> Did anyone watch Frontier House on PBS? I was amazed that the modern women
> actually wore their corsets everyday. I would have thought they would have
> stopped wearing them daily, which is what I had always thought frontier
> women
> would have done. Why wear them daily when you're out in the wilderness and
> you don't see anyone outside of your family for days, if not weeks?
>
> Pamela
>
This was one of Alden's biggest sore spots with the program!  There would
have been corsets that were less constrictive, but they would have been worn
- it was a moral issue as well as a dress issue.  Middle-class values, even
out on the prairie, and you especially wouldn't have shown up to the store
dressed as some of the Frontier House participants did - you'd have been
called rude names in the streets!  She wondered if the FH people simply
hadn't provided the lighter corsetry to the participants.  Plus, you saw the
FH women wearing a corset with nothing underneath, which wouldn't have been
done at all - the shift underneath was to protect the corset from sweat and
you from being chafed.  So basically, Alden was hoping that the women would
have been told to wear corsets daily, as the women they were trying to
emulate would have, and was a little disappointed at seeing some of the
strange fashion choices on the show.

Genevieve, who also remembers a few rants about peter pan collars on the
dresses and big out-of-period hats on everybody at the wedding :-)

Genevieve Ellerbee
Associate Registrar
DAR Museum
Washington, D.C.

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