Cartoons
Cartoons on the subject of corsetry have appeared in many places, however, a special mention must go to three characters, superb artists in their own right, who bought that quintessentially English 'seaside humour' to the masses:
James Bamforth (1842 - 1911), Donald McGill (1875 - 1962) and Fred Spurgin (1882 - 1968)
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We have tried to capture those that share a theme or depict the corset either badly or rather well. Spirella often included cartoons in their house magazine. So many of the cartoons show that long-lasting tradition of lacing one's corsets with a foot in the back. Since so many corset wearers have bad backs, this is hardly recommended! See the section on 'corset lacing'. Inevitably, the 'stout woman' has been the but of numerous jokes and cartoons. Without this long-suffering creature, how would the sea-side picture postcard industry have survived? Atrocious 'double entendres' abound in this fantastical world and yet, occasionally the art-work can be rather accurate. On the right is a wonderful cartoon from Lilian Rivers' book 'Corsets in Africa.' The bra, the girdle and the bulges are all very real. In other cartoons, one wonders if the artist had ever seen a women in a corset; in others, the sight of the stout, disagreeable matron in her stays would have been a daily occurrence. Perhaps the cartoonist was the long-suffering husband in question.
On the left, Dr. Seuss shows us the archetypal stout woman. Well-to-do; middle-aged with a prodigious bosom balanced by an equally large posterior. The large torso tapers downwards to end in small, delicate feet. In reality this was actually very often the case as is depicted in other cartoons here. The caption to this cartoon is - Girdle Shortage: "Will Madam please step into the fitting room." One can guess that this would be a war-time (second world war) cartoon when, even in America, a shortage of rubber was taking its toll on the foundation garment industry.
Farcical, political, French, Dutch and seaside cartoons are shown below; some are accurate, many are not, some are sad and a couple are very rude.
There appears to be no end of the cartoonist's imagination regarding the stout woman and her corsets. Even the word 'corset' elicits almost a schoolboyish smirk and snigger. Failing to extract humour from references or images of corsets and girdles, the cartoonist will poke fun at the poor lady's over-sized bosom!
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Lacing the Corset
One curious feature of the majority of these cartoons is that the characters face to the left and the corset-wearer is on the left and the lacer on the right.
Some of the cartoons have the virtue of being particularly accurate: The maid hasn't pushed her knee or foot into the back of lady wearing the blue corset: The large women leans forward against the pull of her maid, an effective way to tighten the laces, although the laces should never pull the corset completely closed. The corset is not designed to put a waist on the wearer, rather to support the wearer's abdomen and prevent it from bulging; this is exactly the Spirella principle. The corset is very long both above and below the waist. Above the waist, this is designed to prevent any unsightly rolls of spare flesh bulging beneath the armpits. Below the waist, this will control her undoubtedly substantial thighs. I hope, however, the the corset is cut shorter at the front than it appears, otherwise, this lady will never, ever manage to sit down. I feel that the cartoonist's wife was stout; and that he had seen this picture in real life. He didn't have to imagine it. The black and white picture in the middle is drawn in a similar vein. The poor corsetiere on the right's tape measure is too short. Our Spencer friend from Liverpool has encountered exactly this problem, and keeps a special tape handy. It is embarrassing for the client if the corsetiere has to tie two tape measures together!
From Karlsblad to Morecambe, they are still lacing.
Double Entendre
It is interesting (above), that the humour comes from being undressed whether it is a glamorous waitress or an old maid. Bridget appears in two cartoons from very different cartoonists.
Molly Lefebure's book 'Murder on the Home Front' (1954) is a true account of a secretary who worked for a pathologist during the war and she comments:
"But my missus, she's always last, she takes a long time to dress. You see, she wears one of these ;ere abominable belts and it takes quite some time to put on." By 'abominable belt I realised he meant an abdominal belt. But, when all is said and done, abominable is, I should think, a pretty good name for them. This describes preparations to get into the garden air raid shelter. It is interesting to note that with bombs about to drop, the lady still takes time to get into her corsets.
Slightly bizarre above is the maid helping her mistress pull on a girdle. Lacing her corsets maybe, but tugging on a girdle, unlikely.
The theme of the girder strangely appears in two instances, that on the right being Gossard advertising from the 1940s.
The two cartoons on the left are somewhat older cartoons and show the Grecian Bend (albeit exaggerated) to comical effect.
Military Humour
Where the corset is incidental but a sign of the times
Making Both Ends Meet
Sometimes a really good punch line spawns a whole series of similar cartoons:
Time and time again, we see the same joke attached to a different cartoon, a different joke attached to the same cartoon and, moreover, the same cartoon in slightly differing renditions.
