Title page from Mrs. Flynt's manual.
In 1882, styles of clothing for women were restrictive to say the least: tight bodices and long sweeping skirts restricted breathing, made it hard to move freely, and, in some cases where lacing was taken to the extreme, might even crack ribs or damage internal organs. Whether or not all women adhered to the dominant style all the time is, of course, impossible to say; probably most women made adjustments as necessary for individual figures, injuries, or the daily work they had to complete. Serious dress reform for women was some years off, though, and many people thought that strict lacing and tight corsets were necessary for women’s health, particularly to brace up weak backs or prevent hysterics, to say nothing of the fact of keeping in line with the fashion which called for tiny waists.
When Mrs. O.P. Flynt published her pamphlet advertising her “Improved Under-Clothing” for women and children, then, she appealed not only to women as the people actually wearing the clothes, but also to physicians and “all friends and Promoters of Human Welfare.” Mrs. Flynt was an entrepreneur, claiming to have invented her own line of hygienic underclothing which would leave no woman feeling that her figure was being badly treated but, instead, more comfortable, freer to move about her daily business, and healthier. Mrs. Flynt relays terrible stories of women she has known whose health and happiness was ruined — or nearly ruined — by tight lacing but, fortunately in many cases, Mrs. Flynt was able to come to the rescue with her newly designed line of under-clothing. Mrs. Flynt’s under-clothing did still include the liberal use of whalebone — in one piece, between 4 and 34 bones could be inserted, according to the customer’s taste.
As a celebrity spokeswoman, Mrs. Flynt summoned up the famous actress, Mrs. Siddons. She claimed Mrs. Siddons had come to her shop unenthusiastic, convinced that she needed tight lacing and corsetry to keep her figure for her stage work. If she lost her physical attractiveness, Mrs. Siddons seems to have been afraid that she would lose her audiences, too, and that attractiveness depended on having a waist under 25 inches around. Once cajoled into some of Mrs. Flynt’s “improved under-clothing,” though, Mrs. Siddons was little short of reborn and left enthusiastically declaring that Mrs. Flynt could use her name in any connection with her work that she liked.
Mrs. Flynt’s little pamphlet is a fascinating exercise in salesmanship, imploring, cajoling, and nearly badgering the would-be customer into visiting Mrs. Flynt’s establishment and being relieved, apparently, of all pain and suffering by the simple exercise of changing from a corset to a “Flynt waist.”
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