"I am glad that the subject of figure training is under consideration, because so much nonsense is talked on the subject of tight-lacing."

"The fun of it is, all the condemnation comes from those who don't wear stays, either from men or from women with hobbies and without waists. All who have tried tight-lacing speak approvingly of it. I would not give up my well-made, tight fitting stays for anything. The sensation of being laced in tight is an enjoyable one that only those who have experienced it can understand. I have been in corsets ever since I was eight years of age, and I am now past my teens, and though I am five feet four inches tall and broad in the shoulders, I only measure nineteen inches, and I am in capital health."

That's a letter published by The Toronto Daily Mail on May 5, 1883, quoted in the long Wikipedia article titled "Corset controversy," where I ended up following my idiosyncratic train of thought after reading the Instapundit-linked NYT article "Can Compression Clothing Enhance Your Workout?" ("The clothes also are thought to refine proprioception, which is someone’s sense of how the body is positioned in space [and are] also... believed to reduce fatigue and soreness after exercise by literally squeezing the muscles with a kind of no-hands massage and, by increasing blood flow to muscles, help to flush out unwanted exercise-related biochemicals.")

The reason I was moved to blog this — other than my delight at the sheer length of the "Corset controversy" article — was that phrase "women with hobbies and without waists."

Blood and grammar.

1. Questionable sentence in yesterday's Daily News: "But a bride-to-be who stabbed her fiancé in the heart just hours before they walked down the aisle has now been convicted of his murder."

2. I've read about a murder that happened long ago in which a woman was stabbed in the heart with a long pin, and because she neither felt it — perhaps because of a tight corset — or saw the blood — which oozed slowly into her dark-colored dress — she went about her activities for many hours before succumbing.

When it comes to the Constitution and the Affordable Care Act, one must wonder who is the little lamb brought up as a pet.

"This court, cosseted behind white marble pillars, out of reach of TV, accountable to no one once they give the last word..."

That's the beginning of paragraph 4 of Maureen Dowd's attack on the U.S. Supreme Court.

Her rant includes many of the hackneyed phrases we're accustomed to seeing in anti-Court writing:

It has squandered even the semi-illusion that it is the unbiased, honest guardian of the Constitution. It is run by hacks dressed up in black robes.

How do hacks writing NYT columns dress up?

All the fancy diplomas... cannot disguise the fact that its reasoning on the most important decisions affecting Americans seems shaped more by a political handbook than a legal brief.

I elided "of the conservative majority" to highlight how political liberals bitching about conservative judges talk just like political conservatives bitching about liberal judges... and all their fancy diplomas cannot disguise it!

But I'm interested in the phrase that sounded new "cosseted behind white marble pillars." Can one be cosseted by pillars? What exactly is cosseting anyway? Did you picture something like this?



No. That's a corset. Do you let similar words affect your understanding of a word? (I once lost a spelling bee because I allowed the word "ostrich" to intrude upon my understanding of "ostracize.")

But cosset... it's something soft, not pillarlike, is it not?

cosset
1650s, "to fondle, caress, indulge," from a noun (1570s) meaning "lamb brought up as a pet" (applied to persons from 1590s), perhaps from O.E. cot-sæta "one who dwells in a cot." 

When it comes to the Constitution and the Affordable Care Act, one must wonder who is the little lamb brought up as a pet.

"Newt Gingrich... cloaked himself in churlishness and accessorized with self-pity."

My favorite phrase from Robin Givhan's fashion report on the Iowa Caucuses.

I like the literary device that characterizes emotion and facial expression as clothing. I wish I could think of a lot of examples, but what springs to mind is "You're Never Fully Dressed Without a Smile."

There's also "Let a Smile Be Your Umbrella." Somehow, I'm only thinking of old "smile" songs. Both of those examples put the singer in a position of advising somebody else to smile. Thanks a lot. It's not really too empathetic. You want a big, old phony smile on a man who's hurting? Hurting. Where is the song that acknowledges — maybe even celebrates — the display of churlishness and self-pity by presenting it as a fabulous cloak?

And can you picture such a cloak?

IN THE COMMENTS: MikeR quotes Psalms 109:18: "He wore cursing as his garment; it entered into his body like water, into his bones like oil."

