For her first corseted film, The Favourite, Emma Stone said in a Graham Norton interview’ that ‘her organs shifted’ during her time wearing a corset. She expressed: “Honestly women existed in that for such a long time, which does give you a lot of sympathy for that time period.
“So don’t do it if you don’t have to”
Stone isn’t alone in this feeling. The likes of Keira Knightly have publicly condemned the undergarment. Films like Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, Tiatnic, and Corpse Bride all present the corset as something painful that women must suffer through for the sake of ‘femininity’l.
Glamour reported in February last year that a Netflix insider claimed they would be banning corsets from films, and the BBC and ITV were set to follow suit. These reports remain unconfirmed, but the existence of the rumour lends credence to the idea actors cannot feel liberated or feminist when wearing a corset for a role.
‘’Every time we want to see a woman throwing off her shackles of patriarchy, off comes the corset,’’ says Jema Hewitt, a professional costume artist and academic who has worked in costuming since the early 1990s, usually as a cutter, helping to create and fit costumes. She has worked on many films, including No Time To Die and Downton Abbey.
‘’As a storyline, we understand the corset is repressive. It comes off, our heroine is free! Whether it is fair historically, again, no, of course, it’s not.’’
Hewitt was also a part of what she calls the 1990s ‘corset renaissance’, where corsets became more common in film, before mostly only being seen in theatre and the fetish industry.
She notes that not all corsets are restrictive for actors but that moving in a corset allows for a different type of movement that a director may want for a scene.
‘’As modern people, we have modern sensibilities.
“We want action heroines that do exciting things. You know, we want Millie Bobby-Brown to tear around and be able to climb cliff faces and do cartwheels in a corset.’’
Emma Watson famously criticised the corset, ditching it for Beauty and the Beast (2017), wanting her Belle to be an ‘active princess’ according to the film’s costume designer, Jacqueline Durran. In place of a corset, the costume department used lighter fabrics without a corseted waist to make Watson’s horse riding and action scenes easier.
Hewitt thinks that this narrative has created an association with corsets where people associate them with making movement nearly impossible. She has her reservations about this notion.
‘’Like women climbed K2 in a corset. My friend Jen Gartside does martial arts in a corset.
‘’There were female bodybuilders who lifted iron and looked spectacular in corsets. Skittles, the famous courtesan, rode exquisitely on a horse in a corset!’’
Gone With the Wind is perhaps the most infamous film involving a corset, which Hewitt believes built upon the trope of corsets being synonymous with oppression and restriction. Scarlett O’Hara (Vivien Leigh) clings to her bed post, straining against the side and pulled into corset by Mammy (Hattie McDaniel).
‘‘It’s metaphors. It’s not to do with Mammy pulling her into her corset and it being painful. It’s actually to do with how Scarlett is sort of corralled into this life of Southern Belle, and what she does to kind of, break out of it, or what she does to overturn it. Remember Scarlett becomes a businesswoman which is unheard of at that point in time.’’
Leigh also worked on Anna Karenina (1947), where she wore a corset and supposedly complained to costume supervisor Cecil Beaton that it felt like ‘torture’. Lily James, Cinderella, Nicole Kidman, Moulin Rouge, and Saoirse Ronan, Mary Queen of Scots, have raised similar complaints over the past 20 years.
‘’None of the main actors I have worked with have ever complained to me. I also know people who have created corsets for those A-list actors, and they never complained about them when they were on set.’However, at the press junket, suddenly it becomes agony and drama.’’
She adds that actresses are under a lot of pressure when filming and once they are interviewed about their time working on a project, it’s around two years after the film ended.
‘’They can latch onto things that are easy to talk about because they can’t remember all the details, as they’ve done five other projects since then.’’
She is more sympathetic to the complaints of extras over the top-billed stars, saying they ‘have every right to complain’ about the pain of wearing a corset. Normally, an ‘enormous’ box of second-hand corsets is given to extras with no regard for size or body type.
‘‘They then are hanging around for up to 12 hours in what is sometimes a very uncomfortable corset that has been laced up. Potentially by dressers who have never laced a corset and aren’t used to it and don’t quite know how tight they should be pulling. With a director who is also insisting that everyone, you know, looks really slender.’’
She believes the main problem that can occur on set for A-list actresses is if male directors force female actors to wear a corset in order for them to get a job. Usually, actresses believe they can only get a role if they use a corset to appear ‘hyper-feminine’, with that accentuated ‘tiny waist’.
Hewitt refers to women being forced to wear a corset for films by men as a big ‘power imbalance’.
“Who is making you wear a corset? That’s the feminist thing, and we have wonderful things that have emerged again. Going back to the fetish scene and the burlesque scene, the corset is a symbol of female sexual liberation.’’
This idea of the corset as an ‘oppressor’ only if forced to be worn, is also explored in the Enola Holmes. Enola (Millie Bobby-Brown) tells the audience: “The corset: A symbol of repression for those who are forced to wear it. But for me who chooses to wear it, the bust enhancer and the hip regulators. And as they do so, they will make me look like that truly unlikely thing: A lady!”
Hewitt believes that patriarchal ideals are still affecting themes and storytelling. We seem to have tarnished corsets with the idea of oppression as films consistently overuse the trope of corsets repressing a female character. She thinks it’s time to move away from this trope and branch out whilst still maintaining the historical accuracy of corsets in period films.
