r/comics • u/tabithajaneart • 3d ago

OC 2026 vs 1886 [OC]

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Great-great-great Grandma was serving

My Instagram, Tiktok, and Tumblr are tjnovakart!

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u/jade_cabbage 3d ago

I always get so peeved when people go and say corsets were torture devices women were forced to wear to please men or whatever.

My corsets are my most comfortable undergarments in my wardrobe. The back support feels amazing.

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u/Shoddy-Artichoke-528 3d ago

I usually have aching but when wearing a corset it feels like my ribs and spine are being held in the right place for once

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u/epileptic-caesar 3d ago

A guy I went to high school with had to wear one because of his scoliosis. and he was such a dork, poor guy

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u/buyshanegas 3d ago

hey that was me

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u/ZeInsaneErke 3d ago

You're such a dork

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u/DeadDwarf 3d ago

Poor guy…

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u/buyshanegas 3d ago

I am that too. :/

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u/Mr_Industrial 3d ago

Poor, a dork, or a guy with scoliosis?

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u/buyshanegas 3d ago

I am I can’t deny

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u/epileptic-caesar 3d ago

you're too old, but my condolences

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u/ArchdukeToes 3d ago

My cousin had to wear one for scoliosis as well. Also I think his twin brothers and their mates might also have thrown him off a roof. It was one or the other.

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u/Nukleon 2d ago

Did they tip cows too?

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u/epileptic-caesar 2d ago

i would assume he had to wear it because of the whole "throwing off a roof" business. and for some reason i pictured the roof of a barn

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u/HyperfocusedInterest 3d ago

Wait hold on you're selling me on a corset. I'm gonna go buy one now.

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u/Kiosade 2d ago

Don't buy it off the rack, it's going to be uncomfortable. Need to get one custom made.

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u/HyperfocusedInterest 2d ago

I would have never thought of that, thank you!

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u/atomic_redneck 3d ago

When I had horses I wore a back belt when loading/unloading bales of hay (about 125 pounds each). Back support absolutely is amazing.

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u/genreprank 3d ago

I wore a corset

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u/Aethenosity 2d ago

I felt/messed with my first hay bale this year. I was a bit shocked at how heavy it is, even though intellectually it makes perfect sense. Densely packed plant matter. I have hauled yards (edit: measurement haha, no pun intended) of trimming during construction work, but somehow I just always saw hay bales as these fun discs of fluff.

Dreams ruined

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u/SlowlyQuietly 3d ago

Corsets are a far more diverse support garment than they are given credit for! Theres 100% some that feel like torture devices, but you can say the same for bras or any support or brace garment being use incorrectly cant you?

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u/Lira_Iorin 3d ago

I had to wear a back brace once after breaking my back and it occurs to me that it might have been akin to an orthopedic corset, kind of like the difference between a stylish yet functional cane and the ones the hospital gives you.

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u/-Random_Lurker- 3d ago

I call my corset "the best back brace I've ever had." I've started using it while I'm working and such, it's kind of amazing.

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u/SlowlyQuietly 3d ago

Exactly!

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u/RosieTheRedReddit 3d ago edited 3d ago

Also, at the end of the day it's an undergarment you can take off whenever you want. What we do now with modifying your actual body is way more messed up when you think about it. In those days when the fashionable silhouette changed, they simply rearranged the padding. Now you have to cut and sew your body into the new shape 😕

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u/DocileBanalBovlne 3d ago

Bernadette Banner pointed to the most obvious argument against corsets being torture to wear: working class women wore corsets while doing labor. They wouldn't if corsets were so uncomfortable to wear because it would get in the way of earning a living.

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u/socarrat 2d ago

In the 2000s, I, a man in his 20s who was a 6 foot 200 pound chef with terrible scoliosis, wore essentially a corset to work until the heat rash became worse than the back pain. And looking back, I should’ve done more to alleviate the rash, because I’m still on pain meds for my back.

Hm. Didn’t plan on sharing that much, but a “Bernadette Banner argument for corsets“ mention always gets me on my soap box.

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u/RShini 3d ago

Also men absolutely wore corsets too.

The wasp silhouette was considered entrancing on men and women.

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u/Statistactician 3d ago

My wife loves her corsets. She wears them at every reasonable opportunity because of the back relief, especially if we're going to be standing for a long time like at a concert.

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u/Stained_Face 2d ago

I know people don't think that when they talk about it, but, in their defense, a wrong bra can cause harm, so obviously some people wore wrong corsets to try to be even skinnier, just like people insist in tighter pants instead of going to the one that fits better AND looks better just because it's a bigger size

(But, again, girls for corsets, and anyone actually, people have such a bad image and believe in so many fake news)

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u/Reikukaja 3d ago

Ironically, i sometimes wear a back brace. The first couple times i remember thinking "so back braces are basically just ugly corsets"

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u/PiccoloAwkward465 3d ago

Seems similar to the back support belts people use in jobs requiring heavy lifting. Or the one I use for weightlifting.

