July 27, 2015 • 39 mins
Women across Instagram are wearing corsets while they work out. No really. Cristen and Caroline take on the waist training exercise fad by consulting corset history, waist training-wary doctors and studies suggesting shapewear should be worn with caution.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff Mom Never Told You from House top
works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Caroline,
Pat and Kristin. Today we are talking about something that's
related to Kim Kardashian some other celebrities on Instagram, and
(00:23):
something that's really actually a little uncomfortable to talk about,
mainly because it's literally uncomfortable. It's it's waste training. Yeah, whearing. Course,
it's while you work out. Yeah, there's nothing about that.
It sounds great. I'm a very heavy exercise breather. Like
I'm I'm embarrassing. I'm it's it's embarrassing for me and
everyone around me, Like on the treadmill when I'm running,
(00:45):
I can't imagine how much worse it would be if
I were wearing like a restricting garment around my middle. Yeah,
I don't think that you would get too far on
that treadmill. It sounds like if I just pass out,
you need a fainting couch, perhaps next to the treadmill,
so that you could gracefully fall in my modern day courset. Yes,
and Caroline, I've been wanting an excuse to learn more
(01:07):
about waste training, not because I am interested in training
my waist um. But because I've been seeing billboards around
Atlanta for waste trainers. Oh yes, I've seen some billboards,
and some girlfriends of mine have mentioned it, and I mean,
I'm aware of Kim Kardashian and I may or may
(01:29):
not follow her on Instagram because that's that's just what
you do. And she and her sisters take selfies every
now and then of them wearing these waste trainers, and
it has partially things to Kim, but also two stars
like Jessica Alba and Amber Rose. A lot of other
women have turned to waste training, and it's also become
(01:54):
one of those cottage industries like selling scented candles or
perfumes or tupperware out of your home. I'm serious, where
women are now selling them too to their friends. So
it's a whole little little industry that's bubbled up. That's
really interesting because unlike tupperware, which actually does keep your
(02:17):
food fresh, waste training does not actually help you get
in shape. Oh but waste trainers would beg to differ,
and they may beg that I will decline. Well, this
is going to be is be a highly heated conversation.
It sounds like heated, because well, you gotta work up
a sweat to burn off. I am literally sweating in
(02:37):
my corset. Are you wearing a corset right now? Just
a mental the mental bombs. Well, this is true, Caroline,
that if you wear a corset it will change the
shape of your waist. It absolutely will. Now, of course,
when you take off that corset after a while, it's
a different case. But let's not get ahead of ourselves. Um.
Generally speaking, the nose and of waste training is something
(03:03):
that women have been doing for a long time ever
throughout the history. Of course, it's this was more technically
referred to as tight lacing, of lacing your corset and
wearing it in such a way to achieve a smaller
and smaller looking waist. Yeah, whereas today refers particularly to
exercising wearing a a sort of a belly band type
(03:26):
waste trainer. New ag that sounds like it's en yea
and enny of course that you're you're an Enya courset.
It's so so peaceful. But the one that that I
saw Kim Kardashian wearing in a lot of pictures, it's
not like she's wearing, you know, the silken whalebone corset
that victorians were donning in in the course, it's popular age.
(03:48):
She's wearing something that's it's like, it's like a sporty corset.
It's a sporting course, but a lot of them are
still steel bone and restrict your mobility. And for intensive
waste trainers, you not only wear them to exercise, but
it's also recommended that you wear them four to six
hours a day during your daily routine. If you're really
(04:09):
intense about it. You'll even sleep in the thing if
you can manage to sleep in it. Yeah. And it's
supposedly wearing this corset, whether you're working out in it,
sleeping in it, or all of the above, is it's
supposed to promote water weight loss around the midsection and
make it almost impossible to eat a regular sized meal.
