in order to get that [[ImpossibleHourglassFigure perfect figure]]? Dear god, woman, that must be torture--however will you be able to breathe? This perception has been carried into fiction: if corsetry is mentioned in a period drama, it is often in the form of a woman's complaint about the pain caused by being squeezed--usually against her will--into the garment.

** Except there's no actual corset involved. It's implied that Merida is simply in too-tight clothes for the occasion, which her mother doesn't seem to take notice of. Later on when Merida takes over the archery game to win her hand, she is unable to string her bow until she yanks her arms hard enough to rip the seams. No corset!

* Jill Bearup [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCe5Kht9a2U made a video]] about whether or not you could fight in a corset. She found that a (presumably correctly laced and correctly fitted) corset presented no problems, though stated that anyone not used to wearing one may find it uncomfortable.

* ''WesternAnimation/TheCritic''. {{Lampshaded}} by a maid pulling on corset strings, yelling, "Suck it in! Suck it in!", and it's revealed to be Jay Sherman. The corset, however, is put on more like a straitjacket than a corset, with Jay's ''arms'' bound as well. He mutters, "I don't think this is right." The maid scoffs at this, puts a top hat on him, and boots him out of the room.
* ''WesternAnimation/FamilyGuy'' Peter Griffin tried this one to get on a rollercoaster. This causes his organs to rearrange.

* On an episode of ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'', where the family lives in a house set in 1896, on a reality show, Marge in one clip is shown wearing a tight corset, and the camera zooms down to her horribly swollen feet.

* WebVideo/BernadetteBanner averts this in one of her [[https://youtu.be/5QUEf-8BKyE videos]]. One of the corset myths she debunks is that tight lacing wasn’t a common practice, but rather something done only by a very small percentage of women.

* Jill Bearup [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCe5Kht9a2U made a video]] about whether or not you could fight in a corset. She found that a (presumably correctly laced and correctly fitted) corset presented no problems, though stated that anyone not used to wearing one may find it uncomfortable.

* Morgan Donner (fashion historian) averts this in one of her [[https://youtu.be/J0iLJ4TIjto videos]] by wearing a correctly laced and measured to fit corset for a week.

* ''Film/ThePrincess'': Linh makes a joke about how painful a corset is after the princess sheds hers.

* In the 1994 film of ''Film/LittleWomen'', Marmee is prone to rants about how corsets are responsible for womankind's reputation as weak and ill, and when Meg gives in to pressure from her stylish friends, there is the obligatory scene where she is painfully laced into a corset by a strong-armed maid.

* ''WesternAnimation/{{Mulan}}'', during the "Honor to Us All" montage, and she doesn't enjoy it. It wasn't exactly a corset, but a large sash pulled very tight to make her waist smaller. Ironically, the matchmaker berates her for being too skinny to bear children. [[YouCantFightFate Perhaps she was destined to fail and ultimately become China's savior?]]

* Judith Flanders, in her excellent book ''[[http://www.amazon.com/Victorian-House-Judith-Flanders/dp/0007131895/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1311042904&sr=8-3 The Victorian House]]'' (US title ''[[http://www.amazon.com/Inside-Victorian-Home-Portrait-Domestic/dp/0393327639/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1311043292&sr=1-3 Inside the Victorian Home]]''), wrote that "It is difficult to say how tightly {Victorian} women really laced. Large quantities of writing, by both pro- and anti-lacing campaigners, seem to have been written by sexual fetishists, as a sort of soft-core porn... The ''Englishwoman's Domestic Magazine'' correspondents whom we would today guess to be fetishists used words like 'suffering', 'agony', 'delicious', and 'exquisite' to describe the effects of tight lacing, while what appears to be genuine correspondence contained words like 'comfort', 'ease', and 'freedom'."
* In the PBS television series ''[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_1900_House The 1900 House]]'' the women found that corsets made it almost impossible to get the endless housework done. Finally, Joyce discovered a period magazine with an article denouncing corsets as bad for women's health (perhaps written by female physician Alice Bunker Stockham), and they promptly discarded theirs.
* Fashion historian WebVideo/BernadetteBanner averts this in one of her [[https://youtu.be/5QUEf-8BKyE videos]]. One of the corset myths she debunks is that tight lacing wasn’t a common practice, but rather something done only by a very small percentage of women.
* Fashion historian Morgan Donner averts this in one of her [[https://youtu.be/J0iLJ4TIjto videos]] by wearing a correctly laced and measured to fit corset for a week.
* On tennis courts before the First World War. Elizabeth Ryan, who won eventually 30 Grand Slam titles, recalls that at her first tour of England (1914), the ladies’ dressing rooms would have a fire (it was an English summer, after all), above which would be a rail on which the players’ corsets were hung to dry. “It was not a pretty sight”, she said, “as many of them were blood-stained from the wounds they had inflicted”. [[labelnote:Source]]''The Encyclopedia of Tennis'', ed. Max Robertson & Jack Kramer (London; George Allen & Unwin, 1974), p. 239a.[[/labelnote]]
* Lana Parrilla, who plays the Evil Queen on ''Series/OnceUponATime'', said in [[http://www.perthnow.com.au/entertainment/corsets-and-curses-lana-parrilla-on-embracing-her-inner-evil-queen/story-e6frg30c-1226522726296 an interview]] that the corsets in her costume are so tight that she cannot properly swallow food while wearing them and has to be on a liquid diet while filming scenes in them.
* Creator/LucyLawless said that her ''Series/XenaWarriorPrincess'' corset was perfectly fine... after they removed the boning out of it.

