Amazon.com: Bound to Please: Leigh Summers: Books

Better Together

Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought

The Corset: A Cultural History by Valerie Steele

(8) $18.48

Fetish: Fashion, Sex & Power by Valerie Steele

(6)

Extreme Beauty: The Body Transformed (Metropolitan Museum of Art Series) by Harold Koda

(5) $19.77

The History of Underclothes by C. Willett Cunnington

(13) $10.36

› Explore similar items : Books (5)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
How odd that a single article of clothing could be experienced as a sign of middle-class superiority, an emblem of eroticism, a medically necessary support garment and a device for stemming childhood masturbation. In this engaging latest book in the Dress, Body, Culture series, Summers carefully exposes the corset's dual role in Victorian culture: it kept women physically subdued, while at the same time presenting them as sexually alluring, exaggeratedly feminine objects of display. Summers, senior education officer at Australia's New England Regional Art Museum, argues that corsetry was undeniably sexy, since its physical effects mimicked the signs of sexual arousal (shortness of breath, blushing, overheating); at the same time, it was a leading cause of fainting fits, uterine failure and severe abdominal damage. By far the most original aspects of this study appear in the early chapters on corsetry for children (some as young as two years old) and expectant mothers, who were told by fashion magazines and medical experts alike that "tight-lacing" might damage fetuses or, alternately, contribute to a healthy pregnancy. Everywhere, critics decried corset-wearing for pregnant women, accusing them of causing birth defects, "race degeneration," etc. Summers also traces feminist battles against the corset's hegemony. Her arguments on the role of the female body in advertising and connections between dress reform and the struggle for women's suffrage, will already be familiar to readers interested in women's history and Victorian studies. 107 b & w photos and illus. (Oct.)Forecast: While the book's likely readership will be academic, its gorgeous cover and clever title should draw browsers' eyes.

--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Review

"In this engaging latest book in the Dress, Body, Culture series, Summers carefully exposes the corset's dual role in Victorian culture."--Publishers Weekly

"Bound to Please is an absorbing and illuminating book, and will be of great interest not just to fashion historians but to all readers interested in the everyday lives of women in Victorian Britain and North America."--Feminist Review

"It's a thrilling story and Summers tells it well."--London Review of Books

"Summers delivers the classic feminist denunciation of the corset - that instrument of over-bearing patriarchy. [This book is] a concentrated piece of independent scholarship."--Dress

See all Editorial Reviews

What Do Customers Ultimately Buy After Viewing This Item?

	37% buy the item featured on this page: Bound to Please $31.95
	25% buy Fashion & Fetishism: Corsets, Tight-Lacing and Other Forms of Body-Sculpture (2) $24.95
	24% buy The Corset: A Cultural History (8) $18.48
	13% buy A Passion For Lingerie (3) $9.95