Corselletes, Corset Discipline & Institutional Hair and Fingernail Cutting

Today's posting was going to be one of those explanatory things - this one dealing with the corselet (corsellete), a garment that crops up in description several times in INSTITUTIONALISED volume 1 and will undoubtedly do so again along with corsets, corset discipline and other associated subjects in the subsequent volumes. I don't have time at the moment to post up any explanatory illustrations as I am hard at work on volume 2 and the writing is coming along quite nicely today so I don't want to interrupt my flow as it were. I have located some interesting articles and a suitable website to visit however and those links are posted below.

On a completely different tack: while looking around a forced-hair-cutting story site last night I came across what I think is a really great storyline, or at least has the potential to be so if it was to be continued by the author. It is called Industrial School Days by Harry Standing and is easily one of the best things I've ever read incorporating the hair cutting (and indeed fingernail cutting) theme. The tale has quite a lot in common with part of the INSTITUTIONALISED storyline in that the main character hasn't really done anything to justify her incarceration (so I guess it has a certain affinity with those so-called ‘blameless punishments’ so beloved of the 1980s Janus letters pages correspondents), secondly (and this part I love), despite being placed in ‘care’ initially just for the weekend it becomes clear that this period is likely to extend to 21 days and it is hinted that such a period could possibly be extended, quite legally, perhaps indefinitely (I certainly hope so). She has done little wrong, she is really there at the whim of others. Finally, the tale is based loosely on the existence of, and the exploitation that allegedly occurred in, the Magdalene Laundries or asylums of Ireland (See also the 2002 film written and directed by Peter Mullan entitled: The Magdalene Sisters, click to view trailer), a little bit of history that went a long way in influencing the direction of my writing in the INSTITUTIONALISED series. Click on the title above to link to this story.

Hopefully I will be returning to this post later today or early tomorrow when I will post up the relevant illustrations etc.

Corset article 1
Corset article 2
Corset article 3
Corset design resource site

Forced Haircutting Again Raises its Beauteous Head

Forced Haircuts

.....

Yesterday I did indeed, as planned, spend pretty much the whole day in various houses of public refreshment in the Turnpike Lane / Hornsey area of north London. to be honest I didn't get as much writing done as as I would have liked to have but I did manage to progress some part of a particularly twisted little chapter that I have been working on for some time now - I can't say much about the plotline about giving it all a way but it is probably the most diabolical piece of nastiness I have come up with to date and I have only been lavishing the love care and attention on it that it deserves, even if the effort is hopelessly disproportionate to the space it will likely finally come to occupy in the book.

Also yesterday I related how the day before I had swapped comics with an old schoolfriend in a public in Hampstead (The heath, North London). Anyway, he 'phoned me yesterday to give me the wonderful news that he had lost my entire (nearly complete) collection of Viva vendetta comics (graphic novels as I prefer to term them)... the...'ing wanker!!! ... I hope he doesn't read this - and besides, there is nothing wrong with wanking now and then - just don't make the pages sticky. What's most irritating is not so much all the lovely dosh ( money, or drink vouchers if you must) that somebody on Ebay would undoubtably have paid out for them but rather that I had intended to scan in and post up the delicious little scene in which the heroine has all her lovely hair cut off, and in a wonderfully institutionalised scenario too.

The forced haircuting scene is something I been investigating recently; although it features in two or three places in INSTITUTIONALISED volume 1 (and forced hair-dying, too). I intend the subject to play a more central role as volumes 2 and 3 develop (along with one or two more unusual ideas such as the fitting of teeth braces, as a form of humiliation rather than for any true orthodontic purpose). With the loss of my books I have been forced to hunt around on the web for the relevant pictures... and I have come up with these, taken from the film that was made of the V for Vendetta series a few years back.

I just love the institutional background and the sheer horror on the young woman's face. I have to rush out today but at a later date I'll be putting up links to the sources of these pictures and others like them that I've come across.

Enforced Haircutting and Discipline

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