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What’s interesting about this is that it isn’t an issue specific to women’s clothing. Men’s clothing is more likely to be forgiving in the shoulders, but not always; there have been places and time periods that favored a close-fitting silhouette, on the assumption that a gentleman isn’t engaging in the kind of vigorous labor that would make such a cut impractical. (Like a lady, he has people to do that sort of thing for him.) Men have worn corsets, too, and articles of clothing with something you might call a long skirt, but the sleeves are the point at which they’re most likely to run into trouble. When you see a man in a film taking off his coat before he fights a duel, he isn’t just protecting the nicer fabric against getting torn and dirty; he’s giving himself more freedom of movement.