The Corseted Skeleton: A Bioarchaeology of Binding

Acknowledgments
Contents
List of Figures
List of Tables
1 Introduction: Shaping the Garment, Shaping the Woman
	“Civilization” and the Corseted “Savage”
	The Corseted Skeletons: FAO90—St. Bride’s Lower Churchyard
	Corseting “Myths” and How We Can Bust Them
	Why This Matters
	The Gender Binary: Why I Use “Women” and “Female”
	Ethical Use of Remains in Skeletal Collections
	Bibliography
2 The Corset in Our Collective Consciousness: Exotic, Erotic, or Other?
	Fashioning the Narrative: What Cultural Historians Say About the Corset
	Moving Beyond Exotic/Erotic: A Deeper Look at Gender and Its Intersection with Fashion Theory
	Talking About Talking About Things: Critical Discourse Analysis and Its Uses
	The Magazine Genre: On Being Anonymous in the Public Sphere
	Refuting the Exotic/Erotic—A Focus on Health
	Biocultural Analysis or Looking at Behavior to Explain Everyday Choice
	Bibliography
3 The Corset as a Garment: Is It a Representative of Who Wore It?
	Who Wore Corsets and Why, an Overview of Corseting
	Variations on a Theme: Practical Corseting and What Women Wore
	Female Purchasing Power: Class and Corseting
	The Corset Collections: Victoria and Albert, Fashion Museum Bath, St. Fagans, and the National Museum of Scotland
	A Brief Word About Museums
	What Corsets Are Represented in the Collections…
	…and What That Representation Tells Us
	Bibliography
4 The Corset as Civilization: The Debate on Clothing and Women’s Social Wellbeing
	Civilized, Healthy, and in Proper Shape: The Evolution of the Corseted Woman
	The Freudian/Hysterical Narrative on Corseting
	Wandering Womb Syndrome: Corsets and Hysteria
	Change Your Body, Change Your Identity
	Health, Civilization, and Morality—An Upright Woman Is a Moral Woman
	Synthesis: Ideas About Corseting and Morality
	The Dress Reform Movement and the “Health” of Tight Constricting Clothing
	Bibliography
5 The Corset as a Killer: Did Corseting Negatively Impact Longevity?
	Why Did Doctors Hate Corseting So Much?
	Doctors and Their Anti-Female Prejudice
	O’Followell and His Treatise on Corsets
	Example 1: Symptoms of Corseting Damage
	Example 2: Violent Verbs
	Example 3: Agency and Metaphor
	Example 4: A Proposed Law
	Example 5: Advertisements for Corsets
	Other Physicians
	But Did They Die Young?
	Bibliography
6 Women’s Experiences in Life, Death, and Burial: The St. Bride’s Parish Records
	St. Bride’s Lower Churchyard
	Sample Details: Who Is Represented in FAO90
	The St. Bride’s Parish Archives
	Age at Death: Our Assumptions vs. the Data
	Causes of Death in St. Bride’s Parish
	The Bounds of St. Bride’s Parish
	Bibliography
7 The Corseted Skeleton: Skeletal Remains of St. Bride’s Lower Churchyard
	The Skeletal Evidence of Corseting
	Results from the St. Bride’s Lower Churchyard (FAO90) Collection
	Use of Comparative Samples
	Bibliography
8 Modern Corseting and How We Talk About Today’s Women
	The Fall and Rise of the Modern Corset
	Modern Corseting, and Why It Has Found a Resurgence
	Kim Kardashian West and the Modern Corset
	Renn Faires and Steampunk: Ye Olde Modern Corseting
	Summation
	Bibliography
Appendix A: A Timeline of World and Corset-Related Events
Appendix B: Aggregate Data from the Corset Collections
Appendix C: Musée de l’Homme Skeletal Data
Appendix D: Museum of London FAO90 Data
Appendix E: Selections from the St. Bride’s Archive Data*
Index