FIT TO BE TIED: THE POWER OF CORSETS
By Athena Bradford
I was browsing the aisles of my favorite sensuality boutique, when Raye Andrews, the owner, help up a black leather corset. “Try this on,” she urged. I had been fingering satin camisoles and silk kimonos to add to my collection. Reshaping my torso with busks and binding was not on my agenda.
Raye knows me well, so she hit me with her best shot. “I’ve had it in the backroom for weeks, and I’ve been waiting until just the right woman walked in. Flattered and feeling adventurous and slightly naughty, I agreed to put on the intimidating intimate apparel.
Once in the dressing room, however, I discovered that this was easier said than done. Fumbling with the laces, I tried to figure out the construction plan. Did the zipper go in the front or back? Were my boobs supposed to go inside or outside the scalloped edge? Could anyone’s waist possibly be so tiny?
Coming to my rescue, Raye reoriented both the bodice and my breasts and began to adjust the grip. “Take a deep breath and hold it. Don’t let it out until I’m finished.” Before I could object, she took hold of the strings and began to pull.
Anticipating a tourniquet, I discovered temptation. As the bumps in my road took on a decidedly hourglass shape, I kept urging her, “Tighter, make it tighter.”
I know what you’re thinking: “What sane woman would willingly subject herself to the bondage of a corset?”
Well, I am the first to admit that my passion for corseting defies logic.
First, I’m not the sort of person who concocts potions of pain, for myself or anyone else. Power struggles interest me, but when the tightening and turning of the screws crosses over into masochistic torture, I’m out of there: “If you ever do that again, I’ll fucking kill you,” have proven to be very effective safe words.
Second, like most women I know, I Hate, Hate, Hate wearing bras, and trust me; I’ve tried every possible variation. I’ve poured my 34B breasts into demi-cups and caged them in wire. I’ve supported them with water wings and pressurized them with gel. My poor tired tits have taken the plunge, endured the full press, and weathered full-frontal assaults.
I do own a sizeable stack of confectionary pasties and pastries for when I’m intent on seduction. When the mood strikes, I delight in decorating my cupcake breasts with black tracings of lace and caviar pearls. Displaying them on a cantilevered platter arouses my audience, and me quite nicely, thank you. But in the hide and seek tension of foreplay, my leading ladies are usually uncovered before the end of Act II.
For the most part, my bra is the first thing I shrug off when I get home and the very last thing I tug on in the morning
Third, I am emotionally allergic to all other support garments. Wearing Spanx® is pure torture, and I am always on the losing side of Lycra. Oh sure, these slimming foundation garments smooth out the uneven bits, but after all that squeezing and stuffing, I feel like an upholstered armchair poised for the moment of release. How can I ever utter the words, “I want you take me to bed and mess up my covers,” when I’m firmer than my mattress?
So why do I a have secret stash of corsets in my closet? Because while a lover’s hand encircling my waist is a caress, the pull of a corset’s strings is a command: “Pay attention!” Each tug forces me straighter and pulls at the core of my eroticism.
Corralled in a corset, my tightened waist becomes an internal landmark leading to a secret stash of desire. If as St. Thomas Aquinas said, “All knowledge has its origins in sensations,” lacing acquaints me with my core sexuality. A corset functions as a reminder, a passionate Post-It note, that I have something important to offer. I morph into a serpentine Eve when I experience my warm, soft skin rise up above a corset’s reinforced seams. Toss in some glitter and glam, and the transformation is complete.
Some women openly display their corsets to flaunt their sexuality. Worn as a tease beneath an open jacket or brazenly on view as a bodice, a corset is the ultimate siren call. Lavishly embroidered and embellished, sex falls from its slips at the slightest provocation. The restraining architecture cries out to be touched, like the woman within it.
That’s not my style. My goal is to feel internally flammable, not overtly incendiary. It’s a secret that I may or may not share with a lover in the privacy of my home, but the power is all mine. When I wear a waist cincher beneath a tailored suit, I’m concentrating on anticipated pleasure even while I’m discussing business priorities. It’s the mystery under the mundane.
Wearing a corset is not a choice I make everyday, or even most days. I am much more a slave to comfort than a supplicant of steel and suspension. Sweats are my default mode, and freedom triumphs over fashion whenever I’m in the position to make the choice.