I mean, you know, if you're feeling super constricted and
(04:32):
your stomachs pulled in and you feel like your whole
rib cage is kind of getting sucked in, I've been
eating like a big cheeseburger dinner, isn't going to feel
like it's the best idea. Yeah, you can't make it
physically impossible to stuff yourself. Yeah, And so anatomically speaking,
the whole goal is to narrow that space between your
hips and your rib cage. And expert corset maker and
(04:54):
where Autumn atom speaking to wracked swears by not only
the way slimming effect of wearing a corset more of
corset than a Kim Kardashian style waste trainer, but also
just the impact of standing up straight. Well, I can
see that you want a posture posture helper, Yeah, I
mean the pot But when you sit up straight, it
(05:15):
naturally causes you. As my MoMA taught me growing up,
it teaches you to hold in your stomach. You naturally
constrict those abdomen muscles a little bit more. Um. But
it is important, as we're talking about waste trainers and
corsets to not confuse fitness oriented waste training with fetish
(05:37):
oriented tight lacing, because when it comes to modern corsetry,
some people will wear corsets as we think of them
in the more Victorian Edwardian context, for historical garb, but
some also will wear them for fetish purposes. You really
enjoy that kind of tight lacing. It can be a
(06:00):
form of bondage. And Kelly Lee Decay is someone who
knows a lot about this and does not want to
be associated with wasted training. Yeah, she has a teeny
tiny waist when she puts on her corset, it's just
sixteen inches, and she is no newbie to this whole thing.
I mean, she's been wearing this teeny tiny corset for
(06:20):
seven years or more. She says, I'm not a waste trainer.
I'm a tight laser. I'm a corset fetishist, and my
tight lysing goes beyond vanity. I love the artistry in
the construction of the corset and the people who are
a part of that culture. So no, Kim Kardashian and
Kelly Lee Decay are not pursuing the same end. Yeah,
(06:41):
And in that interview with Cosmopolitan, Decay goes on to
clarify how, yes, she's also a feminist, that this is
part of her body image and expression and her sexuality
and it's all part of the same thing. So um
So it's kind of interesting to see all of the
(07:03):
conversations that crop up any time any sort of course
a tree is mentioned. Yeah, she definitely mentions the whole
the whole choice politics thing in her feminism of you know,
you might not agree with this. You might not like this,
but you don't really get to tell me what to
do with my body. I enjoy having a sixteen inch waist,
(07:23):
so that's that's how that is. And she claimed it's
very comfortable, which probably after seven years of wearing a corset,
you you get used to it. And as expert corset
makers will tell you, if you have one that is
fitted properly to your body, it shouldn't be as uncomfortable
as we would imagine. Yeah, a lot of course. It
makers really hammer home having an understanding of anatomy because
(07:47):
ideally your organs would not be squished or or malformed
or anything like that. Um. So hopefully when you're buying
your corsets, you're buying up from somebody who knows what
they're doing. But there is always the advice to buy
one first off the rack before you get one specialty made,
because your waist just nips in so fast and I
(08:08):
think the course it's too stretch out to a degree,
I guess unless they're steel boned. Yeah, maybe that's the
whole thing of buying it off the rack first, see
how you like it, and so if it does stretch out,
you can just toss it. If you just throw it
away with all your braws, just burn, burn the course,
burn the course. That's what Victorian feminists were doing. Well,
we speaking of course, it's we need to give a
(08:28):
little bit of corset history, because while waste training is
a new exercise fad, it isn't anything new this idea
of using this kind of specific shape where to alter
our feminine silhouette. Yeah, women in Crete about three thousand
(08:49):
years ago are actually thought to be the first women
to don these corset like body shaping garments that covered
the waist and hips. So not exactly what you would
think of when you think of that stereotypical Victorian corset,
but still a body shaping garment nonetheless. But speaking of
Victorians and their course, it's we did get a lot
of great perspective from articles at our own website, how
(09:13):
Stuff Works dot com, but also Collector's Weekly, which we've
cited a number of times on the podcast, and a
lot of course IT fans as well. As these articles
do point out that there are a lot of sort
of courset wearing myths out there. Yeah, the notion that
Victorian women had their ribs removed in order to achieve
tinier waste is complete myth because ay, the medical technology
(09:37):
at the time would have made that a very high
mortality rate kind of operation. Um. And of course it's
though we're a lot of times worn, particularly for wealthier
young girls from an early age, and in that case
they might permanently bend the rib cages because if you
think about the growing developing body, if you're wearing this
(10:00):
kind of shapewear in the same way that you might
think of foot binding, yeah it can it can alter
