6 Popular Fashion Trends (That Killed People)
If we know our readers, then we're guessing fashion dominates your every thought. But how far would you go to be wearing the absolute latest and hottest looks? Would you wear something knowing it could, at some point, kill your ass?
Through history men and women have been asked that exact question, and time and time again they shrugged and said, "Eh, I'll risk it." So we wound up with things like...
#6.
The Crinoline
The crinoline is a hoop skirt that women in the 19th century wore under their actual skirts. It was made from horsehair and thread or steel, and the whole purpose of the huge apparatus was to make the skirt look more... skirt-like.
Also, since you were basically wearing a cage around your legs, you could probably use the crinoline to trap small animals and kick them to death.
How It Could Kill You:
The steel crinoline was actually so deadly it's amazing this thing was ever worn at all. Because of its design, it was quite susceptible to gusts of wind. There are tales of women on piers that were swept up and carried out to sea, where they promptly drowned due to having a fucking steel cage tied to their waists. It was also a bad idea to hang around cliffs or tall buildings in this sort of contraption.
The skirts would get entangled in the spokes of carriages, presumably dragging the women screaming down the street. Then there was the less obvious dangers, such as knocking over candles. Don't laugh; the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's second wife went up in flames this way, and she wasn't the only one.
Wait, it gets worse. In 1863 in Santiago, Chile, between 2000 and 3000 people died in a church fire. When a gas lamp lit the veils on the walls, people tried to run outside, but the width of the women's skirts blocked the door, and crinolines with women inside piled up in front of the exit, making an escape impossible even for the people who'd been smart enough not to wear hoop skirts.
What the Fuck Were They Thinking?
The crinoline, in making someone's ass look big, would also make their waist look smaller, and so women didn't have to wear a corset. Why would they take such extravagant measures to avoid that? Well...
#5.
The Corset
The corset, if you're one of the small percentage of our readership not wearing one right now, was meant to suck in a woman's problem-areas with the small side effect of cutting off all circulation between their legs and head.
The result was not so much an hourglass figure, but a body that became an actual hourglass. Queen Maud of Norway was famous for her very small waistline, and many of her gowns are still exhibited so everyone can view their beauty and not-at-all freakishness.
Compressing her organs as only a queen can.
How It Could Kill You:
The act of donning a corset didn't actually become truly dangerous until people started tight lacing them to the point that their insides were squeezed like a toothpaste tube.
Unsurprisingly, when tight lacing was fashionable people didn't breathe very well. With their liver in their throats and their lungs in their bellies, Victorian women invented "the heaving bosoms." Breathing the wrong way in one of these things could break a rib (a serious injury in the days before anesthesia) and cramming all of the organs inwards could cause internal bleeding. Female impersonator, Joseph Hennella, was doubly unfortunate when, in 1912, he first collapsed on stage as the result of the tight lacing from his corset, and then when The New York Times wrote the part about what killed him, they said it was his "increasing girth."
In 1903, a woman died suddenly due to two pieces of corset steel that became lodged in her heart. Yeah, when your outfit fucking stabs you to death, it's probably a sign that you've made a bad fashion decision.
What the Fuck Were They Thinking?
What else do you do when you live in a society that demands women have a shape that's physically impossible? They were stuck between wearing a thing that could snap ribs, or a ridiculous cage dress that could fling them into oncoming traffic at the first gust of wind. At that point, you just flip a coin and wait for someone to invent feminism.
#4.
Footbinding
Footbinding, aka "lotus feet," was a custom for women in China from around the 8th century until the beginning of the 1900s. It began with one concubine (that's archaic for paramour) dancing around in front of the emperor with silk wrapped around her feet, and it ended with women whose feet were so disfigured they could only walk very short distances, never mind do the Hustle.
How It Could Kill You:
In order to transform the foot from regular-shaped to crazy-in-the-head-shaped, women started early, at two to seven-years-old, when their feet were soft and their minds blissfully unaware of what would happen to their feet. First, their feet would soak in a bath that could be anything from herbs and water to urine and vinegar, depending on the family tradition. Then all their toes except the big one were folded down, and the arch of the foot bent back. The process would go on for a couple of years, with ever tighter bandages and recurrently disgusting foot baths, until the feet were about three inches long.
Footbinding cut off circulation in the toes, and the procedure oftentimes lead to gangrene or other life-threatening infections. Gangrenous toes were actually considered to be a good thing, because that meant the toes might fall off. The ideal was a foot that wasn't a foot at all, but simply a continuation of the leg. If the woman happened to die in the middle of all this, that was a real shame, but at least she'd be buried with nice feet.
