wtf: “Megan Fox Reveals She Wore 18-Inch Corset in New Flick”

I can't even say anything witty or... anything. Wow.

Holy shit... that's not normal.

Now you know why women kept having fainting spells in classical literature.

That's ridiculous.

Yes, that is terrible.

And ironic when you consider that the whole idea of "thin = beautiful" really didn't start going to such extremes until after the end of World War I. But then I doubt the producers of that movie were all that interested in historical accuracy.

(In the bedroom, Scarlett is having Mammie measure her waist.)

SCARLETT: Try again Mammie.

MAMMIE: Twenty inches.

SCARLETT: Twenty inches? I've grown as big as Aunt Pitty. You've

simply got to make it eighteen and a half again, Mammie.

MAMMIE: You done had a baby, Miss Scarlett. And you ain't never

going to be no eighteen and a half inches again. Never. And there

ain't nothing to do about it.

SCARLETT: There is something to do about it. I'm just not going to

get old and fat before my time. I just won't have any more babies.

MAMMIE: I heard Mr. Rhett said that he\'d be wanting to have a son

next year.

SCARLETT: Go tell Captain Butler I decided not to go out after all.

I'll have supper in my room.

(Scarlett sits motionless in the chair, fixing her eyes on a picture. It is

a picture of Ashley. Then Rhett comes in. Scarlett hurriedly turns the

picture upside down.)

RHETT: I got your message. I'll have them bring my supper up here

too. No objections to that, I hope.

SCARLETT: No...yes, I...I mean I don't care where you have your

supper. Rhett?

RHETT: Yes?

SCARLETT: You see...well, I've decided-well, I hope I don't have

any more children. (Rhett notices the picture of Ashley.)

RHETT: My pet, as I told you before Bonnie was born. It is

immaterial to me whether you have one child or twenty.

SCARLETT: I know, but do you know what I...do you know what I

mean?

RHETT: I do. And do you know I can divorce you for this?

omg. i want to see an xray of how the internal organs have shifted positions when the corset is on....

omg. i want to see an xray of how the internal organs have shifted positions when the corset is on....

Just do a Google search on tightlacing (word of caution: not entirely work-safe). Current world-record is 15 inches btw.

Jeezus, how was she able to deliver her lines with her body constricted like that?! Maybe she does deserve a little credit...

Wait...

No.

This is the dominance of the male gaze taken to dangerous extremes.

What? Whose male gaze? Not mine. My male gaze looks at that picture and says "Get that horrifying shit off of her before her kidney pops out of her eye socket."

Obviously someone, somewhere, thinks that looks sexy, which is utterly mystifying. All I get is sympathy pain.

Uncool.

This is the dominance of the male gaze taken to dangerous extremes.

That's not right. It can certainly be called the application of the male gaze taken to dangerous extremes. But in 2010 the sight of a corset is such an extreme example that I don't think it's fair to relate it to the dominance of male gaze. It's the same as how isolated instances of female gaze do not balance the culture. Dominance here is about patterns. The female gaze could be dominant in our culture and an 18-inch corset would still be a very bad example of male gaze. Your argument about the dominance of male gaze over female gaze in our culture is perfectly valid. It neither needs, nor benefits from, the demonization of the male gaze in and of itself.

I'm sure they thought they were going for historical accuracy with the 18 inch waist, after all Victorian women did that. Victorian women were also much much smaller in general (have you seen Victorian clothes in a museum? Everything about them is smaller, accross the shoulders, height etc). So an 18 inch waist on a Victorian woman was not the same as an 18 inch waist on a modern woman (and even then, it made them faint).

It seems to me that, if they really wanted to achieve that look, they could have put her in an appropriately sized green corset and just "cinched her up" to 18 inches with CG in post. No uncomfortable actress, and some lucky Photoshop jockey gets paid. If they can give Ryan Reynolds an all-CG costume for the new Green Lantern movie, surely they can do that.

