StaffWritten by Kirstin Stokes Smith | Corsetry is making a comeback in North America, but what once provided a social signal of wealth and status for women has become the latest fashionable method to lose weight and alter women’s bodies. Historians have found evidence of corset use in ancient Greece, but it was Catherine de Medicini of France who has historically been credited with making corsetry popular after she banned thick waists in her court during the mid-16th century.
Fast forward to the 21st century when “thigh gaps” reign supreme, and you’ve got an environment that’s primed and ready for a dangerous trend that involves binding women’s bodies into a corset smaller than their actual waists. This Corset Diet isn’t a diet at all. The website, corsetdiet.com, describes the diet as “non-surgical gastric-band stomach reduction the Victorian way.”
Women’s Health Magazine reports that Jessica Alba used this so-called diet to lose her baby weight after both her pregnancies. LA-based plastic surgeon, Alexander Sinclair, has been supervising women who are wearing corsets several hours a day to lose inches from their waists, ABC News reports.
“This is a remarkable way to train your waist to be smaller,” Sinclair told ABC News, adding that some of his patients have lost up to six inches from their waists as a result of the treatment.
But just because we can do something, should we? Many health experts say no, encouraging women to lose weight using the old fashioned, slow and steady method: do more and eat healthy.
Melissa Breyer wrote about the corset diet trend for Mother Nature Network and found that the debate about the benefits of corsetry isn’t new. She found an 1891 September article from the Chicago Tribune, that was clearly in favor of banning the garment, and the practice of corsetry, stating,
“It is difficult to imagine a slavery more senseless, cruel or far-reaching in its injurious consequences than that imposed on civilized womanhood during the last generation…the tight lacing required by the wasp waist [corseted silhouette] has produced generations of invalids and bequeathed to posterity suffering that will not vanish for many decades.”
Keri Peterson, M.D., a physician at Lenox Hill Hospital (New York City) told Women’s Health Magazine that she questions the effectiveness of the corset diet.
“It’s outrageous, and it just absolutely makes no medical sense whatsoever,” she said.
Further, while winnowing the waist, the corset can also cause acid reflux from the pressure it puts on the stomach, and it can strain your breathing, which isn’t conducive to good health. Peterson told Women’s Health that the pressure the corset places on internal organs is a cause for concern.
“If you can’t take a deep breath, you can’t be aerated efficiently,” she said, adding, “If you want to create an hourglass figure, Spanx are sufficient.”
I wonder what our sisters of the 19th and 16th centuries would have thought of Spanx?