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u/anarcrafty 3d ago

Question. Corsetry has always been on my list of sewing areas to branch out into, but I have not done so yet. I have Ehlers-Danlos, and I had to have part of my left 9th rib removed a few months ago because of it. I work a manual labor job involving a lot of bending and lifting, and have been dealing with a lot of nerve and spine pain since the surgery. The support sounds amazing, but I’m curious if/how much a corset would limit my range of motion.

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u/FelineFlora 3d ago

With EDS you're possibly going to be looking at a trade of one discomfort for another. I wear a corset periodically to help with the pain from my sacroiliac shifting/going out. But when I wear it for very long it makes my ribs ache from the constant pressure. It's not as bad as the SI, but it's certainly an awareness.

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u/Main_Environment9401 3d ago

Traditional ones severly for your job. Get a back brace instead

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u/anarcrafty 3d ago

I have tried four back braces.

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u/Inky_Madness 3d ago

Working class women wore corsets and did manual labor. There is a very popular pattern for one called the “pretty maid” corset that was made from an extant working woman’s corset. It’s worth looking into!

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u/anarcrafty 3d ago

I will definitely look into it. Thank you. I know eventually I might just have to find a less physical job. But this one pays well enough to support four kids working three days a week, so I’d like to avoid that if possible, lol.

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u/Bonzai_Tree 3d ago

Yeah, my wife has massive bazongas, and she says corsets are so supportive/comfortable.

At least, for her, as long as she is standing.

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u/Sailfin_CritterMaker 3d ago

Might you share where you for yours please? I tried finding some for myself but I either get the "goth" corsets or the medical braces ones in results

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u/OrangeToTheFourth 3d ago

I'm a regular corset wearer and I like orchard corset. 

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u/jade_cabbage 3d ago

I got mine from mystic city corsets! There are a lot of measurements needed to get a proper fit, but it was definitely worth it!

I've also heard good things about Atelier Sylph for historical corsetry, but the budget is a bit high for me, and I don't have the confidence to sew her patterns quite yet.

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u/NickeBeee 3d ago

I'm not a woman but I'm interested in historical fashion, and I've heard good things about What Katie Did by women in the community

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u/OutlyingPlasma 3d ago

Mystic City Corsets are popular and real, not some decorative thing.

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u/PastShine7597 3d ago

If the men find out we can shapeshift, they'll tell the Church!

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u/fuuckovbeech 3d ago

So it's like a powerlifting belt?

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u/Love-Future-3000 3d ago

Well we did have textbooks showing how the use of the corset rearranged organs. I have not seen many modern women wearing corsets pulled so tight as they were depicted in history.

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u/SoLongHeteronormity 3d ago

As I said in my comment, that wasn’t common back then either! Best to think of tight-lacing as the Victorian equivalent of stupid tik-tok pranks for attention.

People have been doing stupid shit that contemporaries saw as stupid shit throughout history.

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u/Beginning-Struggle49 3d ago

honestly, makes sense that there were "extremes" or outliers in that time, that got more attention. I'd say we see the equivalent everyday online, theseadays

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u/Front-Pomelo-4367 3d ago

Empress Sisi had special corsets made to accommodate how tightly she laced them, and people at the time thought it was...a choice. She was also anorexic (stopped eating completely whenever her weight approached a certain point) and exercised excessively.

Most photos of tightlacing have been photoshopped (painted over or edited) by the photographers of the time

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u/RShini 3d ago

that tight-lacing was why she didn't initially bleed out when she was assassinated.

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u/ToraRyeder 3d ago

I'm living for your comments.

The idea that humans are just recently doing stupid things for clout is just silly. In a few hundred years, people are probably going to think that a lot of the things we see on TikTok were fads that EVERYONE went through.

Humans are just humans lmao

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u/WonderingHarbinger 3d ago

Try thinking about it like shoes. There are some crazy-ass shoes out there. There are plenty of photos and x-rays of how they will mess up a person's feet. The thing to remember is that most people don't wear those shoes at all, and even the ones who do don't wear them all the time. It would be unreasonable to look at a fetish site, or even the Louboutin website and say that those are representative of the shoes people wear in 2026.

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u/Captain_StarLight1 3d ago

Oh like ballet shoes fucking up peoples feet.

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u/WonderingHarbinger 3d ago edited 2d ago

I feel like pointe shoes have their own level on the wtfery scale, way beyond such plebian footwear as 8-inch lucite platform heels with live goldfish inside. At least nobody is putting 12 year olds in stripper heels.

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u/EasyasACAB 3d ago

At least nobody is putting 12 year olds in stripper heels.

I don't know if we do them anymore but there was a time Child Beauty Pageants were in the public eye. They dressed those little kids like strippers. From what I saw on a documentary about them they could get disgustingly raunchy.

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u/Barbaracle 3d ago

Shoes thing is actually kinda true. I mean it's not bound foot of China bad, but podiatrists say 63%-72% of people globally wear wrong size of shoe. Look up pictures of what a modern foot vs what a natural foot looks like.

I had to go through this myself and that's why barefoot, low drop, wide-toe box, etc shoes have become a thing in the past decades or so.

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u/twinnedcalcite 3d ago

The same doctors also said that riding a bike would cause a women's organs to fall out.

