When Tom Paine was 13, he was apprenticed to his dad’s corset business; he made corsets. I guess I should explain what a corset is. It’s an undergarment for ladies, it’s underwear. A corset is rigid. It’s built out of sewn-together layers of starched linen with laces in the back and long skinny pockets or channels in rows for whalebone struts to slide into. A corset’s purpose is to flatten the stomach, tighten the waist, straighten the back and make a lady’s form more appealing. After you squeeze yourself into one, you get somebody nearby to haul on the laces to make the whole apparatus even tighter. In the 17- and 1800s, upper-class ladies wouldn’t dream of being seen in public without wearing a corset.
Here’s the epic movie Gone With The Wind (it takes place in the American South just before, during, and following the Civil War)—this is the scene with Scarlett O’Hara getting trussed into a corset by her slave, Mammy.
https://twonerdyhistorygirls.blogspot.com/2011/08/politics-staymaker-thomas-paine-1793.html
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