Then again, a devil's advocate position: The annals of film acting are full of horror stories about hellish costumes. I wonder how much different this really is from other actresses and actors who undergo hours of makeup or prosthetics, or wear painful, constricting superhero suits, all for the sake of looking just right for the camera.

Dr. Rocketscience, I would agree with you, I'd say that the prevalence of porny breast implants is more indicative of the modern male gaze at work. But I would not agree with you about the "demonization" of male gaze. Pointing out the dangerous, painful ways which women conform to the male gaze (foot-binding, corsets, breast implants and other elective cosmetic surgeries, for examples) is not "demonizing" anything, even if the observation was a bit anachronistic. It is still on the same continuum.

Isobel, yes! This vintage-phile is way too Amazonian in stature to ever fit into those tiny, neat duds (NOT corsets, though, I'm not interested in bruising my internal organs). Poop.

omg. i want to see an xray of how the internal organs have shifted positions when the corset is on....

Rather an MRI of the brain of whoever thought this was a good idea so we can see what's wrong with their head. Director used to be an animator at Pixar.. trying to make everything look cartoony and forgot people aren't CG?

I'm sure they thought they were going for historical accuracy with the 18 inch waist, after all Victorian women did that. Victorian women were also much much smaller in general (have you seen Victorian clothes in a museum? Everything about them is smaller, across the shoulders, height etc). So an 18 inch waist on a Victorian woman was not the same as an 18 inch waist on a modern woman (and even then, it made them faint).

Point taken, Isobel.

But didn't the latter end of that era also give us the Gibson Girl, an idealized female who most definitely was not thin by today's standards? And were the most famous stars of that era (for example, Lily Langtry) really that thin compared to modern women? There was probably never a time in American society where being fat and female was entirely popular but there were times when society's definitions of "fat" and "thin" were a lot more kinder to women than they are today. Thus, in the age when Mae West, Jane Russell, Marilyn Monroe and other full-figured women were still famous, it was not unknown to see novels and short stories in which the female characters would look at themselves in the mirror and wonder if they were too skinny. I doubt that happens much today.

Quoth Elizabeth Swann: "You like pain? Try wearing a corset!" *hits pirate with a pole*

18 inches?!? That is beyond ridiculous. To put that into perspective, professional models struggle to get down to the industry-standard of 24 inches.

May I suggest, before making judgements about the male or female gaze, that you take a look at 'Fashion & Fetishism: Corsets, Tight-Lacing and Other Forms of Body-Sculpture' by David Kunzle. He examines the history of tight-lacing and comes to the conclusion that:

(a) Even at the height of the Victorian tight-lacing craze, it was very rare for women to go below 18 inches.
(b) In fact, tight-lacing was very strongly opposed by the male establishment. It seems to have been something women did of their own accord. This can be seen from the often rather over-heated correspondence pages of some of the Victorian women's journals.

I'd also comment in passing that in her memoirs, Katharine Hepburn claims to have had an 18 inch waist in the late '30s.

@figbash:

I don't get it. What does any of that have to do with Megan Fox getting squeezed like toothpaste here in 2010?

(b) In fact, tight-lacing was very strongly opposed by the male establishment. It seems to have been something women did of their own accord.

I think this ignores the way women often accept and internalize patriarchial standards of beauty. And men being against it doesn't particularly mean much if the images they were distributing of women at the time still showed them with ridiculously thin waists and then considered these images attractive, beautiful or arousing.

Yeah, "demonize" isn't the right word. I realized that a 1/2 hour later when went to try again to sleep. Let me rephrase.

Corsets are bad. The dominance of male gaze is bad. But the dominance of the male gaze is not bad because corsets are bad, nor vice versa. Again, a corset is not the dominance of the male gaze gone to extremes, it's just the male gaze, in and of itself, gone to extremes. women everywhere wearing corsets would be the dominance of the male gaze gone to extremes.

