Unpacking assumptions about corseting Rebecca Gibson supplements narratives of corseted women
from the 18th and 19th centuries with her seminal work on corset-related skeletal deformation.
An undergarment that provided support and shape for centuries the corset occupies a familiar
but exotic space in modern consciousness created by two sometimes contradictory narrative
arcs: the texts that women wrote regarding their own corseting experiences and the recorded
opinions of the medical community during the 19th century. Combining these texts with skeletal
age data and rib and vertebrae measurements from remains at St. Bride's parish London dating
from 1700 to 1900 the author discusses corseting in terms of health and longevity situates
corseting as an everyday practice that crossed urban socio-economic boundaries and attests to
the practice as part of normal female life during the time period Gibson's bioarchaeology of
binding is is the first large-scalar multi-site bioethnography of the corseted woman.
