First time I wore a corset I became a woman. Before that I was a person not at home for trying to be too many different things to too many people. I had felt responsible for the world’s destruction since I was five and put before the TV to watch crying Indians and baby seals being clubbed for their furs.

Femininity was frowned upon as being weak and less than. Again, this was a TV message. At college the message was the same. This message was not one espoused by any of my male professors. Only the bitter female ones who seemed to hate the young lady students as much as the young men.

At a Civil War re-enactment, I borrowed hoops and clasped on a corset. I glided around in a blue-checked navy day dress and smart green hat feeling like someone new. I was treated differently too. There is a dignity to uniforms and dresses that we rarely see in our modern casual attire. I don’t know why it took this corset to accept my femininity and begin to love it. Even the occasional guilt I had experienced for bringing more “useless eaters” into the world left me. Bringing beauty and love and more humans into the world is not weakness.