Student News
 

            Yet corseted a University of Wyoming girl recently became. How could she truly research historic clothing without being historically clothed?

            Katie Stienmetz, a May graduate of the Department of Family and Consumer Sciences’ textiles and merchandising program, traveled back to the time of her Renaissance, Victorian, pioneer and early 20th century sisters by constricting her upper body for two months as part of an honors undergraduate project focusing on ladies’ clothing in the bustle era.

            For 24 hours a day and seven days a week (minus quick respites for showering), Stienmetz lived and slept a corseted life and gained an appreciation for the evolution of female clothing styles and for what women went through to fit into them.

            After conducting research on the undergarments of her ancestors, Stienmetz, a Fort Laramie native, made her own tight-fitting corset, complete with stays, laces, and the capacity for boosting cleavage and shaving inches off the waist.

            She drank extra water to counteract her restricted breathing, gave up going to the gym, ate smaller portions of food at each meal, struggled to bend over, propped up with a pillow to sleep and dreamed about suffocating or being buried alive.

            “A lot of people asked me if I had been in an accident and if I was wearing a back brace,” recalls Stienmetz.

            Women of the past usually wore their corsets over a chemise and only removed them once a week to bathe.
            If a lady had enough wealth, she might own two corsets – one for the day and one for the night.

           “It was a status symbol to show that you could afford to have a maid help you get dressed every day,” Stienmetz explains.

            Girls as young as 5 wore laced undergarments that pulled their shoulders back and were fully constricted by age 13.

            “Most women kept wearing a corset because otherwise they wouldn’t be able to keep the shape it gave them,” she says.

            That figure sometimes came at a price. Gone with the Wind’s Scarlett O’Hara prided herself on her 18-inch waist but suffered somewhat agonizing lacing sessions to maintain it.

            Stienmetz reports that a corset could reshape a woman’s lower ribs, often pushing them into severe angles. The garment could also lead to the rearrangement of her internal organs. If a woman were to stop wearing her corset, it would likely take a long time for her body to return to normal.

            Nevertheless, the UW graduate doesn’t believe that the restraints adversely affected women’s health or spirits.

            “Corsets didn’t hold them back at all,” she says, describing women in Alaska during the Gold Rush who climbed mountains despite their form-fitting undergarments.

            One of Stienmetz’s great-grandmothers was a school teacher who wore a corset until the day she died. The other one was a laundry woman who abandoned her stays early in her life. “It depended on how you were raised and where you saw yourself in society,” she notes.

            In a literature book she read about women of the 1860s, Stienmetz discovered a strong-willed character who didn’t wear a corset. “She wasn’t the main ingénue who found her man and got married, though. The character existed and the idea existed, but they weren’t attached to the heroine.”

            Once the Industrial Revolution became a reality, she says, women’s roles began to change and clothing styles soon followed suit.

            Although Stienmetz is now sans corset, sports a skinnier waistline and is looking forward to beginning a graduate program in museum management at the University of Washington, she has fond memories of her laced-up days.

            “I developed an emotional attachment to my corset that sort of surprised me,” she confesses. “There was something very comforting about it, like arms giving me a huge hug. It really made me feel ultra feminine.”

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