Something that’s super interesting that I heard when learning about fashion history is that whilst ye olde times are often considered to be more patriarchal and restrictive than current times, there were ways in which the era was better for body positivity than our current times. Take corsets for example. The particular style and construction of them can be drastically different if we look at examples from across the decades. This corresponds to changing fashions at the time — a particular era may have valued an aesthetic of extremely pronounced hips, whereas another might value a thinner waist. However, what most people nowadays don’t realise was that, not only were corsets pretty comfortable, it was also fairly common to use padding to accentuate certain areas. In effect, it was the body shape that was more important than body size. So even someone who doesn’t have an hourglass figure naturally could easily emulate that shape using the standard support garments of the time.