Personal hygiene and physical training for women

by Anna M. Galbraith

As time rolled on, this loose cord, which had formed the girdle, was reinforced by a broad belt or band to support the breasts. Among the Assyrians this belt was made of stiffened linen or thin metal; the Egyptians wore a folded belt; a broad belt for supporting the breasts was also worn by the Roman ladies. But whatever the material used, this stay-belt does not show any signs of tight laces or of vertical ribs of iron or bone. It was, however, the forerunner of “stays,” and when the moral fiber of the Greeks grew lax, the courtesans set the fashions, and dress was used to display rather than to conceal the figure, and, in order to make the hips more prominent, the waist was constricted by a many-layered belt. At the same time, the use of cosmetics was introduced.

The Mediæval or Middle Ages.—From the end of the fifth century to the beginning of the seventeenth there was a singular resemblance in many marked particulars between the dress of the two sexes. It now became the object of dress in both sexes not merely to clothe the person, but also to display the figure and adorn it. In the temperate climates there are always greater changes in fashion than in the very hot or very cold.

Subjugation by the Romans in the first centuries of the Christian era was followed by a general conformity to their mode of dress, so that the Roman dress may be considered to have become European.

In marked contrast to the loose, flowing robes worn by the southern nations of Europe in their decadence were the short skirts and jackets clinging to the limbs, which were worn by the hardy nations of the North, who were given to constant fighting and the pursuit of the chase. The Norman lords, following the fashion of the south, swept about in long tunics and flowing robes.

In the twelfth century the Anglo-Saxon women, dressed in their loose garments, were indebted to the Norman ladies for the introduction of “stays,” and the fashion of tightly lacing the body with a robe, laced down in front in order to show its undulations, as well as the use of cosmetics.

In the household register of Eleanor, Countess of Leicester, which bears the date of May 24, 1265, is one of the earliest places in which the word corset occurs. The word is again found in reference to the wardrobe of Richard King of the Normans, and Edward his son. Corsets were at this time worn by men as well as women.

The author of the life of St. Thaïs, who lived in the twelfth century, tells us that the French were so tightly laced that they could bend neither their bodies nor their arms.

Peter the Great wrote that the robes are so tightly stretched over the body, that the ladies can scarcely breathe in them, and often suffer very great pain in order to make their bodies slender.

It was in the thirteenth to the fourteenth century that the last trace of the Roman drapery gradually disappeared: the women adopted for the most part the robes with the tightly fitting corsage, leaving ordinarily uncovered the neck and the skin of the breast; this closely fitting corsage was closed in the back by lacing.

Boots and shoes of this period had their pointed toes made two or three times the length of the wearer’s foot. The fashions of England were the same as those of France, though apparently they were not carried to quite the same excess as on the continent. The singular aim of each sex was not only to emulate the other in the sumptuous style of dress and its profuse adornment, but also to imitate the form and fashion of the other’s attire; this obtained in both countries.