What the Fuck Were They Thinking?
A woman with normal-sized feet was considered ugly and frankly, unwedable. We all know what that's like, when a woman who doesn't have hideously mutilated feet starts stomping about, walking all normal and shit. Would you want to marry that woman? Of course not.
Women who didn't have bound feet were considered to be provincial, because only farmers needed to be able to walk and get work done. A real lady staggered on her heels or rode piggyback, because she was unable to put any pressure on her toes (if she had any).
The foot itself was usually covered in sores, puss and gave off a repugnant smell, and if you happened upon a Chinese woman naked in the days of footbinding in China, the first thing she'd try to cover would be her feet. Not that you'd want to see those feet anyway; men actually never saw their ladies' feet without beautiful silk shoes on, but if they had, we're thinking that would ruin the mood pretty fast.
A "healthy" lotus foot.
I felt very ill looking at the footbinding. Thankfully I didn't hurl, but I felt it coming.
ReplyAm I the only one that thinks the "lotus foot" kinda looks like someone giving a thumbs-up with their foot?
ReplyI have never before been so ashamed to be a male until I read this article.
ReplyThe ironic thing? You mention in footbinding that the sight of the foot would have been a turn off for men at the time...and that's where things get even worse. Chinese men of the time had somehow convince themselves that A) a bound foot was sexy and B) footbinding led to the woman in question having a tighter vagina.
Reply...yeah. The Chinese communist party might have created a plague of locusts and declared war on intelligence, but at least their bizarre 'reforms' managed to catch footbinding in its net. Same goes for eunuchs.
How is foot binding not #1? Girls who had their feet bound could hardly walk without pain and the binding broke pretty much every bone in your foot. Not to mention it looks f*****g gross.
ReplyIt's not number one because the lists aren't in any specific order.
Those collars look incredibly strappy, though.
Replycorsets were also worn by peasant women, but they didn't tightlace to extreme. same way modern women might diet and exercise a bit to shake a few pounds, but without trying to get to size 0.
Replythere's always been a difference between a few fashion-nuts who took things to extreme and normal people who only engage in watered-down versions of that fashion.
thinking extreme fashions were normal back then and that we have only liberated ourselves from such idiocy in the past century is like a future historian picking up a vogue and concluding 21th century women were all on the brink of fashion-inspired starvation.
But aren't we? Aren't we, really?
Frankly people have always wanted to look like they didn't have to do work. When most jobs were physical and outdoors that required being pale as hell, strapped up and barely able to walk. Now most jobs are inside and sedentary it requires being permanently tanned and fit as hell. Because who wants to look like they contribute to society?
ReplyThe next time my boyfriend bitches about wearing a suit, I'm showing him this article.
ReplyBut...you didn't have to do any of these.
"Stop bitching about the suit - at least it's not a health risk."
Seriously needed some kind of warning and external link to those foot binding pictures
ReplyI actually did a report on bound feet when I was fifth grade. Me and some friends did a play. (in the end, the lead characters father killed everybody but the baby)
ReplyThat's... messed up for a play performed by fifth graders.
I'll say this about corsets: it's only the Victorians who really f-ed them up. I used to work at a Ren Faire (yes, yes, I'm a geek...), and I had to wear a period corset. We laced ours properly (snug but not lung-constricting), and it was incredibly comfortable. I could run and jump without my chest jouncing painfully, and the boning provided a built in backrest while sitting on benches. Modern corsets (of the practical kind often purchased by frantic mothers before weddings) sadly tend to follow the Victorian trend of waist cinching rather than the the original design of unparalleled support.
Reply Hide All See All 5 RepliesIt's a shame that something that can be so comfortable has been redesigned to the point where the word is used to describe torture. Fashion!
In early 2010 I had to have lumbar spinal fusion surgery, and was wearing a medical back brace for almost a year. It was a huge, monstrous, lace-up plastic thing. On bad days, the muscles in that area are still weak. I purchased a period corset at our local Renn Faire because it provided damn near the exact degree of support as that plastic giant, and did it much less obtrusively. I seriously recommend a trip to a Renn Faire for people struggling with back trouble.
hehe... the boning provided a built in backrest. sounds sexy.
Period to the Renaissance would the be bodice on the outside, corset under.... so I'm assuming that, at least for the original commenter, she was wearing a bodice. This was per-masochism.
even when laced in i have had no problem breathing. despite the boning corsets are still slightly elastic (talking about 'real corsets', not those flimsy lingerie-corsets).
they do provide a lot of support, the same way a belt provides support to a weightlifter.
