We're getting really excited about the upcoming paperback release of my book
Victorian Secrets: What A Corset Taught Me About the Past, the Present, and Myself.
To help build the anticipation for everyone else as high as it is for us, here are a few short excerpts from the book. This excerpt describes my first experience cycling in my corset.
Enjoy!
Victorian Secrets: What A Corset Taught Me About the Past, the Present, and Myself.
To help build the anticipation for everyone else as high as it is for us, here are a few short excerpts from the book. This excerpt describes my first experience cycling in my corset.
Enjoy!
Excerpted from Victorian Secrets... (Skyhorse Publishing, 2013), p. 45:
I have never had a driver’s license, and it was my custom to ride my bicycle to school. I was a little nervous about cycling corseted, but after going a few blocks, I realized I needn’t have worried. My posture was a bit more upright than the classic cycling position, but nothing quintessential had changed. The corset didn’t interfere with my legs’ range of motion, and of course, my arms were completely free. The added stiffness on my torso required a bit of acclimation as my body practiced the little hindbrain tricks of balancing that a cyclist does so quickly that conscious thought doesn’t get a chance to enter into them, but overall the changeover from uncorseted to corseted riding was really no harder than a shift from off-road tires to slicks: something to get used to, nothing to worry about...
Ladies’ riding outfits, for horse and cycle, circa 1889. In the high-wheeler days of the 1880s, women preferred tricycles like the one seen in this fashion plate to the penny-farthing bicycles that men rode. When the safety bicycle (with its two same-size wheels and more modern look) boomed in popularity in the 1890s, its use was eagerly adopted by riders of both sexes.
Me on my bike. Photo courtesy Matt Choi, Mary Studio.
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