Also riding on a train was also a risk to a women's fertility.

Blame the corset for women fainting. NOT TB that was an ever common threat.

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u/-Random_Lurker- 3d ago

Or the laudanum they were constantly on.

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u/lieslandpo 3d ago

Those are fictitious depictions made to make women look stupid and/or silly for doing extreme things for fashion. Most people did not do tightlacing anyhow. That’d be like saying most girls are getting their ribs removed for a smaller waist in modern times.

You have to remember photos were edited as well. People vastly underestimate how much the rest of the clothing (large skirts and sleeves) does for the overall silhouette too.

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u/Intrepid-Attempt7577 3d ago

It's actually kind of a shame that these textbooks had such striking imagery and spent time on this little anecdote... Because it did happen, but was largely viewed as a vain and niche fashion trend that didn't see broad appeal even at the time.

Like if the textbooks of the future talked about 21st century fashion trends talking about how women suffered from wearing 6-8 inch heels all day in the office, and men were rendered temporarily infertile because skinny jeans and leather pants were too tight... Real things that really aren't as significant as it would seem.

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u/A-Grey-World 3d ago

That's because elastic was invented, and bras are typically cheaper and more convenient.

Most of the "moving organs about" was utter nonsense. Like how they thought the womb migrated around the body and caused "hysteria" (a woman having opinions)

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u/Aggressive_Kale4757 3d ago

A corset might finally be what I need to achieve that shape I’ve been wanting and fix my fucked up back. Interesting.

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u/JEverok 3d ago

Love my corsets, after 8-10 hours it starts getting a little tight feeling but that's probably because of the 8-10 hours of doing things rather than the corset

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u/windexsorbet 3d ago

A couple years ago I had planned a move very poorly and had to pull some all-nighters in the week before my lease was up. A corset I had bought for a costume saved me from so much back pain.

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u/SeveralServalServing 3d ago

Corsets were also originally for men and men continued to also wear them for a long time

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u/BamaBuffSeattle 3d ago

Oh god as a man I feel so misled now. Truthfully I should have just asked my fiancée if they felt comfortable, but I absolutely bought the idea a man would force a woman to wear uncomfortable clothes for his own... perditions.

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u/whyenn 3d ago

I get that "perdition" was probably intended but I'm curious to know if maybe autocorrect got you?

"Perdition" means damnation, typically one per person.

"Predation," the act of being a predator, is sometimes used metaphorically, and derives from the Latin word for "plundering booty."

And there's also "perversion."

Any of them could work, I'm just double checking—autocorrect has gotten me more than once in the past.

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u/TimTam_the_Enchanter 3d ago

Pretty sure the word being reached for was ‘predilections.’

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u/Any_Conflict_5092 3d ago

Predilection?

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u/peelen 3d ago

My corsets are my most comfortable undergarments in my wardrobe

I have zero knowledge about corsets and how comfortable they are, but there are a lot of things that are comfortable today, but were torture years back.

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u/Lils7693 3d ago

Yeah no, trad/proper corsets are great. The only difference is the boning, it's no longer made out of baleen (taken from hunted whales); there's steel boning (it's heavy) and plastic ("synthetic whalebone") which is the primary material now because it's lightweight and supportive.

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u/verdant_velociraptor 3d ago

if anything, corsets tend to be the reverse. they should be extremely comfortable if they're correctly sized to. Back in the day, most clothing was custom made, whereas most clothing today is off the rack so modern corsets are unlikely to fit well. That's usually what actors are complaining about when they wear corsets in historical dramas. there often isn't time in tight filming schedules for multiple rounds of refitting clothes, which results in ill fitting and uncomfortable corsetry.

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u/skelettmuskel 3d ago

can you give me a pointer for good brands?

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u/Wilkham 2d ago

What's your corsets ? Where do you buy them ?

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u/I_need_to_vent44 2d ago

Right? My beautiful corsets have done no wrong and they keep me from being in pain and angry at everyone around me (when I'm in prolonged strong pain I turn into a very angry chihuahua lol)

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u/scorpan37 2d ago

Good corsets are awesome and most corsets throughout history were probably comfortable and practical But at times through history high fashion has featured torturous corsets that were unnaturally shaped, some of which went so far as to cause restricted breathing and movement aswell as causing bruising and chafing but even then they were probably not worn on the regular

All that being said the corset is a severely and unfairly underrated garment and deserves way more respect

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u/ChicoChzckegirl 2d ago

Do you per chance have any recommendations?? I haven't been able to find any actual corsets that aren't just aesthetic pieces

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u/LurkingToaster66 1d ago

yeah, my wife wears her corsets when her back is hurting. Apparently helps a lot.

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u/liberty 3d ago

Men (and women) often wear "corsets" for heavy compound lifts, so it's surprising that the concept behind corsets is so elusive.

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u/Careless-Cake-9360 3d ago

There's your problem, you are conflating past corsets with modern corsets.

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u/fandoms-d-o-t-exe 2d ago

I a trans man want a corset specifically for my back (looking snatched is just a plus)