On the left, the cartoonist has the laces of the corset off centre simply to show the lacing as a quintessential part of the corset.
The same cartoon is often used but with the resort location crudely added, usually in a different font.
The ends meet theme continues
Slightly strange above; are those children or adults depicted as children?
Sometimes, the same cartoon has two or more different captions. The cartoons range from subtle and observant to downright rude
The Lost Chord
Come Just as you Are
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The style of these two is so similar I assume that the same artist was involved. |
Roughly translated from the Swedish: "Yes dear! I'll come as I'm standing now!"
Girth Control
Girth control is about the only common element between these two cartoons. That on the right is particularly detailed and accurate. A play on the words 'waist' and 'waste' feature below:
Corset Shop
The corset shop opens up unlimited opportunities for the cartoonist to lampoon both the stout and the thin. The famous line "I'd like a new bra please." "What bust?" "Nothing; it wore out!" is truly flogged to death below:
There's more humour to be extracted from the humble brassiere:
Interesting diversity of figure on the "I'd let 'em swing first" cartoons
It's a shame, but we cannot find a higher resolution version of the cartoon on the left. "Have you one that stretches more than two ways?" asks the stout lady querying the advertised two-way stretch girdle.
She should have asked for Playtex that, at one point, advertised seven-way stretch.
Inevitably the embarrassment of the man in the same context as female underwear gets an airing!
Bloomers
The cartoonist extracts some mileage from the (non-) mention of 'bloomers'.
The sentiment on the right is so true. Ill-fitting girdles riding up was the bane of many women, but where is this lady's girdle?
Peeping Tom
"It is necessary to become a connoisseur while we are young!" (right above)
We see above the same idea, on the left in English and on the right in French. Typical of the French; the hotel room door has three peep-holes. The theme is a standard for the cartoonist.
Love or the abuse of it features on the right, but why is the lady dining in her corsets?
The Scotsman comes in for his fair share of lampooning
The Drunk
I feel that the cartoon on the left would have been better served with some harridan in her corset and curlers. The gentleman clutching the barrel (below) reminds me of this quote from Betty MacDonald's classic book 'The Egg and I' (1945):
"The Corset Lady had piercing black eyes and a large bust and stomach apparently encased in steel, for when I brushed against her it was like bumping into our oil drum."
The Forbidden Subject
The subject of sex is ever-present but never mentioned directly.
Are you sure you want a man here?
The Old Maid
Of course, at the opposite end of the fat lady spectrum sits the spinster desperate to find a man. Although the subject of the cartoonists' critical pen, the subject was very serious in those days. An unmarried woman had little chance of 'getting on' in life as Del Lins Holmgren so vividly describes in her book 'Beginning at the End'.
Women in grandmother's time were placed in this order of importance: man, horse, woman, dog. Today, we are placed ahead of the horse but still not equal to men. The terms spinster, old maid, etc., in my grandmother's time were considered derogatory names and a fate worse than death. The focus of a woman's life was to catch the attention of a man and eventually move on to marriage. In order to do this, women submitted to wearing corsets, waist-pulling devices, and bust enhancement. They could cover ugly legs with long skirts and hips that, in my dad's words, were "two axe handles wide" could be covered with full skirts or bustles. Hair was saved from their hairbrushes and used to make their hair more bouffant. Modern-day eyelashes, falsies, etc., were unavailable to them. Every means of making oneself attractive was employed so as to not fall into that dreaded category of "old maid." The male could be fat, bald, ugly, toothless, and smelly; but he was still in demand because he could save her from that awful fate of being a spinster. She would probably have to drink lots of wine to endure his lovemaking, but he saved her from being an old maid.
There are so many cartoons regarding the assembly of the final product.
Sometimes when the bachelor finds the girl of his dreams, all is not as it seems or, as the French put it "Fortification Concealment."
We rarely modify images, but the two above in their original state showed the women in question removing prosthetic arms and legs as well as wigs and teeth that we felt was going 'too far' for our tastes.
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I find this postcard cartoon rather odd since Jessie was supposed to be rather fair and bonny: |
Jessie the Flower o' Dunblane
The sun has gane down o'er
the lofty Ben Lomond,
How sweet is the brier wi'
its saft fauldin' blossom,
She's modest as onie and
blythe as she's bonnie,
Sing on, thou sweet mavis,
thy hymn to the evening, |
The 'old maid' might appear a sad figure, but so does the bachelor without a woman:
The caption on the cartoon second from the right can be taken in a number of ways, but surely not.