Yet like a great many women, my sexuality covers a lot of emotional and physical territory—from surrender to dominance and everything in between. I wear corsets because I don’t want to be an infrequent visitor to those feelings. So when my confidence flounders or when my flames recede, wearing a corset is the perfect anodyne to a sluggish libido.
Sometimes smutty, always sexy, my corsets serve as bookmarks, recording the connected chapters of my pleasure.
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Interesting. I hated my experience wearing a corset but it was a lot less sensual than your experience.
I wore a corset one summer as a model at a science museum's exhibit on the effect of fashion on the human body. Everyday, I had to be laced up in a corset and dressed in a full Victorian 'walking' outfit while the presenter showed the crowd what was happening to my internal organs. Even in the air-conditioned exhibit hall, I found it hard to walk around without getting light-headed.
It's not an experience I'd like to recreate and I can't imagine anything less sexy than the corset I wore that summer. Every now and then, my partner suggests a corset addition to my lingerie collection but I'm not having any of it - not even the decorative-not-really-contraining ones. They bring back too many bad memories of gasping for breath while earning minimum wage.
I get the effect that a corseted body has-the exaggerated female shape is undeniable. What I don't understand is the fetishism that surrounds the actual wearing of corsets. How exactly does confining one's waist relate to core sexuality?
Why did you try so many different bras when you don't like them when you don't even need bras with 34B size...
then again i'm a student so i guess i don't have to enter mandatory bra world unless i get a somewhat decent job...ew. haha..
when you don't even need bras with 34B size...
Please do make assumptions about what another woman is comfortable in. Comfort with or without a bra is dependent on much more than just size. I am a 32/34A, and I am not comfortable without a bra. I even sleep in one. My best friend when I was 18 was a C cup, and she was perfectly comfortable without one. If you haven't lived in the body, you are not qualified to determine what the right amount of support is.
Thank you! I love corsetry. I don't cinch up much, because, like you, I'd normally just rather be comfortable. But when I do I love the constraint, and the steel, and the hourglass.
This is delightfully written, I really love your metaphors and word play.
My experiences with corsets has been like all my other experiences with typically feminine clothing and shoes - one of dress-up and delicious pretending. I flirted very heavily with buying a corset made to fit my body after buying a very cheap second hand corset for a dress-up party (Rocky Horror).
Your story has rekindled my interest, so thank you very much for sharing.
What a beautifully written post... you are a fantastic writer.
I, too, am a fan of corsets - though I only have one at the moment. It's black and red, and I feel damn sexy in it (especially because those colors look fabulous on me). Got it at Trash & Vaudeville in NYC a few years ago - sounds to me like you'd love it if you ever get the chance to go there.
This post actually inspired me to get another, and to have even more fun with it, haha.. thanks!
I have to admit i've never really considered trying out a corset. but i am very intrigued now.
I think in order to wear a corset responsibly, it's necessary to:
1) acknowledge their powerful history as tools of painful, dangerous physical oppression, as well as symbolic oppression.
2)recognize that it changes your relationship to your body by molding it (and in some cases disfiguring it). If you have an unhealthy relationship with your naked body, corsetry can't be healthy...and this line was especially disconcerting: "As the bumps in my road took on a decidedly hourglass shape, I kept urging her, “Tighter, make it tighter.”
I know this may come off as condescending or didactic, but I think that when you're dealing with something as heavily loaded with patriarchal history as a corset, it's necessary to take these things into consideration. Much luck.
I find it disturbing that there are so many backwards looking sexual articles on this blog, but I am not surprised. What the last decade has done to the fallen angel named feminism is make her a sex slave--literally and figurately.
When I think about what women have suffered through and died from to get to a point where women are at the precipice of touching the hemline of the possibility of achieving some form of gender equality in the USA, and we have women talking about loving the feeling of being constricted in a a corset. Would you who feel that this is sexy feel the same if a black woman said that wearing shackles made her feel sexy?
Kudos to EGhead for everything stated except the word 'responsibly' because the only thing a woman could do responsibly to a corset is burn it.
I would challenge the writers at this blog to think of a paradigm where equality is not simply talking about sex and/or sexual orientation issues as the whole of being a 'feminist.'