@fatphobiabusters
@fuckyeahfatpositive
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Bernadette Banner I think talks about this on her YouTube channel, I think. There's "survivorship bias" in historical clothing where a lot of what we have that's well preserved is quite small, so it gives the false impression that people were all skinny back in the day. But actually, it's not that there were more skinny people - it's that those garments were more likely to survive precisely BECAUSE it was rare for someone to be small enough to wear them!! They were often clothes of young people who outgrew them quickly and because they were too small to let out or remake (unlike larger garments that could be made smaller or reworked into new pieces more easily) they stuck around!
I honestly am surprised how much I bought into this myth even as a plus size historical costumer who theoretically knows better.
I sell (and collect) vintage sewing patterns and I was always under the impression that like, they just didn't make many vintage patterns in my size, cause yanno, people were smaller.
Until I bought a huge box of 60s and 70s patterns that were all for a bust 44" and larger. Like, the actual size range of available commercial patterns was exactly the same as today.
But for SOME REASON the larger size patterns didn't survive to the modern day as much as the size 8 and 10 ones did. Couldn't be because there were a lot of people using them...
Was literally going to add the Bernadette Banner video until I saw someone else got here first.
Another thing worth noting, especially in early Victorian-and-earlier times, is that dresses often had cords or pins, not zippers and buttons, and could be heavily adjusted by use of a stomacher or other undergarment. There are cases where we simply can’t know how big the wearer was because the garment itself allows for such a wide range of size.
ALSO-also, photo editing has existed since the beginning of photography, and when illustrations were still the common way to go for advertising it was even easier than it is today to have exaggeratedly thin women as “models.” Most of the super-thin women you see in early photographs are neither that thin, nor tightlaced. THEY’RE EDITED.
