Support and confinement to an overstrained part are two different things; the one is beneficial, the other destructive. And this I can assure my readers, that I ever have remarked those married women who have longest maintained their virgin forms were those who, in a state of maternal increase, observed a proper medium between a too relaxed and a too contracted boddice.
Nature in these concerns is our best guide; and when she dictates to us to provide against the possible disagreeable consequences of any of her operations, it is well to obey her; but when a fastidious, and, allow me to say, an indelicate, regard to personal charms would excite you to brace with ribs of whalebone the soft mould of your unborn infant; or when it has, in spite of these arts, burst its prison-house alive, you seek to deprive it of the nourishment your breast prepares—then remember you perform not the duty of a mother, but show yourself rather egregiously guilty of wantonness and unpardonable cruelty.
No person living can feel a more lively admiration than that which animates me at the sight of a beautiful form,
—“rife
With all we can imagine of the sky.”
I behold in it the work of the most perfect being—the accomplishment of one of his fairest designs. He seems to show in earthy mould the lovely transcript of the angels of heaven: she looks, she breathes, of innocence and sweet unconscious beauty. But when I cast my eyes on women issuing from the house of a modern manufacturer of shapes; when I see the functions of nature impeded by bands and ligatures; when I behold the abode of virgin modesty thrust forward to the gaze of the libertine; when I observe the pains taken to attract his eye,—I turn away disgusted, and blush for my sex.
Vile as these meretricious arts are, they are not less dangerous to health than to morals. The constant pressure of such hard substances as whalebone, steel, &c. upon so susceptible a part as the bosom, is very likely, in the course of a very short time, to produce all the horrid consequences of abscesses, cancers, &c.: on their miseries I need not to descant.
On the long stay I shall now make a few remarks, arising from the observations I have been enabled to make on the ladies of various ages and figures whom I have known wear it. To the woman whose waning charms set in an exuberance of flesh, perhaps the support of this adventitious aid is an advantage. But in that case its stiffening should rather be cord quilted in the lining, or very thin whalebone, than either steel or iron. In all situations, the boddice should be flexible to the motion of the body and the undulations in the shape; and it should never be felt to press upon any part.
Thus far we may tolerate the adoption of this buckram suit for elderly, or excessively embonpoint ladies; but for the growing girl (whom, I am sorry to say, mothers not unfrequently imprison in these machines,) it is both unrequired and mischievous.
Before nature has completed her work in the perfection of the youthful figure, she is checked in her progress by the impediment which the valves, bands, &c. of the long stay throw in her way. Those finely-rounded points which mark the distinction and the grace of the female form, and which the artist, enamored of beauty, delights to delineate with the nicest accuracy, are, by the constant pressure of these stays, rendered indistinct, and in a short time are entirely destroyed.
Let, then, the long stay be restricted to the too abundant mass of fattening matronhood; so may art restrain the excesses, not of nature, but of disease. Unwieldly flesh was never yet seen in a perfectly healthy person. It generally arises either from intemperance overloading the functions of life, or dissipation decomposing them.