Health & Medicine
Michele Koebke Wears Corsets to Cinch 16-Inch Waist, Historical Fashion is Deadly Practice (Video)
Kathleen Lees
First Posted: Jun 10, 2013 02:17 PM EDT
For Michele Koebke, her goal is to have the world's smallest waist. And so far, she's making it happen by wearing corsets all day and night to shrink her size down further from its current 16 inches.
History shows that the corset has existed for centuries, and can even be traced back to the Greek and Minoan periods. However, many people often associated the garment with the Victorian era, known for shaping and deforming women's bodies for the ideal of beauty.
Valerie Steele, the author of The Corset: A Cultural History, describes this fashion piece as the most controversial garment seen throughout history. Steele adds that the corset has been condemned as an "instrument of torture," a "major cause of ill health and even death," and above all, as a "coercive apparatus through which patriarchal society controlled women and exploited their sexuality."
Well-known anatomist and physician Von Sömmerring, along with other health professionals, have also said that "the back-laced corset, as worn by fashionable ladies of the time, constituted a heath hazard by compressing the ribs and other internal organs and leading-he claimed-to tuberculosis, cancer, and scoliosis, or curvature of the spine. His illustration contrasts the natural shape of the female body with the artificial hourglass shape produced by a tightly laced corset."
However, history doesn't seem to deter Koebke. Though it's reported that the 24-year-old has already been struggling with some health issues, she's hoping to shave off another inch to match idol Cathie Jung.
You know what they say-beauty is pain.
Want to see Koebke in action? Check out this video, courtesy of YouTube.
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First Posted: Jun 10, 2013 02:17 PM EDT
For Michele Koebke, her goal is to have the world's smallest waist. And so far, she's making it happen by wearing corsets all day and night to shrink her size down further from its current 16 inches.
History shows that the corset has existed for centuries, and can even be traced back to the Greek and Minoan periods. However, many people often associated the garment with the Victorian era, known for shaping and deforming women's bodies for the ideal of beauty.
Valerie Steele, the author of The Corset: A Cultural History, describes this fashion piece as the most controversial garment seen throughout history. Steele adds that the corset has been condemned as an "instrument of torture," a "major cause of ill health and even death," and above all, as a "coercive apparatus through which patriarchal society controlled women and exploited their sexuality."
Well-known anatomist and physician Von Sömmerring, along with other health professionals, have also said that "the back-laced corset, as worn by fashionable ladies of the time, constituted a heath hazard by compressing the ribs and other internal organs and leading-he claimed-to tuberculosis, cancer, and scoliosis, or curvature of the spine. His illustration contrasts the natural shape of the female body with the artificial hourglass shape produced by a tightly laced corset."
However, history doesn't seem to deter Koebke. Though it's reported that the 24-year-old has already been struggling with some health issues, she's hoping to shave off another inch to match idol Cathie Jung.
You know what they say-beauty is pain.
Want to see Koebke in action? Check out this video, courtesy of YouTube.
See Now: NASA's Juno Spacecraft's Rendezvous With Jupiter's Mammoth Cyclone