Tightlacing (also called corset training and waist training) is the practice of wearing a tightly-laced corset to achieve extreme modifications to the figure and posture and experience the sensations of a very tight corset.Modern tightlacing is a minority interest, often associated with fetishistic interests in the corset and BDSM. The majority of tightlacers are women, although some men also tightlace quite extensively.
(Wikipedia)
I think we all agree that these corsetted vintage women are just marvellous. The beautiful, feminine shape, the dreaming eyes.... Well, in reality, more than dreaming, these poor women were just permanently gasping for air, almost fainting due to a serious shortness of breath and indigestion.
The perfect woman of the 1990ies, Claudia Schiffer, has a waist circumference of about 24 inches (62 cm). In the 19th century, average corsetted waist measurements varied between 20 and 23 inches (still not completely pathological), but women with wasp waists as small as 16 to 18 inches were not uncommon and even celebrates as beauty queens. Especially in England, the perfect size of a woman's waist was not more than 18 to 20 inches!In the mid 19th century sewing machines were invented and corsets were mass-produced and turned relatively cheap. Victorian middle and lower-class women became obsessed with extreme tightlacing, trying to reduce their waists as much as possible in order to get a man.
But only one woman managed to reach a waist measurement as small as 13 inches. Ethel Granger, who tight-laced for most of her life, achieved the incredible 13 inches waist: a reduction of over 10 inches (almost half of Claudia Schiffer's waist)!
To achieve this exaggerated hourglass shape, Ethel had to wear a special corset almost for her whole life. At the beginning the tightlacers wear a corset about 4 inches smaller than the natural waist. After a certain, depending on the body fat, the corset can be laced tighter and after about a year a reduction of 6 inches can be achieved.On the photo on the left, Polaire, with a 14-inch waist.
Of course, wearing a corset doesn't make anyone slimer! The fat, the muscles and even the inner organs are just reorganized. (I don't wanna know where all the fat goes, in case a rather obese person wants to tightlace, redistributing the fat rolls by doing so).
A tightlacer's liver is pressed upwards and sometimes looks as if split into two halves.
The stomach (deprived of his normal "habitat" by the corset)'s volume is reduced and the corsetted person cannot eat larges amount of food or carbonated drinks anymore (some corset webportals say that tightlacers become even healthier persons as they eat smaller amounts of food, but I'm really not sure about that...). Indigestion and "trapped winds" are also a major problem. A person wearing a very tight corset can only breath intercostally (shallow breating) which can be the origin of many minor diseases, such as a permanent, quite disgusting cough. Exercise? Not more than regular walking (a tightlacer can't even think about swimming, as long as he or she wears a special swimming corset - a problem for the males).The myth of the ethereal Victorian beauty - totally destroyed by what happens in reality: farting and pale women who can't join most of the activities that make life so enjoyable.
Talking about modern tightlacers, the woman who currently has the smallest waist is 70 years-old Cathie Jung, with incredible 15 inches (38.1 cm). Unlike Victorian women, she didn't start to wear a corset until the age of 25. Born in Connecticut, she is born to an orthopaedic surgeon and has stayed corsetted for the last 26 years (she takes off her corset only for bathing).
In this video, Cathie appears in an Italian TV show. An innocent young man with bonded eyes has to guess what parts of the body is touching. As Cathie's waist is almost as small as an upper arm, the poor guy is quite confused...
What seems really strange to me is when I see men trying to achieve the ancient feminine hourglass shape. Why should they do that?One of the most famous examples is Mr. Pearl. This former fetish legend grew up in South Africa and is today a successfull, Paris based corsetier, commissioned by Mugler, Lacroix, Galliano and Gaultier when they need a master to produce their corset designs for the runway. Clients include Dita von Teese, Kylie Minogue and Jerry Hall.
What strikes about his photos is that, with his 18-inch (!!!) corsetted waist he manages to even enhace his image of a true English gentleman.
I guess that being a fashion designer allowed him to escapes the category of a total freak.
Something that I heard of years ago but never new if it actually existed is the removal of ribs to achieve an hourglass shape in less time. I think it does exist. At least there is a website of a quite suspect doctor called Dr. Aaron Stone (stoned and removing ribs?) in Los Angeles who offers rib removals plus tummy tuck (abdominoplasty) for merely aesthetic purposes This method has been said to have existed during the Victorian era as well, but evidence is scarce.
In this body-shaping procedure, the floating ribs number 11 and 12 (and ocasionally number 10) are removed. But rib removal per se does not reduce waist circumference. It has to be combined with a tummy tuck to remove the surplus body fat.Rumours about certain Hollywood celebrities having their floating ribs removed are usually nothing but rumours.
But, the method exists. It just doesn't seem clear to me if the achieved result is actually a nice and smooths hourglass or guitar shape. It kind of looks to hard-edged to me. And irreversible, of course.
However, let's hope that the homosexual fashion designers who design the fashion tendencies years in advance, don't think about creating a new standard of feminine beauty: a body with a wasp waist, so small that our delicate body is in danger of falling apart.
Leave your comments, see you in two weeks.
