No more question for the heroines of La Chronique des Bridgerton to have an object imposed on them that sheaths their body and whose fashion effect they have paradoxically favored. The production of Netflix’s hit drama – which offers a colorful dive into the daily life of young girls in British high society during the Regency era – has announced that wearing a corset will no longer be compulsory for its actresses . They will therefore appear decorated from season 3 of the period series, which must be broadcast on the platform by the end of the year.
Comedian Simone Ashley, who plays the lead role in the second season, welcomed it in early February in an interview with the British daily The Times, saying: “Fortunately, we now have the right to wear bras instead. , and that changed everything for me. I can do a twelve hour day and feel comfortable. And for good reason: the decision is a direct consequence of the criticisms issued in recent months by the actresses of the series about the discomfort and the risks caused by wearing this historic accessory, which aims to refine the bust of women by tightening their waist.
“Keeping women in a tight corset for weeks caused health and safety issues (…) Many stars reported bruises and even breathing problems,” the production acknowledges to explain its decision, in comments reported by the tabloid The Sun. In March 2022, Simone Ashley had just been the first actress in the production to list the grievances addressed against the object of clothing born in the 16th century that became a costume, in an interview with Glamor magazine:
“I figured out that when you’re wearing the corset, you just don’t eat. It’s impossible. It changes your body. I had a size smaller very momentarily. Then, the minute you stop wearing it, you find your body as it is. I was also in a lot of pain, and I think I tore my shoulder at some point! »
A year later, in The Times, the 27-year-old actress added, “Corsets push everything down to your stomach. Which means when you take them off, you get a little bump. I hated wearing those corsets while filming Bridgerton. They are so beautiful, but I hate them! »
Displaced organs and difficulty breathing
Before the heroines of Bridgerton, several actresses had already shared their experience of wearing this costume which constrains the bodies and the game, even though they also sometimes underlined the benefits – in the service of the posture and the historical veracity of certain stories. .
In 2019, in full promotion of the film The Favorite, which has just been released on the screens, the American actress Emma Stone, who plays the second role, evokes with sarcasm the hell that this accessory made her live during filming, on the set of a BBC talk show:
“Has anyone ever worn a corset?” You really can’t sit down (…) For the first month, I couldn’t breathe either! I smelled menthol to make me feel like I was in a wide open space for thirty seconds, then I was back to not being able to breathe. After about a month, my organs moved. It was only temporary, but it was disgusting! »
The French actress Cécile de France, who bowed to wearing a corset to play the main role of the feature film Mademoiselle de Joncquières, released in 2018, declared for her part, at the time and in a more subdued way, at the daily 20 Minutes, how corsets “symbolize” in one object an entire era where women were confined to “very reductive roles”, due to the fact that “you can’t breathe in there”. As for the American-German actress Kirsten Dunst, who played a rock Marie-Antoinette in the film of the same name released in 2006, she simply argued, speaking to The Associated Press, ten years later: “I hate corsets. It’s not pleasant, especially during long periods of filming. »
It is for all these reasons, and also to make Disney’s heroine more modern by giving her back her freedom of movement, that British actress and feminist figure Emma Watson categorically refused to wear a bodice in the new film version of Beauty and the Beast, released on the big screen in 2017.
“Asking the question of clothing shows that feminism is an aesthetic gesture”
“In today’s increasingly woke world, it’s also not a good thing to encourage women to have smaller waists,” Bridgerton’s production source adds. quoted in off in the columns of the Sun, to justify the freedom granted to the actresses of the series. The production, which claims to be progressive, would thus embrace by this gesture the aspirations of its time.
Bérénice Hamidi, professor of theatrical studies at Lyon-II University and specialist in cultural representations, rightly believes that “this decision of Bridgerton’s production is in no way anecdotal”. “She manifests a double questioning, both on the working conditions of actresses and on the links between the way we create and the representations we produce. These questions have crossed the cultural world since the feminist awakening of
According to her, “to ask the question of clothing, in this case the corset, shows that feminism is an aesthetic gesture as much as a political one, which transforms and renews our representations and our imagination”. From this point of view, Ms. Hamidi judges the Bridgerton series “exciting because it carries contradictory messages”, with on the one hand “its assumed inclusive dimension and its denunciation of the conventions of the time weighing on the lives and bodies of women on the other hand. characters”, and on the other, “the persistence of an eroticization of ultra-stereotypical female bodies embodied by the corset, which swells the chest and shrinks the waist, [and whose wearing was] until now obligatory for actresses” of the series.
Skeptics of the announcement of the end of the corset on the sets of the series, often fine connoisseurs of the history of clothing, note for their part that nothing in the temporality in which the series is supposed to take place – the beginning of the 19th century – did not require the actresses to wear “long” corsets from the start – more restrictive and therefore potentially painful -, seen on screen, which in no way correspond to the historical period. But the series produced by Shonda Rhimes for Netflix has always assumed not to impose a concern for realism, to allow itself more freedom by mixing codes and styles.
“From the first episode, it is obvious that we are watching a non-realistic historical series,” agrees Myriam Fouillet, doctoral student in film studies, specialist in the history of costume in cinema. “The whimsical aesthetic deployed there serves to convey a message to a modern audience. The costume designer uses codes familiar to younger generations to inform the story and underline the characters’ characters. For example, the dresses of the Featherington family reveal the excessive nature of the matriarch, Lady Portia, by their garish colors, the overflowing of patterns and the profusion of ornaments, which in no way respect the conventions of the time of the Regency. All the more reason for the corset, although reinvented as a fashion accessory in recent years, to be abandoned without regret by the production and the heroines of the series.