Dear Mr. Editor,
I’m a modern girl, and would like to have my own views heard on the corset question. What really gets me going is not what has been published in your paper on lacing, I’ve sometimes thought the writers must be leg pulling; but a conversation I overheard recently. I was in a railway compartment, and two other ladies were discussing a friend.
One said: “But she is hopelessly old-fashioned in her ideas, why she actually wears corsets and holds her breath while she pulls herself in, and she isn’t stout!”
The other replied: “Well, there’s no accounting for tastes, my dear.”
Now I think it’s perfectly ridiculous anyone lacing up in that way to-day. I’m girl enough to admit I wear corsets, but when I’ve got an elastic belt for the dansant, or an ordinary corset for day wear to keep me in shape, I reckon I’ve done all that is needful in the corset line.
I won’t say that if whalebone stays and wasp waists were fashionable that I’d be wearing loose corsets. Oh no, but while the gods say be fashionable – and comfortable, well, I’m duly thankful.
Besides, given a fair choice, who wouldn’t prefer easy corsets, cami-knicks, silk stockings and garters, to jean whalebone stays, baggy bloomers, shaped and boned camisoles, padded underskirts tripping one up, trailing skirt and boned bodice both at the waist and neck? Why, the very thought of it gives one the creeps.
I’m jolly thankful I’m living when one can slip on a pair of corsets in two ticks, and be smart; rather than living when one must have felt like a trussed fowl when all dressed up, not to mention looking like one.
I’ll bet the wasp-waisted girl would look like an unstarched collar without her stays, on the other hand we can either have them or be without them, and look equally smart, It would take a very keen pair of eyes to tell whether most of us modern girls wear corsets at all. Most of us either wear them or do without them equally well, and feel no embarassment, only having them as an adjunct and not as a necessity. And we’re all the better for it.
Yours faithfully
“Normal.”