* Somewhat related to the above, [=YouTuber=] Jill Bearup [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCe5Kht9a2U made a video]] about whether or not you could fight in a corset. She found that a (presumably correctly laced and correctly fitted) corset presented no problems, though stated that anyone not used to wearing one may find it uncomfortable.
* Corset aficionados of all genders get their corsets custom made to fit their bodies in order to avert this trope. A corset that doesn't fit properly, which is often the case for ones that can be bought off the shelf (and would very much apply to male wearers), can get very painful to wear when tightened to more than a simply snug fit. Also, they tend to not fit the dimensions of the wearer right. Lacing too tightly before the body is used to it is also painful, and tight lacing is a process that is supposed to take ''weeks'' so that the body can gradually adapt to it. A corset that is properly fitted to the body, even when pulled tight, isn't supposed to hurt and if it does, then the one wearing it should loosen the lacing. The body needs time to adapt to it. In most cases, wearers should also have something under the corset, like a camisole or chemise. (This is so you specifically do ''not'' get the welts that pop up in other examples of this trope, and also to protect the corset from being sweated on.)
* Empress Elisabeth of Austria is (in)famous for tight-lacing, to the point that her waist was 40 cm (16 inches) at its smallest, and 18 1/2 –- 19 1/2 inches at the time of her death. Coupled with her sleeping issues and eating disorder, this made her "inhumanly slender" -- she was unusually tall (172 cm or 5'8'') and only weighed 50kg (110 lbs). Ironically, it initially kept her alive after the stabbing with a stiletto knife that eventually caused her death, and it was only after her corset was removed that she bled out.

* In 1903, a woman named Mary Halliday dropped dead for no apparent reason. During her autopsy, it was discovered that two pieces of corset steel had become lodged in her heart.

* ''Film/EnolaHolmes'': Enola was raised by a feminist mother who didn't make her wear corsets. While she is able to wear a normal corset without any problems and is even able to fight off an attacker in one, the finishing school she's sent to insists on lacing her much too tightly for waist training, which is shown to be quite painful. The former is a case of ShownTheirWork, as regular corsets weren't that restrictive, as well as the fact that she purchased the corset in a women's boutique, where it was likely laced by a professional dresser (as opposed to the school teachers who may have been unfamiliar with the correct procedure).

*** It's interesting to note that, since men don't give birth, their organs don't shift around as easily so it's more difficult for them to wear corsets properly. See the RealLife section below.

* Somewhat related to the above, YouTuber Jill Bearup [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCe5Kht9a2U made a video]] about whether or not you could fight in a corset. She found that a (presumably correctly laced and correctly fitted) corset presented no problems, though stated that anyone not used to wearing one may find it uncomfortable.

* Despite providing the page image, female characters in ''Manga/VictorianRomanceEmma'' only wore extremely tight corsets for special occasions, in this case taking a couple of inches off before a date.
** However, they are described as painful, or at least really uncomfortable. In one scene of the manga, Emma's employer Dorothea Meredith is being dressed for the day, when her husband Wilhelm enters the room and proceeds to lace his wife's corset. Despite the whole scene is described as a jocular, almost sexual moment of intimacy, Wilhelm has to place his foot on Dorothea's back and pull the laces with all of his might to squeeze his wife into the desired shape. The author's commentary for this scene claims that, according to her researches, such a painful scenario was common and not surprising at all.

[[quoteright:350:[[Manga/VictorianRomanceEmma https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/of_corset_hurts.jpg]]]]

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* In an episode of ''Series/{{Bones}}'', the victim of the week was a nine-year-old girl with a deformed ribcage. It turns out she participated in beauty pageants and had worn a corset in her sleep, in addition to starving herself to the point of malnourishment.

* Empress Elisabeth of Austria is (in)famous for tight-lacing, to the point that her waist was 40 cm (16 inches) at its smallest, and 18 1/2 – 19 1/2 inches at the time of her death. Coupled with her sleeping issues and eating disorder, this made her "inhumanly slender" - she was unusually tall (172 cm or 5'8'') and only weighed 50kg (110 lbs). Ironically it initially kept her alive after the stabbing with a stiletto knife that eventually caused her death, and it was only after her corset was removed that she bled out.