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LADIES...start stalking those neighborhood estate sales for a
fainting couch, the Victorian era is making a comeback. Forget the Spanx
and shape-wear, the corset is on demand! Got bloaty pounds and ugly inches
staring at you in the mirror just longing to be squeezed out of sight? Well
you’re in luck--a recent CBS News segment reports that many women are squeezing the pounds off with the Corset Diet. “It (the
corset) holds you really snugly, so you don’t get hungry as often,” one
corset-er squeaked.
Touted as safe and effective by TheCorsetDiet.com, a
United Kingdom company, the corset seems to mesh well with our 21st century
culture of instant gratification. Corset-ers
swear by its power to erase the body you were born with instantly. So skip the
nip (and the tuck). For $150 you can lace and tighten to a better you with a “non-surgical gastric bypass sleeve.”
Snacker or binge eater? Don’t sweat it (and you won’t have
to because there’s no exercising with this girth crusher). The corset has you
covered. Dr. Alexander Sinclair, a Beverly Hills plastic surgeon, explains: “The patients have a feeling of being
full, of being satiated, so they’re not constantly eating. What the corset
does, is with progressive pressure, it will mold those ribs, and makes the
waist more narrow.”
Calling all baby mamas! The Corset Diet will shed the baby
weight and eradicate all evidence that your body was ever a sacred, life giving
vessel. In fact, celebrity actress Jessica Alba revealed that
she “wore a corset day and night for three months” to regain her body after
each of her pregnancies.
Get a Grip
All tongue and cheek (and muffin tops) aside, the health
detriments of “corset training” are documented. Keri Peterson, M.D., a
physician at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City and a medical
advisor for Women's Health Magazine calls them outrageous. “Corsets can only make you appear slightly
thinner while you're wearing one–they can't physically change your size. And if
anyone wearing a corset loses weight, it's not actually because of the
corset—it's more likely because the contraption makes it so uncomfortable
to eat that you automatically consume fewer calories,” says Peterson. What's
more, wearing a corset could actually cause acid reflux (because of the
pressure they put on your stomach) and trouble breathing deeply (because of the
pressure they put on your diaphragm and lungs). It makes no sense whatsoever.”
And yet, women are hooked by the idea of losing weight just by
putting on a piece of clothing. It certainly fits with our 2014 lifestyle. Often women find themselves too busy being taxi driver, cook, housekeeper, counselor, medic, and about a thousand other things (not
including the job that comes with a paycheck) to take the time and effort to
think about what it means to be healthy. The exponential speed
of cyber-time leaves little real time to stop and reflect on the standards of
beauty we are measuring ourselves against. The promise of instant results comes with a price we're willing pay. Considering just last
year an Iowa woman swallowed a tapeworm to lose weight, “beauty is
pain” might still be the 21st century woman’s siren song.
Image credit: Fig. 100. — Fine taille. . . d'après Gil Baër. Doctcur O'Followell (page 124.) [c. 1905 Public domain], Wikimedia Commons
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