AND: Here's the King James version:

As he clothed himself with cursing like as with his garment,
so let it come into his bowels like water,
and like oil into his bones.
Let it be unto him as the garment which covereth him,
and for a girdle wherewith he is girded continually.

"How to Undress a Victorian Lady in Your Next Historical Romance."

"Authors Who Crave Verisimilitude Learn to Unlace a Corset in a Good Bodice Ripper."

Apparently, it was much harder to get the lady's clothes off than the average fiction-writer would have you believe. But, generally, in fantasies, clothes come off — even fall off! — much more easily than in real life.

This makes me think about "The Peculiar Art of Mr. Frahm."

What year was it?

My history blogging continues. Before clicking, see if you know the year.

"Boston Corset Maker Says Women Have Grown Stouter" — and the the 21-inch waist is a thing of the past.

The Chief Justice spoke of Lincoln's "Christ-like character," but the President said Lincoln was a "natural human being with the frailties mixed with the virtues of humanity" — as the Lincoln Memorial was dedicated today.

Mrs. A.N. George of the National Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage is offended by the reference to "the tactics of the pole-cat when badly frightened" that appeared in a resolution by the New England Woman Suffrage Association.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyles visits New York and opines on Coney Island, suffragists, plumage laws, and skyscrapers.

Why hasn't the Women's Party put up a female candidate for President?

"Every man turned into a devil. We ran fighting and clawing and scratching and swearing for the ladder leading up to the deck. We found the hatches battened down. Great God, how the men did curse!" A terrible ship fire.

The NYT tries to explain the physics of "Young Professor Heisenberg," and Lady Grace Drummond-Hay talks to General Hermann Wilhelm Goering.

Tom Wolfe "suggested that intellectuals are attracted to socialism because it seems in 'good taste"" and it has the '''secret promise' ... that intellectuals will wind up with power."

The NYT wonders why it is that the 12 greatest women alive in the United States today are all childless.

"A fully abstract style based on tight grids and repetitive linear marks."

The painter Agnes Martin has died, at the age of 92. She was loved for her "fully abstract style based on tight grids and repetitive linear marks."

Ah, how well I remember in the 1970s, when a prominent magazine -- I've forgotten which -- analyzed the essential difference between male artists and female artists and declared that women's art tended to use a grid. Some key women like Martin did work with a grid, but to say that women used grids! As if it were biological! What a putdown! Without a grid, unlike a man, you'd be lost. You need a regimented structure to constrict you -- an artistic corset! And consider it, you younger women (and men): this is how major magazines wrote about women even after the great victories of the women's movement. This was considered a big step up from saying women simply could not be great painters. When I went to art school in the early 1970s, the school had a professor who told his students, year after year, that women could not be sculptors, and therefore the best grade a women could get in his class was a B.

None of this takes anything away from Agnes Martin, of course. Goodbye to the grand old painter, and thanks!

Martin seems also to be the patron saint for artists who give up their work:

In 1967, when her New York career was taking off, she abruptly left the city, wandered the country for months in a pickup and camper, and stopped making art for seven years. She finally settled in New Mexico, building an adobe house with her own hands on a remote mesa where in winter she was snowed in for weeks at a time...

Before leaving [New York] she gave away all her paint and canvas rolls, hoping young artists would use them. Once she starting painting again in 1974, however, she worked solidly until the end of her life, in a format that seldom varied: six-foot-square canvases on which she drew horizontal graphite lines and painted bands of color with subtly vigorous strokes. She changed her palette from series to series, using pale colors one year, and black, white or gray the next.

Everyone who has ever painted, then given it all up -- and I include myself -- might take inspiration from this grand old woman. Who knows if the day may come when you can find your way back to picking up the brush again?

Celebrity corsets.

Check out the celebrity-designed corsets. (It's an auction to benefit the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network.) Not that I'm bidding, but may I recommend the Julianne Moore? And note the Eve Ensler. It's really Eve Ensler-y.

UPDATE: Chris emailed me that link, by the way, which he found at The Dent, a Tori Amos news site. Tori has a corset in the show. It's bee-themed.

ADDED: Chris adds: "The corset benefit is for an organization that Tori Amos runs. Also,the bee theme is a double reference that her fans would get--one of her best B-sides is called Honey."