Corset

A corset is a garment worn to mold the torso into a desired shape for aesthetic purposes (either for the duration of wearing it, or with a more lasting effect). Both men and women have worn corsets. At different times throughout history, the garment has been used to exaggerate the female bust and hips and shrink the waist or to minimize these features. Some corsets were made of cloth or leather, and many included steel or whalebone ribs.

A corset can extend from the shoulders to the knees or lower. The smaller variety, which only covers the waist, may also be called a waist cincher. A corset may also include garters to hold up stockings (alternatively a separate suspender belt (garter belt) may be worn for that).

Corsets go back as far as 2000 B.C., when Cretan women wore them to emphasize their breasts and hips.

There have been documented examples of women shrinking their waists as small as 16" or less through corset training and Tight lacing. The Guinness Book of World Records records two instances of women reducing to 13" waists. These were extreme cases, however, and corsets were also designed for women to wear while bicycling or playing tennis.

The corset fell from common wear in the 1930s in Europe and America, replaced by girdles, but survived as an article of costume. Originally an item of lingerie, the corset has become a popular item of outerwear in the fetish, BDSM and goth subcultures.

Corsets type definitions
Name of Corset		Start age	Characteristic	Breathing	comment
Hybrid-corset		1990	Short pipestem waist	medium
Pipe-shape		1910	Press buttock, no loin curve	fine	ugly, inconvenient
Pipe-shape		1910	Expanded chest no loin curve	fine
Edward (Sloping waist)	Straightfront	1910	Extreme high small loin Extreme high sloping waist	poor?	Edge in kidney Bad back
	Straightfront	1910	Extreme big loin curve Expanded chest. Wasp waist	medium	Edge in kidney Bad back
	S-curve 'Dagmar Hansen'	1910	Low sloping wasp waist Raised expanded chest	fine	Singer
	S-curve 'Gibson girl'	1900	Raised expanded chest High sloping waist	fine	Floozie Edge in liver
Victorian (horizontal waist)	"Health corset"	1880	Raised compressed chest Long concave waist	medium	Flattened liver Not healthy
	Conical-conical Hourglass	1855	Raised chest High wasp waist	fine	Edge in liver
	Ice cone Ball-conical	1947 1830	Raised chest Low Wasp waist	fine	Ballet, opera
Romanticism	"Pipestem" corset	1830	Pipestem waist	fine
Romanticism	Ball-Ball, Hourglass	1815	Low horizontal waist	medium
Stays (narrow conical)		1500	Compressed lowered chest Low waist	poor

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The Corset also served as a nickname for the Supplementary Special Deposits Scheme operated as a means of monetary control by the Bank of England. The scheme was abolished in mid-1980 and the consequent surge in money supply measures without any underlying economic change vindicated the metaphor implicit in this terminology.