Corsets: Tight Lacing! (1879)

An unnamed Dress Reformer, utterly against "tight lacing" (corsets), uses the art of poetry to explain that everything that ills a woman--from her attitude to her nature, from length of life to a red-tipped nose--is all a result of the ill-fated habit of tightly cinched corsets. This vintage newspaper publication is an example of the American Victorian's use of humor to blame fashion on craziness with a price too steep to pay.