Well, just have a look at the French and English cartoons below that describes the plight of the woman alone. As one might expect, it is the French version that pushes the innuendo.
"Hello, hello!!! Electrical department. If you can not send me a man tonight, send me candles!!!
Younger Women
Mockery of Fashion
This explicit and very well drawn cartoon actually does raise a serious problem. I have seen both girdles and corsets so low cut over the hips that lacing or a zipper was required to allow the wearer to 'toilet' as my corsetiere quaintly called it.
Foreign Cartoons and Animals
Apologies to the 'foreigners' out there, I suppose that is a non-PC title. What I meant to imply is cartoons from sources other than the British seaside. My mistake is beautifully captured in the following dialogue from the very amusing film 'Paul' (2011):
Earthling: "Are - are you an alien?"
Alien: "To you I am!"
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"Does she wear a corset?" is the French caption. Well apparently not, but the cartoon is just part of a corset advertisement that presumably is suggesting that she would look better with a corset.
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The cartoon above is nearly self-explanatory, however, the text is rendered in both French and Dutch and they are not translations of each other although they fit the cartoon. The French translation is "I’m certain that he will not be able to resist!" and the Dutch version says "He will not think of another." How strange.
At least in the middle, the captions are more or less the same in both languages:
"Another notch and I will have the figure of your typist!!" |
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Greetings from Carlsbad "Before and after the cure" |
The French version. Interestingly, the ladies on the left look distinctly Teutonic whereas the ladies above are far more - ooh, la, la! |
On this dual language cartoon, the translations are not even close:
"I mean to catch this post if I bust a stay lace!" is not "I want this card to arrive on time!"
I did try to translate the caption on the French cartoon (2nd from right) but I failed. It goes something like "These corsets are no good, but we can take care of that tummy!"
The whale cartoon is quite poignant since whales were once slaughtered for their 'whalebone' (amongst other products) to make corset stays. 'Poisson d'Avril' means April Fool and the caption reads
"When one has such a belly, one needs a corset eh! Whale." Regarding the Rhino (dodgy translation here): "Put an end to your torment. It's going to be fine. You'll look like a Gazelle". As for the pig, we're guessing here: "Everything tastes so good that the pig has to wear a corset!" I think this is a pun where the pig has overeaten (hence the corset), but pork is an excellent meal as well. Please could a German speaker help us here?
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When is a corset not a corset?
When it is drawn by that master of Mad Magazine cartoons, Don Martin.
This is a classic example of something that is obviously a corset drawn by somebody who has never actually studied one closely or who simply wants to create a grotesque corset impression. The problem that the lady has encountered is, however, all too real.
My husband remembers another Mad Magazine cartoon where removal men had carelessly dropped a chest of drawers and spilled the contents onto the street. One prances around waving a girdle in the air "I didn't know anybody wore these things anymore!" The lady of the house looks on with a mixture of anger and horror. |
One of KC's classics lies mid-way in accuracy between the cartoons on either side.
The corsetiere is well corsetted; correct.
The client is wearing a corset but the lacing is far too wide and one never puts the knee into the client's back and certainly get those stilettos away from those expensive and fragile stockings.
I know that it is only a cartoon and the effect is exactly what the cartoonist wanted to create, but this page is mainly about the accuracy of the depiction. |
In contrast, the artist who created the picture below does not even show a corset ...
... but it is obvious that the old lady wears one.
Throughout this page we have seen depictions that range from accurate to highly inaccurate, however, this is one of the most accurate. The stooping old lady, the hand on thigh and, most telling, the ridge of the corset showing through her dress as she bends. This artist knew about old ladies wearing corsets.
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Don Martin's cartoon above has a basis in reality in that flesh cannot be compressed, it can only redistributed. Two cartoons elaborate on this theme:
There is a genre of postcard that has become popular over the last decade, certainly in Britain, where an old picture has some supposedly humorous text added. The example below is one such:
Special Occasions
Birthdays and valentines provide no end of entertainment, perhaps inspired by Spirella's own cartoons.
These cartoons appear to be slightly older than the standard sea-side fare.
Here is the 'double entendre', but otherwise it is a stock picture of a corset. The town of Douglas, was crudely stamped on the top as, I presume, were many other locations.
Indeed, joking aside, rust was a major problem for the metalwork in corsets in the early days.
Comic Strips and Cartoon Characters
The most unlikely of characters are found to be wearing corsets...
You don't have to see the caption to know what's coming.
.... but ....
I think we should leave this page to the quintessentially English humour of the sea-side postcard where even the mention of the word "corsets" evokes a laugh!
