The month of September is marked by the opening of the Ashland County Fair, Friday night football under the lights, the first cider pressing at Mitchell’s Orchards, and the thundering cannon blast at AU home games. Autumn beckons us onward, and for the most part, we’re ready.
September is also a month to focus on the women of the greater Ashland community with this week’s celebration for 2019’s Ashland County Women of Achievement. The Women’s Fund of the Ashland County Community Foundation is also joining in the fun with their upcoming “Celebrating the Past and Envisioning the Future” program, on September 24.
One of the features of the Women’s Fund event is a display of historical clothing, including the wedding gown of Edna Garber, the mother of Ashland’s beloved matriarch, Dr. Lucille Garber Ford, and the grandmother of retired ATS professor, Dr. JoAnn Ford Watson. As the pictures confirm, in 1914 the young Edna said “yes’ to a beautiful dress.
As a girl, I enjoyed reading about the society weddings in the Buffalo Evening News, describing taffeta A-line creations with sweetheart necklines and cap sleeves, or ballroom gowns of organza trimmed with Chantilly lace. Yet despite my early interest in wedding attire, my fashion sense remains underdeveloped, so I can’t fully describe the Garber gown. It has a delicate lace insert at the neckline, and it’s apparent the bride had a slim figure, as the natural waist is accented by a lace bow. The cinched waistline was quite fashionable in the late 1800s and into the first decades of the 1900s, often seen in pictures from that era. It’s likely that Edna’s tiny waist came naturally to her, but I’ve discovered that many women went through a daily process of tight-lacing to achieve such a fashionable look.
Wikipedia, that twenty-first century source of all knowledge, explains that “the primary effect of tight-lacing is the decreased size of the waist.” I’m not sure whether Ethel Granger made the Guinness Book of World Records, but she is noted for having the smallest waist recorded at thirteen inches. She achieved that reduction by tight-lacing for most of her life, successfully reducing her waistline by ten inches. Ouch!
Obviously, I’ve never practiced tight-lacing, scared away by the scene from “Gone With the Wind” where Mammy tells the young Scarlet, “Hold onto something and suck in your breath.” Grabbing the bedpost, Scarlet does as instructed. Mammy tugs and pulls, and “the tiny circumference of whalebone-girdled waist grew smaller” (Scnoop website). Scarlet later remarks, “Goodness, but my stays are tight.” Or, as Lady Cluck complains as she plays tennis in the 1973 “Robin Hood” classic from Disney, “Oh, my girdle’s killing me.”
Because it pushed vital organs out of place, tight-lacing could be quite harmful to young women. I’m in possession of a copy of a letter from Maude B. Booth, who led The Salvation Army in the United States in the late 1800s with her husband Ballington. She wrote to women leaders, speaking of her consternation that “some women officers are addicted to tight-lacing.” She continues, “I say addicted purposely for I really think that tight-lacing is as bad as cigarette smoking in a man.” Pictures of Salvation Army women from that era confirm her observations. Even in women who swore off “worldly adornments” and the “follies of fashion,” the lure of the tiny waist was strong, and, according to Mrs. Booth, both sinful and life-threatening.
Now, more than one hundred years later, “we’ve come a long way, baby.” As we celebrate the accomplishments of this year’s Women of Achievement, and envision the future with ACCF’s Women’s Fund, it’s apparent that many of the constrictions that faced women a century ago have been lifted, as the constraints of limited opportunity have gone the same route as the daily wear of girdles and corsets.
These words hang behind my desk: “Here’s to strong women. May we know them. May we be them. May we raise them.” For Madelyn, Lizzie, and Emma, for our daughters and granddaughters, for the girls in the pew and the young women behind the fast food counter, here’s to an un-corseted future marked with strength, courage and boundless dreams.
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