A snippet I would like to share about corsets in 1913 plus questions about bust support.

[Yvonne De Rooij]

I was talking about old (edwardian to 1949) books on sewing with TheLongHairedFlapper on her youtube channel, and she recommended some freely downloadable books from archive . com

Comments

[ext_3749756]

Thank you for going in depth, I now have a very clear picture of what you described

[geminiwench]

I will argue that I have had the courtesy of many men sharing their feelings/thoughts/impacts of both their mother and their father with me... and they are just as grievous as what happens to adult women... its just men are taught not to dig into those feelings, perform introspection on their young stallioned hurts, and certainly not to SHARE those feelings. I have some really wonderful men in my life who have opened up... and their world is our world.. just a little different of a paradigm. But the hurts are the same.. they're just different

[virginiadear]

"But, I was a girl, and younger, and conversational.. and I heard IT ALL."I believe your being younger had a lot to do with it, simply because as one lady (enough older than I that she could have been my parent) expressed it, parents are anxious with the first child, because they've never done this thing---parenting---before, and they're so worried about getting it right; and being a girl makes a difference because we have a cultural expectation that females in our species will nurture our emotions

[geminiwench]

As a triple D cup.... OH THE PAINS!!

My mother is also big breasted, but was very honest about it and her body... that helped me with mine.

But the idea of women being squeamish about feminine bodies it's like.... why? how?? I don't understand!!

[virginiadear]

Y'know, it was just how things were. As I've already said, it wasn't dramatic, and it wasn't traumatic, and there are plenty of women in America (and in other parts of the world) who are wearing a bra with a too-loose or too-tight band, or the wrong size cup

[geminiwench]

I, myself, have big breasts. But I was not trying to assume you did, excepting for the fact that: "the breasts in question be larger than was thought 'necessary,'" which is a phrase I can't help parsing in a deeply cultural way. I feel it is like the way some people are raised to believe their nose is 'bigger than necessary' or the have more body hair 'than necessary' or 'should have' a bigger butt or breasts or.. or whatever. The very idea of ideal bodies is and anyone telling anyone else their body is 'not enough' or 'too much; in any way especially referencing 'necessity'... is really confusing to me, not intellectually.. but **emotionally**.

I'm not trying to belabor the point,.. but I might accidentally be belaboring the point. Many sorries!

[ext_3749756]

I'm sorry you had to go through that. I wonder what her belief about cup sizes was really based on.

Personally my brother and I are very much disappointed with our father. But my brother is still in contact with him and lives in the same street as our father does, so I think every time something bad/disappointing happens with my father it's salt in the wounds for my brother.
I think that it isn't generally socially accepted when men open up about negative experiences in their childhood, or just anything regarding their feelings in general. That may be why we don't hear it much unless it's our close male relative.

[virginiadear]

"I'm sorry you had to go through that. I wonder what her belief about cup sizes was really based on."Thank you, but please not to be sorry. In the end it wasn't all that dramatic, just not a correct fit, you know? And bodily I took no harm from it, had no physical pain, nor any emotional pain (probably because I simply trusted that my mother knew what she was doing when she'd select my bras for me when I was still in school: mom's a woman, I'm a girl, so it must be right), and eventually I did come to realize that I was wearing the wrong cup size, but the percentage of women who do [wear the wrong sized bra without knowing they're doing so] is staggeringly high, at least in this country

[ext_3749756]

As a dutch person writing to mostly americans on the internet in english I have learned to say "I am so sorry that you had to go through that" when I actually mean "I empathize with you" . I am under the impression that the former sounds nicer.
I had gotten so used to using this wording to express my empathy that I started using it in dutch too, and stumbled into the "what are you apologizing for? You had nothing to do with that" reaction.

I made the mistake of trusting my mother's wisdom 100% and putting her on a pedestal.
Of course she has made mistakes, some of which had a large negative impact on my teen years.
I have forgiven her for it and come to the conclusion that she did the best she could.
But that was in my late twenties, and only after my mother and I talked about the past.

[virginiadear]

"As a dutch person writing to mostly americans on the internet in english I have learned to say "I am so sorry that you had to go through that" when I actually mean "I empathize with you" . I am under the impression that the former sounds nicer.
I had gotten so used to using this wording to express my empathy that I started using it in dutch too, and stumbled into the "what are you apologizing for? You had nothing to do with that" reaction."I believe I understand what you are saying, here (above.) Personally, I prefer your actual meaning, that of empathizing with another person, and wish more of my countrymen and -women would learn to use it as well as to make the distinction between empathizing and sympathizing

[ext_3749756]

I was fortunate that my mother has changed for the better over the years as well (this mainly happened from my mid to late twenties).
She had a lot of her own issues to get through.
Sometimes when tell others that she has changed too, they reply by saying that it isn't her that has changed but our interactions since I am no longer in my teens.
These are people who barely know her so I think that is kind of an ignorant thing to say.
Parents can and do change imo.
We get along much better now and that has nothing to do with me not being a teen anymore. My mother was a very bitter, troubled and stressed out person until I was 24 or so.

[virginiadear]

I agree: a great deal gets said in ignorance, sometimes also a kind of "passing [a lesson] along," as in telling the listener something of which he or she is already well aware, simply because the speaker had had it presented to them when they'd rather not have heard it and have been waiting for an opportunity to be the teacher of that same lesson.

[ext_3749756]

That is so accurate of what usually happens :)

Even I am sometimes afraid I telling someone something they are already know, and I am afraid they feel that their intelligence is insulted.

[virginiadear]

There's bound to be some repetition, you know, both in the saying/writing and in the hearing/reading, but no one knows everything and often a repeat of something known long ago (or even not so long ago) but since forgotten can spark memory and enthusiasm, so it seems to me we need to relax our egos on that score.
On these social media platforms, particularly, I've noticed that people get rather prickly. I suspect they forget: this isn't private e-mail, for one thing, and we don't truly know one another all that well, for another thing. One person snarled at me on one occasion that they already knew thus-and-such and didn't need me to tell them their own cultural history.
No doubt they didn't, but plenty of other people were (or could have been) reading on that public forum, and without that explanation they might have been clueless if they were a stranger to the subject at hand.

[ext_3749756]

I think a good conclusion could be, just as you say, we can't know everything about anybody else.
When I remember to do so I include a disclaimer such as "if you already know this, disregard this message".