This trend for waist training is sending women backwards
Grimly fascinated, I recently found myself reading a long article on Barry Eppley, the American plastic surgeon favoured by “incels”, the notorious community of men obsessed with the idea that their appearance holds them back sexually. Next thing I knew I was googling his most famous patient. Pixee Fox, a woman, is a “body modification artist” whom Eppley helped to achieve her dream of becoming a “living cartoon” by giving her, among other things, a “wasplike waist”. This was achieved by removing the outer half of three of her ribs.
That’s right: cosmetic rib removal, aka surgical waist reduction. Thanks to microwaisted stars such as Fox and Kim Kardashian, who is among the world’s most powerful influencers, women the world over are now doing anything in their power to achieve a tiny, tapering waist that fans out to womanly hips, from surgery to breath-stealingly tight bands worn round the middle all day.
Welcome to the world of “waist training”.
One of the most poignantly ironic signs of this new obsession is the return of the corset. Corsets are de rigueur on Instagram, on the catwalk and the red carpet and, briefly last week, even in Mothercare. New mothers were being ng encouraged to squeeze themselves es into a waist-girdle and, to achieve the e look of the Mothercare model, a pair of patent leather platform stilettos with it. Following an outcry, Mothercare has removed the corset and the advert, but continues to sell a lace-print waist-training “tummy tucker” band that should “help with slimming down” after birth.