15. Boned Girdles
In response to a woman's e-mail about whether or not a widely available and quite wonderful boned and zipped girdle, Smoothie's Always 21, was like the boned and zipped girdles of the old days:
According to my own memory, the Always 21 is a pretty good approximation of what many girdles were like in the golden age of girdles. My own experiences with girdles with heavy boning, hooks, and zippers were, interestingly, in the period from 1962 to 1965, when I was between 12 and 15 years old. My first girdles were of this variety. In my family, when a girl was ready to start wearing a girdle, she immediately started wearing a real, heavy, boned girdle. This was the case with many of my girlfriends, though not with others. There were some mothers in this period who believed in a kind of transitional period, who thought that, at least for daily wear, girls in their early teens ought to wear light-weight unboned girdles (perfect for their active bodies and all that).
My mom did not agree. We four sisters all went immediately to the real thing and I had absolutely no complaint. I wore my first girdle for Easter '62, was allowed to wear it to church on Sundays and for dress-up occasions, while I had to wear a garter belt to school or around the house. This lasted until the start of the school year in September of 1962, when I was finally permitted to wear a girdle all the time.
All of my earliest girdles were boned, and fastened with hooks and zippers. My mother guided us towards such girdles when we bought girdles and I did get some insight into her feelings about this when one of my sisters, the one who was two years older than me, suggested that she'd rather wear a somewhat less restrictive girdle. This particular sister was something of a tomboy in our family. Not a real tomboy (such a thing was inconceivable in our family). She was quite pretty, a skilled flirt, and very feminine. But unlike the rest of us, she was somewhat athletic and she was the only one of my mothers' four daughters who would ever seriously complain about her girdles.
She was also the only one of the four of us who had the medium-sized hips of women in my father's family rather than the very full hips of the women in my mother's family. The three of us with full hips were very glad to squeeze into the most formidable foundation garments. She, however, didn't think it was quite necessary, and although she understood the need to wear a girdle, she didn't feel that it was necessary for her to be boned and zipped all day long. At least this is what she suggested to my mother.
As I recall, my mother explained to her that young girls needed highly structured girdles, even if they didn't need a great deal of girdle control, so that they could develop the habits of good posture and so that they could become used to the kind of girdles they would need to wear when they were adult women. This seemed perfectly plausible to me. I don't think she was as convinced but I do remember her shrugging and accepting my mother's judgement.
I have wondered in retrospect if my mother also did not think it would be quite right to let one of her daughters wear somewhat less controlling girdles than the others. She might have legitimately feared that this would have highlighted the fact that the other three of us needed more figure correction than my poor complaining sister, who probably suffered an uncomfortably tightly girdled adolescence in part so as not to make the rest of us feel self-conscious about our figure flaws.
In any case, I do remember my earliest girdles as very tight and rigid. I also remember getting used to them. Though they were the same kind of girdle as the Always 21, I don't think they were quite as comfortable. The Always 21 is especially well-made, and it is able to take advantage of the technological advances of the last thirty years in the portions that are flexible. The girdles of the early sixties were rigid and rather heavy. Women today would never accept them. For us, though, wearing such girdles was a perfectly acceptable and very important part of being a well-groomed female.
I'd be curious to know what some of the rest of you think, who remember wearing boned and zipped girdles in our youth.
When Lycra came in, around 1964, my mother allowed us to get some Lycra long-leg panty girdles for summer wear. When she saw how controlling they were on us, and when she saw that our posture did not immediately go to hell, she tried them herself. From this point on, like most women in America, we became confirmed Lycra girdle wearers and eventually phased out the boned, hooked, and zipped variety. I still kept a few around until I went off to college, for a few outfits that demanded super control, but from 1964-5 on, I only rarely wore anything boned. My best Lycra girdles gave almost as much control as the boned and zipped ones, and they were much lighter and more comfortable. I should mention though that the Lycra girdles of the mid-sixties were not quite as comfortable as the girdles one can find now, because they apparently hadn't developed the means of weaving Lycra and nylon together as well.
Continue to How To Persuade A Woman To Wear A Girdle
Copyright 1995 by Suzanne. Used with permission of the author.
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Originally Posted April 20, 1997