The eighteenth century was a time where corseting was a very normal practice that started from the time of adolecence where children were put in cinchers to get used to the idea, there adulthood was to be corseted and that was the way of life. When the nineteenth century had a very different view of the matter. Girls and Women who tight-laced were considered to be engaging in perverted and evil activities that were equally as frowned upon as masturbation, thought to cause blindness. Actresses and models were snidely accused of being called a “tight-lacer” like it was a sinister practice, and that is attracted the attention of indecent men. How did something so common, get to be so uncommon, and so weird? Misinformation down the grapevine.This is similar to telephone, the game I am confident we have all played at least once in our adolescence, where one person starts a sentence at one end, and it usually finishes in a jumbled mess that came out nothing like it started from the other end. Bad information usually travels in a similar fashion, or should I say “bad-fashion”. Like an infectious seed had been planted, and with years of nurturing, it spread and nearly suffocated an entire garden.

Rumors have doused corsets for centuries and have drowned them out of the “popular crowd” sometime after the eighteenth century because of rumors, including girls get their ribs removed to be able to fit into such a thing, you can not breath in them which has caused casualties, or the one I love among many, if you take off your corset you are going to not have any support anymore and you will flop around like a limp noodle. Well ladies and gentlemen, none of these are true. In fact, if anyone so much as tried to have a rib removed in the eighteenth century, prior to modern medicine and anesthesia, I can only imagine how that would have went, and I am sure you can picture the same.

As for my core strength, I do other regular exercise such as yoga, but even bringing in my waist I have not noticed even slightly a limp noodle feeling of a weakening core. If anything I am holding myself up while wearing my corset so it doesn’t crush my girls or cut into my hip. But, regular tight lacers and waist trainers should maintain other forms of without your corset on that involves core-strengthening exercises.  And children, pre-teens, and even young teens should refrain from training until they are done growing because it is vital to build up your abdominal muscles and core-strength while you are young, hence why I don’t need the support of my corset, but want it.

As homosapiens, we have what is called four “floating ribs” at the bottom of our rib cage, two on each side. These ribs are not attached to the sternum and are able to be adjusted and moved around,
slowly of course. This is the reason we are able to “train” the waist in. The ribs move in and slowly your body shifts as well as your organs, functioning normal and efficiently. This may sound unhealthy to some but I reassure you our body is made for this, the process repeats itself in one of lifes most natural form, pregnancy. Hosting a pea all the way up to sometimes a whopping 11 pound child is an even more traumatic thing for your body to endure if you think about it, and you only have a nine month count down, ouch.As for breathing, it is true you breath differently with a corset on, but not being able to breath should never be an issue, and if it is, you are in the wrong size or wrong corset. When corseted your air intake is done in a form called accessory breathing. This form of breathing is done is shorter, more frequent breaths in the upper part of your lungs rather than long expanded breaths. Although loss of lung capacity has been documented, accessory breathing also affects pregnant women and obese individuals.

Myth Busted.

So next time someone gives you a snide look, or pukes out a rude remark, they could possibly just be a moron or they reside in a little town I like to call Jealousy-ville! But in reality, they are probably just grossly uninformed and are in need of some educating. But don’t feel obligated, I very much pick
and choose who I want to share information with in a face to face fashion because a lot of the time you know right off the bat if they are interested at all in actually learning or not. So, fight the urge to win the retaliation war that was just initiated and think of this blog. Give them the “3-finger-snap” with some attitude, in your head of course, smile politely and represent your stay with a forward attitude. This will in return, activate your corset to do exactly what it is intended to do, radiate elegance in the highest of fashion, upon many other things of course…