"Here is a 'reader's letter' from New Orleans
Times-Democrat, 22 March,
1896
(though from the reference to India I suspect it
may have been reproduced from a British source):
A correspondent writes from
Jhalra, Central India:
“I wish more girls would write
their figure-training experiences to your paper. I have just left the finishing
school where I was for two years, and have come out to my father in India. I may say,
without conceit, that I have a good figure and small waist, which are entirely
due to the careful system of figure-training enforced at the school I had the
good fortune to be sent to. I wish first to protest against the common belief
that a small waist and tight-lacing are synonymous terms, that a small waist can
only be the outward and visible sign of a tightly-laced corset, whereas it is
much more usually the result of years of careful training while the figure is
growing and supple and can be molded.
When I went to the Paris school, at
the age of sixteen, my waist measure was twenty-one inches, and I had never
worn any but ready-made stays. On reaching my new school my figure was very
carefully measured round chest, waist, and hips, my height and weight were
taken, and all details entered in a book. After a few days I was fitted with a
pair of long, fully-boned corsets with shoulder straps, the waist measure being
twenty inches. I was laced into these without much difficulty, and at night I
had to wear similar sized, though less stiffly boned, corsets. I at first felt
very uncomfortable, but I was old enough to admire and envy the beautiful
figures and tiny waists of the elder girls.
“The system enforced was that
our waists should be reduced a quarter of an inch every month until the Superior considered
that the utmost limit of tenuity, consistent with good health, bad been
reached. Great attention was paid to our food and exercise, and drill, and
corsets formed the medium through which we received our rewards and
punishments. There was considerable rivalry between the girls, and rewards
consisted in being allowed to lace our waists in as small as our vanity, or
spirit of rivalry, desired on Sundays, and after 5 o'clock In the afternoon on week days.
Punishments consisted of what was called ‘backboard drill’ and punishment
corsets; the latter were very long, and as stiff as steel bones could make
them, and were certainly instruments of torture. When I left school my waist
measure was fourteen inches, and I can honestly say that I enjoyed good health
and suffered no more than slight temporary inconvenience, and that, with one or
two exceptions, the Superior and her staff had to exercise more vigilance to
see that we did not lace in our waists smaller than the decreed size, than to
see that the decreed size was not exceeded.
“During our free time in the
evenings we used to see how small we could make our waists; and I dare say that
many will disbelieve me when 1 tell you that many of us often succeeded in
getting the tape to meet at twelve inches. I do not mean to say that I could
have exhibited my waist laced in to twelve inches; on the contrary, we often
were so tightly laced that we could scarcely breathe, and sometimes fainted
before we were released. Since I have been “out” I have not been allowed to
show my waist smaller than fifteen inches in public, Father says “people stare
so at you,” but my night corsets are still always laced in till my waist
measures only fourteen inches.
“Everyone here seems to think
that I must be fearfully tight-laced. and must be suffering agonies, but it is
just as easy and comfortable for me to wear a fifteen Inch waist as it is for
untrained figures to wear a twenty or twenty-five inch waist, and I am able to
take as much exercise walking, ruling, dancing, tennis. badminton, etc. as my larger-waisted
girl friends. I am thankful to say that father likes to see my waist small, and
when we dine at home alone I never show larger than fourteen inches, and in one
pair of corsets with a lovely frock I exhibit a thirteen and a half inch waist:
to make sure of this I am wearing that frock to-night, and father has just
measured my waist, and says he certifies it is just over thirteen and a half
over dress measurement.
“I am afraid you will think my
letter very long, but I must add one word more. The superior's rule was that as
long as a girl could wear her corset day and night for a month without such
pain as to necessitate relaxing the lace, she should have the usual
quarter-inch further reduction on the 1st of next month, and that a corset
which could be worn from month's end to month's end, without release was not
tightly laced.
“Tight-lacing only began when
the corset was so tightly laced that it could not be worn all day and night
without such pain as to necessitate relaxing the lace, and that there was
hardly any limit to the tenuity to which a girl might reduce her waist provided
that she always relaxed the lace when she found she was suffering from being
too long in confinement at the extra small size; and she used to warn us never
to allow our vanity to risk exhibiting in public a smaller waist than we had
proved by private practice we were able to bear.”
