There's a belief that Victorian era women removed a rib to get their tiny waists.
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| Exhibit A. |
Though rib removal seems like a plausible way to get things done in our modern day, back in Victorian times surgery was quite different. Anesthesia was not what it needed to be, and death by infection was very high. If rib removal were an actual thing, about half of the women attempting it would have died.
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| This was a time when even Coca Cola was considered medicine. On second thought, maybe Victorian medicine wasn't all bad. |
The old "Remove A Rib" tale is just a myth, I'm happy to say! Instead, women achieved the wasp waist through tight lacing, a method of tying corsets tighter and tighter over time, permanently altering the shape of the body. They key is the amount of time it took. Some women may have tightened their corsets to make their waists six inches smaller in one go, but it was more likely they tightened them two or so inches at a time, eventually working their way down. As many girls began wearing corsets as early as age thirteen (or sometimes younger), they had years to work toward a desired size.
If you keep your eye out, you can see the influence of corsets all around you, sometimes in the form of wedding gowns,
haute couture,
and even medical devices.
Or the odd souvenir photo, of course.
Through my theatrical experiences I've had the good luck to wear a corset a time or two, and I can enthusiastically state that they aren't nearly as painful or uncomfortable as feared. Indeed, the most frightening part about them is simply sitting down.
