Straight backed girls?

Question

I was on vacation a few weeks ago around Plymouth, MA and read something in an exhibition about how girls when growing up used to be tied to hardwood boards for several hours a day (not sure if they were laying down or standing up) to make their backs straighter as this was considered a good thing. Does anyone know if this is true or was common or uncommon.

I am a guy playing in part a girl role in a play (set in Elizabethan times) and I am really getting an insight into how badly women were treated through the ages. This was just another example if this is true.

Answer 1

Yes, it is true, and fairly common. I think it happened more often in the 18th century and Victorian times. Young girls might be strapped to a board at their back and secured with a collar. It sounds very cruel to us, but it was approved at the time.
http://www.staylace.com/textarea/history/&ccac2.htm
http://www.staylace.com/textarea/history/&ccac1.htm

(Incidentally, left-handed people were forced to use their right hands - and not so long ago!)

Posture had always been extremely important, and corsets and stays aided this also. In Elizabethan times, corsets could be partly made of wood, descending to a point at the bottom. Actresses today wearing corsets remark that it makes them upright at all times - not always negatively! There were different styles of corsets through the ages, depending on the fashions.

In Elizabethan times it was the custom to dress girls in adult clothes; childhood was not really recognised. (This attitude continued for a couple of centuries.)

Elizabethan corsets/stays:
http://www.elizabethancostume.net/corsets/history.html

More:
http://www.lycos.com/info/corsets--laces.html
http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A594614

Answer 2

OK, let's leave this "how badly women are treated" thing aside for a while....
A straight back means a good posture, and that hasn't changed until today. See http://www.bellaonline.com/articles/art34786.asp
A women with a "straight back" has always been desirable, for various reasons, and around the world. Examples:
China - A girl with a straight posture must come from a good family since it seems she doesn't have to perform hard work.
Africa - tall and straight stature is a sign of pride. Girls carrying heavy weights on their head are "forced" into a straight posture.
Europe - A straight-backed girl looks taller (and be honest, better) than one that slouches.
I haven't heard about strapping girls onto a board, but it is conceivable, not so much as "look how badly they were treated", but a strong desire of mothers having "the perfect daughter" to have her finding a man.
Today's torture: Pulling and waxing hair out.....!

Answer 3

I don't know about that particular injustice, but I do know that women have been subjected to covering their entire bodies even while working in difficult manual labor, as well wearing corsets so tight that they pass out and/or suffer internal damage. Women in far east also had their feet bound for years until they were painfully misshapen and could no longer walk. Women in many cultures and throughout history have been denied the right to own property, vote, speak in public, make family/business decisions, recieve education, attain employment, select their own spouse, become involved in government, earn fair pay, some faiths do not allow women to touch or read the holy books, history has also seen women sold into sexual slavery (which continues today),etc. As a matter of fact, women still do not earn as much as men, even after having the same qualifications and when working in the same job. As for the rights of women in government, Japan recently was quite releaved at having a male child born into the royal household to carry on the "male" ascension to the Chrysanthemum Throne. The country had previously been in an uproar, and was very concerned over the possibility that it might have to eventually give the crown to one of it's female princesses. Unimagineable, I am sure. As for the sexuality of women, many places in the world, particularly in Africa, still circumcise women by either cutting off their clitoris or by completely removing the exterior vaginal structure altogether - most commonly done in the girl's home village by holding her down and using a traditional blade without anesthetic or antiseptic.

I don't know about the back straightening, but somehow it would not surprise me. Women's dresses used to be made with a stiffly designed shoulder, chest, and back, to hold the woman's shoulders back and keep her back straight. I understand it was extremely uncomfortable, but made her neckline and bust look more appealing.

Answer 4

It was for posture, not torture!

Another technique was to have a girl carry a stick across her back (held in place by her elbows) for several hours a day to encourage straight posture.