Also, why do people put things "on the same spectrum" in an attempt to equivocate, when to put things on a spectrum is specifically not to make them equivalent. For instance, i could say that fishing is "on the same spectrum" as cannibalism. Or that "not with us" is on the same spectrum as "with the terrorists".

Again, a corset is not the dominance of the male gaze gone to extremes, it's just the male gaze, in and of itself, gone to extremes. women everywhere wearing corsets would be the dominance of the male gaze gone to extremes.

After considering MaryAnn's response, I concede that it is the dominance of the male gaze. The fact that a man told her to do this, and she didn't say "hell no" and no one else said "stop this madness" is dominance. Everyone involved thought this would appeal to the average man, and that was enough to make it happen.

Which, again, uncool.

Maybe continuum was the wrong word. What I meant was, even though the expression of the male gaze might change over time (some eras skinny is in, some eras chubby is in, we've gone from corsets to breast implants, etc), the male gaze itself remains ubiquitous and, whatever form it takes, oppressive.

@ Tonio - I didn't mean that Victorian women were thinner (they probably weren't) but that they were just smaller in general (as were men), so 18 inches was bigger then than it is now, and even then it was damaging. I think I remember reading that 5 foot 4 was considered really quite tall for a Victorian woman and that's short now, whereas now I'm five foot nothing and am by far the shortest person I know.

For a long time, I've been trying to convince people that Megan Fox isn't an actual human being, that she's a pure CGI construct just like Optimus Prime. The whole "in love with a Russian stripper" thing, real people don't do that.

This is not a picture of an actress, it's a cartoon character.

the male gaze itself remains ubiquitous and,whatever form it takes, oppressive.

(Emphasis mine)

Here you lose me again. The male gaze, in and of itself, is not inherently bad. What's bad is that the male gaze as an aesthetic is dominant to an extreme in culture, neglecting the desires and interests of half the human population. That some expressions of the male gaze are harmful is a separate issue.

To put it another way, if the male gaze is bad, how does that make the female gaze good? Or are we trying to get two wrongs to make a right?

It's a myth that all Victorian women squashed their waists down to ridiculous sizes. Fashion historian Valerie Steele did something interesting a few years ago- rather than looking at the "idealized" illustrations, handwringing articles bemoaning the state of womanhood, etc., she actually studied corset ADVERTISEMENTS from the period- which show much more clearly what was really available to women, and what they were really buying. She found most advertised waist sizes in the 20-30-inch range, with larger sizes readily available as well.

That is not at all to negate the male gaze or the fact that women DID modify their bodies with major foundation garments because of it. Those illustrations, catalog pictures, etc. DID represent a hugely distorted male ideal, and one to which women did make efforts to conform, even if the reality didn't usually mirror the extreme.

I am trying to think of what a similar apparatus for men would be like.
An under nut sack wire brace that holds the testicles in an up right and locked position?
Maybe something like in The Incredibles where the guy would stuff himself into a similar corset that then forces his beer gut up into his chest?

Men DID corset. Still do, though it's rare. There was even a CSI episode about it! :) Briefly in the early 1800s, it was fashionable for men to have that wasp-waist look too.

And Shatner, of course. :-)

Lee Marvin's gunslinger with a heart of gold character in Cat Ballou donned a corset toward the end of that movie. Who knew that was historically accurate?

That's pretty sick.

It's obvious that there is a mass-produced standard of beauty in this nation that is oppressive, painful.

It's used to drive a billion-dollar-a-year industry devoted to tummy-tucks, diet crazes, and making otherwise wonderful women feel inadequate and viewed solely in the context of their bodies and their ability to provide pleasure for men.

A task made increasingly difficult by the selfishness and fetishism of male sexuality in our culture.

When will it end?

This is about comic book portrayals of females more than movies. They are making her look the way women are portrayed in comics--Barbie doll type proportions. Look at that new Wonder Woman--her outfit is OK, but the ratio of her waist to he hips/thighs and bust are probably similar to what they are doing with the corset here.