Introduction

 Hello, hello, hello! Welcome to the cutest little blog you ever did see. Thanks very much for joining me!

My name is Rachel Walker. I'm a dual major in anthropology and history at Utah State University. Because why have one bachelors' degree when you can have two for twice the price? This is my senior year and for my exit move, I've decided to embark on quite the fashion history adventure.

This blog is all about the Undergraduate Research and Creative Opportunity (URCO) Grant I applied for in June 2021. Hopefully it will be accepted in August. My project focuses on Victorian-Era corsetry and how contradictory ideas from the nineteenth century about the corset form public opinion today. I'm very excited about it! 

In order to better understand the role of corsets in women's lives, my aim is to reconstruct and wear an 1890s corset on and off for a period of several months as an experiment to see how it supports or constricts my body. During the experiment I will wear a smart watch to record my heart rate, pulse/oxygen intake levels, steps, etc. Comparing the vital signs in and out of the corset may give deeper insight into how the body responds. 

As one of the most controversial items of clothing, the corset and its history are full of misconceptions and grim tales of extreme waist reduction practices in which only a few actually participated. Most women wore corsets while doing demanding physical labor, domestic work, and factory jobs with no mention of their undergarments. Yet, here we are over 150 years later with so many female characters in film and television getting tightlaced into a corset and subsequently fainting as a result. The dominant ideas of historical corsets today are the leftovers of male-written cartoons, newspapers, and journalists of the nineteenth century. 

My previous sewing experience and lifelong interest in the history of clothing and textiles, particularly in the Victorian Era, led me to corsets. They were the foundation of women's (and men's) dress for hundreds of years that provided both shape and structure. Both primary and secondary sources on the prevalent use of corsets in everyday life have opposing views of the vital undergarment which makes for a tornado of research confusion. From ca. 1860-1899, the fashionable silhouette was exaggerated. The era of the "wasp waist" corset was mocked harshly in print media. Political cartoons of the time depicted women who wore such extreme underclothes as stupid, obsessed with image, and frail. 

I will explain this collision of thoughts in much greater detail in the future should you be interested. This the introduction and I'm already spewing a lot of information at you. Talking endlessly about my interests is both a strength and a weakness so I appreciate your patience! 

Following posts will likely include deeper exploration and discussion of: 

-FAQs about corsets, health and safety, and its history

-Progress updates on how the project is going, potentially including data collected by the smart watch each week

-Women and the role of clothing in their lives over time

- My experience of drafting and making mockups of the 1890 Symington "Pretty Housemaid" corset 

-The narratives surrounding women's bodies and who controls the 

-The intersectionality of fashion history, textile science, gender studies, class, race, and sexuality

I would love to hear what you think of all this! Please reach out by leaving comments and questions for me on any of my posts and I will do my best to answer them. 

Thank you so much for your interest in my research project! It's been over a year in the making and I am very excited it's somewhat coming to fruition. Recipients will be notified August 3rd and until then, I will be working on mockups, drafting the pattern, and There is so much more to come and I do hope you'll come back soon! 

Until next time, 

-Rachel