WAISTing time?

I’ve always been one of the curious people looking into celebrities’ lifestyles. One month ago I began living this lifestyle. Between all the ideas flowing through my mind I forgot to consider the fact that these celebs don’t just take regular selfies like us. They have more than waist trainers, they have Photoshop!

Still, I wondered if it is really possible to change your body shape. This is the question I had when introduced to waist trainers. Can a pear or an apple eventually turn into a full hourglass with a waist trainer? How is it possible for someone to change their body so drastically with a tight piece of cloth that pulls your waist together.

After long nights researching the product and watching videos, I came across some waist trainer horror stories but also before and after photos that were inspiring. While much of what I saw on waist trainers was positive, Mary Jane Minkin, M.D., an OBGYN from Yale School of Medicine said that the products are useless. “Once you take the garment off, your body will return to its usual shape,” she said in an interview in Women’s Health Magazine. “It’s also uncomfortable.” Minkin also mentioned the fact that waist trainers restrict movement, make it hard to breathe and eventually cause rib damage.

Still, I looked for the proper waist trainer (after hours of talking to my mom about even trying this). The proper corset is not hard to find at all. You can find the perfect waist trainer almost everywhere. When ordering my corset I went for a simple clip on corset saving a lot of time.

The people we look up to and see as idols are just normal people. This includes the Kardashian family (Kim, Khloe, Kylie, Kourtney), Nicole “Snooki” Polizzi, Jenni Farley, Lindsay Lohan and Jessica Alba. All these people have tried waist trainers because no matter how famous you are and how great people think you look, everyone has insecurities. Not everyone has an hourglass shape and that’s why waist trainers are becoming such a big deal today as people search for the easiest ways to achieve the perfect shape.

Day One (Oct. 25):  Three hours

I have finally received my waist trainer. With three rows of clips I’m able to adjust it to my size. I started out on the biggest clip just to get used to the idea of having something so tight on me for three hours.  

Putting the waist trainer on for the first time was intriguing. The pressure put on my waist during these three hours was unimaginable. Sophomore Anahid Karapetyan told me that she had also used a waist trainer to see if they really worked. “It starts to hurt after a while but the results end up to be the way you want them.” After a few hours I felt great just looking at myself in the mirror.  

The point of waist training for me was not to get that perfect waist but just to understand why so many people are doing this. According to The Wall Street Journal, HourglassAngel.com, a website that sells waist trainers, had an increase in sales of waist trainers from $4.7 million in 2013 to $8.1 million in 2014, a growth of  $3.4 million.

I noticed that it helped with posture making me sit straight like I never have before. At this point after sitting down for an hour of doing homework I started feeling some pain, so I started walking and surprisingly felt a lot better. Day one wasn’t actually that bad which made me very excited to do this again the next day.

Day 2 (Oct. 26): Four hours

Turns out wearing a waist trainer at school is not a great idea. Sitting in English teacher Stephanie Sajjadieh’s class, I nearly started crying. The pressure was unbelievable. I wanted to ask if I could go to the restroom, but how do you walk out of class and come back with holding a waist trainer? I waited for an hour until class ended to take the corset off.

I was not very concerned about the harm that could potentially be done to my organs as I did not have my waist trainer very tight. A FOX 59 segment aired in November of this year, in which Dr. Michelle Jones-Singer (cosmetic surgeon and OBGYN) said, “The harm is damage to your internal organs. Some reports even attributed acid reflux, crushed ribs, blot clots and increased pressure on the heart with waist training.”

Still, I kept waist training every day that week and started feeling a difference. It was like I had turned into a different person. I started getting used to the pressure so I began to wear it for one extra hour every day.

Week 2 (Dec. 3-Dec. 10): Six hours

Jumping forward to week two, I trained for six hours a day. Being as impatient as I am, I went ahead and measured my waist, which was probably not the best idea. After measuring my waist to see if anything had changed, I was very discouraged because nothing changed.

Was it really worth it to wear something so tight every day and not get any results? Junior Edita Asiryan used a waist trainer for her back and said that when using the waist trainer she noticed that it did make a difference with her waist. I trusted her expertise and decided to take what she said into consideration. “Don’t give up even if it takes longer than a week or two,” she told me. “If you do it every day for a month you will start to see a difference in your body.”

Week 3 (Dec. 11-Dec. 17): Ten hours

After week two, I started wearing the corset for about ten hours. I actually noticed that I lost my appetite. I didn’t eat for three days which was pretty weird. How do you not get hungry for three days? I kept drinking water during those three days so I could feel like I at least put something in my body.

I started to incorporate salad and popcorn into my diet for the rest of the week just to keep it light after not eating. Maybe it was the three days I didn’t have an appetite to eat or the waist trainer kicking in — whatever the case, I noticed that my waist looked smaller. Measuring my waist after three weeks, I noticed that I had lost two inches. Finally! Waist training was actually working.

Week 4 (Dec. 18-Dec. 24)

After journaling for a month, the final week was here. I officially lost three inches in the last four weeks which I consider to be very little, considering the fact that I spent exactly 189 hours waist training. Being the calculative crazy person I am, I calculated how many inches I lost each hour: .01587302 inches every hour!  

Is it worth it to change who I am and after seeing how much pain I went through at some times? Why should I have to change myself to be the ideal girl? I asked Humanities teacher Jennifer Davis if she had ever heard about waist trainers.  Like me, Mrs. Davis bought a waist trainer to see if the product actually worked, confessing that she didn’t like what it stood for. “I began thinking about how women fought against these uncomfortable clothing restrictions, like whether it’s high heel shoes women are supposed to wear or whatever,” she said. “Why was I falling into that trap, caring about all that? What is it that we want to value? Is it the cover of the book or what’s inside?”