Dear Sir,–I look forward to your jolly weekly every time, and your corset and high-heel correspondence is just fine, but I don’t believe much of it. You will wonder why? Well, extreme tight-lacing can’t be done in the haphazard way many readers pretend they do it; there is too much of the following sort of things: “Three months ago my waist was 27in. round, now I enjoy life with a 15in. waist.” “Bosh” is what I am rudely moved to say.
Miss Tighty Tighty may reach 15in. for about an hour, but I very much doubt if she could remain so laced as long as that. It would take years to reduce that much and be able to say that she enjoyed the experience of being laced all day to those small dimensions. If you are inclined to doubt me, Mr. Editor, just cut out a piece of paper of a square, leaving a hole 15in. in circumferences, and then imagine your own, or anyone else’s middle reduced sufficiently to go into it.
Yet a 15in. waist is by no means impossible. I know of a 13in. waist which is walking about the streets today, only it is well camouflaged. But it does mean a lifelong training, even for a normal developed person, to reduce to 15in. permanently, and then there is no such thing as comfort. I speak from experience, for I was put into corsets when only eight years old, and from that day until I was 28 my corsets were always laced on to me by someone else, and the laces secured in such a way that it was absolutely impossible for me to touch them.
I know nothing more terrifying than to be so at the mercy of another person. If mother directed her corsetiere to make my next pair of stays an inch smaller, I was not allowed out until they met me at the back. I have been placed on heels so high that it agony to stand on them, yet could not sit down for more than a brief moment for the horrible pain from the seated position in my long stiff corsets into which I had been laced until I could hardly breathe.
Some of these veritable instruments of torture came from my knees to my throat, and so soon as I became used to one shape so would another be forced on me. One week I would be most terribly straight-fronted with my corset curving my back in a great arch, the next in a spoon-busk corset with my stomach protruding in front in the most uncomfortable way, and the soft busk curving in to my waist in the ugly manner of those stays.
To get my waist into the very smallest limits, a narrow band having about six eyelet holes at the back would be laced right home first, and secured before my corsets were placed on my figure at all. The pain from this was indescribable until relief was given to the figure as a whole by the application of the outer corset. The waist can be reduced to surprising dimensions in this way, but the victim has to be so strung up and secured that she cannot move an inch until the whole operation is complete. To move without adequate support with waist held to 14 or 15 inches for a width of only 2in. would probably mean a broken rib or other damage, and of course it looks awfully ugly until shaped up.
I think that many of your correspondents would cry off if they had not the means to release themselves whenever the pressure of their tight corsets began to be unbearable, yet if they want to experience the thrill (I won’t say comfort) of tight lacing, the must get far beyond the unbearable feeling sets in, for it isn’t until the figure gets thoroughly numbed through days of continued and increasing pressure that the real thrill begins to establish itself.
Hence you will understand that I really cannot believe quite all the stores which you have sent you ; possibly you do not yourself. But it would be a treat if you could get some really authenticated experiences from a few of the older school of corset makers who remember the “Iron Maidens,” as the punishment corset at high-class girls’ schools were known.
There were two at my old school, in which it was quite impossible for the wearer to sit down or move the head, shoulders, or arms. Once laced into this and one was as stiff as a sold poker from the knees to the crown of the head, and at meal times the “Iron Maidens” were hung by a hook at the waist, whether they had an occupant or not.
However, other days, etc. etc. Thank God I can breathe a sigh of relief now, for I often couldn’t then.
Yours truly,
“IRON MAIDEN.”