There’s a post on CarnalNation that provides a nice overview of male corsetry. I do like the tone of the article, written by Suzanne Forbes.

Forbes notes at the start that she isn’t a huge fan of corsets for men, but then does give her opinions throughout the article about the types of corsets that she prefers for men. It’s great to see positive reactions to men wearing corsets.

Few items of clothing display the disparity between male and female fashion like the corset. Now that women aren’t forced to wear them, they’re seen as glamorous and sexy, the province of burlesque stars and Mad Men’s voluptuous Christina Hendricks, who modelled one on a US magazine cover. But no one thinks a man wearing a corset is cool. They just think he’s fat. While the female corset has undergone a transformation from underwear to outerwear, the male equivalent stays hidden under the clothes, a source of shame, proof of an inability to keep off the lager and crisps.

Read the full article about John Galiano here.

Supposedly, Leo donned a corset for his costuming for the film about Howard Hughes.

It looks like this commercial, posted on YouTube, was actually made for regular TV. It seems like one of those local TV advertisements that runs very quickly in before the local news comes on in the US. I wonder why Stella’s Corsets tries to brand these corsets as “orthopedic” corsets. Does this help in convincing men (and women?) that the corset is a medical necessity, rather than something just for vanity? Or, is this useful in the US for collecting some health insurance dollars in some way?

These aren’t really corsets, but it’s pretty interesting to see the growth of the male shapewear market. I wonder how much this market is really growing or whether the hype is mostly media-created out of a desire to fill a non-stop news cycle.

I’m sure that’s the context of this image from Getty.