Young Girl Wearing A Tight Corset

By wearing a tightly-laced corset for extended periods, known as tightlacing, men and women can learn to tolerate extreme waist constriction and eventually reduce their natural waist size. Tightlacers dream of 16 inches (41 cm) and 17 inches (43 cm) waists, but most are satisfied with anything under 20 inches (51 cm).Some went so far that they could only breathe with the top part of their lungs. This caused the bottom part of their lungs to fill with mucus, symtoms of this include a slight but persistant cough and heavy breathing causing a heaving appearance of the bosom. Until 1998, the Guinness Book of World Records listed Ethel Granger as having the smallest waist on record at 13 inches (33 cm). After 1998, the category changed to "smallest waist on a living person" and Cathie Jung took the title with a 15 inches (38 cm) waist. Other women, such as Polaire, also have achieved such reductions (14 inches (36 cm) in her case).
However, these are extreme cases. Corsets were and are still usually designed for support, with freedom of body movement, an important consideration in their design. Present day corset-wearers usually tighten the corset just enough to reduce their waists by 2 inches (5.1 cm) to 4 inches (10 cm); it is very difficult for a slender woman to achieve as much as 6 inches (15 cm), although larger women can do so more easily.