When I first read the boning part I thought you were saying you get a lot of dick when you wear a corset.
I have an advert for Cheryl Cole's Shoe Collection right underneath the Footbinding section. Good to see the torture hasn't completely gone away, just changed its nature.
ReplyI have to say corsets themselves weren't dangerous, it was people wearing them in a stupid way. They were put on very young girls and actually effected bone growth. Or laced down too fast too tightly, like Kiera Knightly in Pirates of Carribean. She even admitted in an interview that she had the costumer lace her up as tight as they possibly could and then wore it for twelve hours - which would be like putting on high heels for the first time and then running a marathon in them. The proper way to waist train is slowly over time - a half inch a month at best.
ReplyQueen Maud of Norway was actually a sports nut - she biked, skii'd and skated constantly with an 18" waist.
The woman who was stabbed by her stays had to have been in an accident; a twelve carriage pileup or something. Even if the bones of a corset break, the fabric is going to hold them in place unless there's some other circumstance shoving them back into the body.
A whole lot of African tribes will do mutilating things to their women, rather like the footbinding. Some tribes would have their women stretch their necks out to horrifying lengths using bronze rings, and then there was at least one tribe who would require their women to stretch out their lips to horrifying sizes and put rings in them. There's an article in there somewhere, Cracked. I liked this article, by the way. Very nice, very well done. :)
ReplyThe tribe that uses metal rings to stretch womens necks is from Myanmar (Burma).
I wish I could think of another stupid fashion trend men had that would get them killed, poorly made military equipment aside. About the only one I can think of is old time absinthe fountains. They were made from copper, which would have been only kind of bad except absinthe is such a strong spirit it corroded the fountains causing people who drank the old absinthe to get heavy copper poisoning in addition to whatever the wormwood did. Meaning even if you do drink absinthe with wormwood, unless you also poison yourself with copper, you will not get the classic green fairy. Still... bad example since women also drank the stuff too.
ReplyThe Absinthe did not corrode the copper pipes. The Absinthe you're talking about was made in very dirty distillery's mostly based in basements and sheds. It was so popular that many saw it as quick way to make money.
Is it really ironic for the woman who made money selling lead make-up to die from it? I understand where you're coming from, but surely if there is a negative side effect of something you would expect someone who makes a living selling it to fall victim to it.
ReplyIt's not unexpected, which probably reduces the irony value, but I'd sya it was still there.
It made her rich - i.e. it helped her a lot. Then it killed her. I'd say that's irony.
Yeah, not irony. Even "poetic justice" would be a stretch.
The "lotus foot" thing is just horrifying. Still, I wouldn't be surprised if they got the idea from Trinny & Susannah
Reply Hide All See All 3 RepliesTrinny and Susannah? Who are they? Time-travellers who mucked about China?
Trimmy and Susannah? You mean Clinton and whatserface, right? Because the British "What Not to Wear" actually worked with the individual to create whole new wardrobes that would work with their body type, lifestyle, career, personality, etc. It's the stupid Americans who threw all women into the same pile and made them look like grotesques all for the sake of "fashion".
Juliet, Trinny & Susannah are these two old tarts from England from the show "What Not To Wear". Some people joke that they must have inspired stuff like foot-binding and wasp waists because they often support going to ridiculous (sometimes really expensive too) lengths to look good.
It's scary how the world hasn't changed today, and fashion still has standarts that pushes people to die. i don't like this world.
Reply Hide All See All 3 RepliesWhy you still here then?
Yeah, I dont like that society forces these constraints on people either. :/ If someone wants to do their own thing, why not let them? Quite frankly, it's restraining and antiquated. Thats what I told the judge anyway, but apparently not wearing pants near public schools is a crime now. Who knew?
and just like today most people in the past didn't go overboard on fashion: most women nowadays don't diet down to a size 0, most women then didn't lace their corset to extremes
It was actually communism that ended footbinding in China as it was then seen as a decadant aristocratic practice. Unfortunately, many women with bound feet were then persecuted. I agree with those who are saying it should be #1.
Replymany of those women had their feet rebroken and flattened out after it became illegal, further crippling them. Yay, sexism!
should be #1 because the child didn't really have a say in it and was lifelong mutilated.
far as a know it wasn't communism as such that ended footbinding (though they made laws against it), but more a general changing attitude in chinese society that led parents to search for ways to avoid footbinding.
but still: kudos for the communists in regard to ending stupid fashion-trends. not all of their social reforms were bad