The Corset and dress reform

When people think about women's fashion, they think about the fashions of today, but in the 1800s and the 1900s, women wore hoop skirts, long dresses, tight blouses and corsets. The corset was a garment that had to be worn just below the rip cage, then it would be laced. In the early 1800s, the corset would be kept fairly loose, but as the century progressed, corsets were placed tighter. During the Victorian Age, it was thought that the "hourglass figure" was considered the ideal look for women. "According to 19th century economist Thorstein Veblen, who conined apt phrases like 'conispicious'." Women also wore hoop skirts, the hoop skirts were made from steel and  after the corset was laced, then the hoop skirt would also be laced. Women also wore bustles, these were like small pillows that women would tie around their waist so that would sit around the hips. Bustles were worn around 1870s-1890s.

"Sleeves were set tightly into dresses,blouses and jackets to prevent a woman from raising her arms, a gesture Victorians regarded unladylike. In this getup and walking in high heels, a Victorian woman was literally enslaved to fashion, encumbered in layers of startched, heavy clothing appurtenances and restricted in bodily movements." Victorian doctors thought that the "hourglass" figure was far too extreme for victorian women and realized that women were suffering from what the corsets had caused. Many of they symptoms was displacing organs, broken ribs, shallow breathing and the body would also detertoriate from lack of oxygen. Women had to take smaller breaths, when they were wearing their corsets. If a woman didn't take  these smaller breathes, then they would faint. There were also specialized coaches that were designed when a woman fainted. Also the only way to rvive them was to use smelling salts.

However, there were plenty of people who did not like the corsets or the resrictive clothing;  they wanted to reform women's fashion. One woman named Amelia Bloomer had created the bloomer outfit; this outfit consisted of a dress and a pair of pants that ballooned and then closed at the ankle. There were many people that were opposed to it; "God commands that one Christian woman should ever put on a pair of pants for any reason-even if these pants are made for a woman  and not made for a man. Advocates of this extreme  claim Deutronomy 22:5 as their Scriptual proof text, declaring that for a woman to wear pants she then becomes an abomination to God because she is putting on that pertainth to a man." (http://www.lightministries.com/SDA/id1226.htm) However people continued to wear them; and they were quite popular among women working as nurses during the Civil War. 
Today one woman took the corset and turned it into a thing of beauty; she had said that when it comes to feminism, that feminism is what she makes it to be, and she thought that the corset was beautiful.