Comment on Helene E. Roberts' “The Exquisite Slave: The Role of Clothes in the Making of the Victorian Woman” and David Kunzle's “Dress Reform as Antifeminism” (vol. 2, no. 3)

“The Exquisite Slave: The Role of Clothes in the Making of Victorian Woman” and “Dress Reform as Antifeminism: A Response” are not only interesting in themselves but also typical of a certain kind of current debate about feminist issues. It usually involves three positions: (1) A common feminist position is to identify an erotic perversion or other bizarre behavior with ordinary social behavior in order to damn the ordinary social behavior; this is Helene Roberts' identification of tight-lacing with the ordinary wearing of corsets in order to damn the wearing of corsets. (2) The counterposition (often antifeminist, “common sense,” and useful in supporting the status quo) is to separate the two, calling one “normal” and the other “abnormal” in order to prove that the ordinary social behavior is innocent or even trivial. This seems to be David Kunzle's position: the ordinary wearing of corsets is entirely different from tight-lacing, and therefore the corset is not important. In fact, denouncing it was “the obsession of small minds.” (3) A third position, not present in this debate, is the identification of an erotic perversion (or other bizarre behavior) with ordinary social behavior in order to clear both. This is the strategy of wouldbe liberals, who wish to indicate that they aren't judging anybody as long as they don't have to talk about the revolting business, whatever it is. It is sometimes the strategy of erotic minorities prior to the solidarity of liberation movements, in which case it usually doesn't work. All of these positions mystify the subject.

I believe Kunzle to be right in insisting that tight-lacing was a genuine erotic specialization and that the ordinary wearing of corsets was not. But he seems also to imply that therefore the wearing of corsets was unimportant. If it was, was dress reform therefore trivial? Did Louisa May Alcott and Amelia Bloomer have small minds? I would say that nothing which reifies women is trivial, and that most of Roberts' statement applies to ordinary social behavior, not to the erotic perversion of tight-lacing.