The reasons waists look so thin in old photos (it’s not just the corset)

It may be that, like many people, you have been impressed by the tiny waistlines of women in the past. Whenever we come across images of these women, we tend to imagine that they were going through enormous trials. Well, actually, things weren’t quite like that. The waist has been, over the centuries, a kind of parameter of the ideal of feminine beauty. And, a century or two ago, the corset wasn’t the only feature that allowed girls to achieve a slim waist.

O awesome.club tells, in this post, which resources helped in this tireless search.

If someone asked you to imagine a woman from the past wearing a corset, you would think of a girl wearing the body-hugging, extremely tight garment. He would probably believe that they all suffered from enormous discomforts, but that was not the case.

A woman began to wear a corset to shape her body from puberty, so that over time, her waist usually remained narrower than her hips and back. But that didn’t mean that part of the body didn’t enlarge. The fact is, imagining girls fitting a corset too tight for their bodies is not historically accurate. After all, as we said, they worked since puberty to get a slim waist.

But while it is true that corsets were worn from an early age (from the age of 12, to be more precise), it is also true that seamstresses custom-made them. Whether a woman was thin or more robust, the garment was made to fit her figure.

Upper-class women didn’t work, but lower-class women, who were the majority, did. They dealt with agriculture, worked in factories or as maids and nannies. Therefore, they needed clothes that would allow them to carry out their duties with a minimum of comfort. An example are the maids shown in the photo above.

The practice of wearing a corset emerged around the 16th century. For over four centuries, women have worn this garment. However, we must remember that in past centuries, women’s fashion was also different. Long dresses, skirts and sleeves with ornaments and ruffles proliferated.

In the case of skirts, fashion dictated that they be ample. In fact, not just a skirt was used, but layers and layers of skirts known as petticoats, which added to the volume of the main piece. However, on numerous occasions, they were not enough to create an ideal width for the dress. For this reason, women arranged them to achieve the desired radius, first placing a frame of wooden hoops that went from the waist to the ground, known as a merinaque. In addition, they placed pieces of fabric called panes on the sides of the hips.

It was also very common for the top of dresses to be decorated with ruffles or puffed sleeves. All these pieces created an illusion that made the waists of the time look incredibly thin. It was not, therefore, a question of achieving a truly narrow waist, but of creating such a perception.

Yes, although the famous Photoshop didn’t exist, at that time, the photos were already edited. There are even books with instructions on how to edit the photographs and even their negatives.

Interestingly, in the case of the photos, the image professionals thinned a woman’s waist by painting her with the color of the photo’s background. Thus, they appeared to have a thinner body than they actually did. In the image above, you can see that the artist drew to the point he wanted to reduce the woman’s waist.

What other customs from the past catch your eye that you would like us to investigate?