can we please let historical women be historical?
NOTE: I AM REFERRING HERE TO AESTHETICS, NOT MORAL/SOCIAL ATTITUDES. RACISM IS GROSS AND ENOUGH PEOPLE IN ~YE OLDEN TIMES~ WEREN’T RACIST THAT IT’S NO EXCUSE
papers are praising Emma Watson to the highest heaven for refusing to wear stays and a hoop skirt in Beauty and the Beast and honestly, I’m kind of sick of it
yes, it’s a fairytale, but Belle is living in 18th-century France. she probably would have worn stays because they’re a basic foundation garment that provides breast and back support and pretty much every woman wore them. probably hers would have been laced more loosely because she’s not upper-class. and yeah, she would have worn some kind of hoops or panniers under her fancy ball gown. which would have been significantly fancier than the new adaptation is making it and needed the support and can you tell how hard I am side-eyeing the designers
in a fairytale it doesn’t matter so much. I’ll concede that the movie’s not actually set in real-life 18th-century France, so they can do what they want. but it’s a trend I see a lot in historical fiction, too. Miss Whatsherface is a Liberated Strong Female Character and doesn’t wear a corset! how shocking! how perfectly tailored to appeal to our modern sensibilities!
here’s a truth-bomb: women wore corsets. most women didn’t lace them at all tightly and some took them off upon returning home for the evening like we take off our bras today. nevertheless, they did wear them, in almost every echelon of society. factory girls, servants, farmers, sex workers, artists, aristocrats, the earliest female politicians and doctors- almost all women. the only time I’ve seen “liberated woman doesn’t wear corsets” done well was with a character in the Artistic Reform dress movement started by pre-Raphaelite artists in the late 1800s. and then the author actually did research to reflect that Artistic Reform was more than just not wearing corsets
most women also wore skirts most or all of the time (with notable exceptions like Amelia Bloomer, Anne Lister, and other singluar ladies who defended their right to pants). many also wore hoop-skirts, panniers, or crinolines. and guess what? they were still badass.
Ada Lovelace made her groundbreaking mathematical discoveries in the dorky balloon sleeves and puffy skirts of the 1830s
Madame C.J. Walker became the first black female millionaire in the US and ran her beauty empire in bustle skirts and corsets
Mary Shelley invented science fiction in stays and an Empire-waisted dress. Charity Bryant and Sylvia Drake got commonlaw married and wrote reams of poetry in the same
Dr. Shih Meiyu got her medical degree from the University of Michigan in a corset, as did Dr. Kang Cheng at the same time
these women were products of their time aesthetically and we shouldn’t have to divorce them from that or denigrate it to appreciate their accomplishments. the same holds true for historical fiction. if your female character can’t be just as strong dressed in the typical clothing of the era, you need to go back to the drawing board