that anatomy as well. But no one was pulling a
god in the garden of Eden and like ripping out
a rib here and there, pulling the god pull it
always pulling a god on well, I mean yeah. We
(10:21):
read this thesis by Katherine Marie Clingerman called Binding Femininity
and Examination of the Effects of tight Lacing on the
Female Pelvis, and Clingerman does mention that both girls and
boys wore these sort of binding garments for a while
in childhood because it was associated so strongly with proper development,
and so not only was the course that part of
(10:42):
proper attire for a lot of girls and women, but
it was considered part of normal, healthy development. Making sure
you grew up tall, straight and strong um and scolios
is in a lot of cases, according to Clingerman, was
blamed on not being properly laced up into your shaping garment. Well,
and these days, if you do develop scoliosis, a lot
(11:04):
of times you will wear a corset like back brace,
which is not the same thing as a waste trainer,
right exactly. And speaking of today and waste training, there's
not a lot of good opinions of it when you
when you ask the doctors about the topic. For instance,
(11:24):
Leslie Heinberg, who's the director of Behavioral Sciences for the
Bariatric and Metabolic Institute of the Cleveland Clinic, explained that, hey,
you know, if a woman wants to wear spanks to
get a smoother look, that's understandable, But wearing a course
it isn't a good choice for weight loss intervention or
even physiologically. Not a lot of doctors on the side
(11:46):
of waste training. Yeah. Doctor Caroline Apovian, who's a professor
of medicine at Boston University School of Medicine and a
spokesperson for the Obesity Society, has been pretty outspoken against
waste training. She told Health Dot com in my opinion,
it's complete nonsense. And other doctors as well, like Nicole Florence,
(12:08):
who's the co director of Memorial Weight Loss and Wellness
Center at Memorial Medical Center, highlight how even though you
might be seeing a different, more I pleasing shape on
the outside, the reshaping that is going on on the
inside isn't so good. Um. And Dr Florence, speaking to
(12:30):
Ebny magazine highlights how restricting that movement in your mid
section can also restrict your lungs, which can lead to
lung problems, as well as restricting your bowels, which can
cause constipation, Which makes me think, are we trading a
smaller looking waist temporarily for not being able to poop
(12:54):
well and lung infections? But I'm not being able to
poop and not being able to poop. Yeah, So you're
you're slimming things down just so that when you take
it off, things are a little bloated. Yeah, I mean,
and on top of that, there's a possibility of bruising
and rib pain. Um. And yeah, I mean, you're not
necessarily breaking any ribs to do this, and um. Old
(13:16):
myths about wearing corset's like misshaping your liver and giving
people tuberculosis aren't true, but it's still not very healthy
overall if you're wearing them every day for the recommended
four to six hours. Oh and by the way, if
you want to get real results, then go ahead and
sleep in it too. And one thing in reading about
(13:37):
all of this, it was in the back of my
mind the whole time, was the issue of like, Okay, well,
if you've got this outside force supporting your middle all
the time, does that not just make the muscles that
are meant to do that anyway get weaker? And I
was really concerned about this fact, and I looked it
up in there. There is some stuff on on like
(13:59):
the very atric belly band websites about like if people
are using that those types of of cinctures for non
approved medical use, and they use them for too long,
then it can cause some of those muscles to get weaker.
Because that's what your core is. Your your core, your
natural courset is to to hold you up and and
(14:21):
make sure that you are sitting up straight well. And
it's probably gonna be more challenging to strengthen that natural core,
Caroline if you develop something like oh, I don't know,
a hiatus hernia, which at one point was a certain
type of it linked to tight lacing in the Victorian era,
was named for Dr Samuel Thomas von Summering, who warned
(14:44):
against the health dangers of tight lacing and finally got
a hernia named after him, so he got that, He
got that that feather in his cap. It can also
cause Glennard's disease, which comes about if you are a
long term tight laser, and it is marked by that
muscle atrophy. But not only that, it's marked by a
(15:05):
shifting of the organs away from their natural position. That
sounds horrifying. I want my organs to stay where they are,
where they're supposed to be. I know me too. I mean,
I'm area. I already have no idea what's going on
in there, and that weirds me out enough to imagine
them moving around, because I mean, you've already think about
You've already got your uterus floating around, and so it's
(15:25):
already pushing the organs around. Crystal. Well, speaking Caroline, this
is a total side note, But speaking of your wandering
womb guys, back in the Victorian era, a lot of
them actually weren't huge fans of course a treat because
tight lacing was a thought to be a cause of hysteria.
(15:46):
So if you're if you're squeezing, you're crazy, yout around crazy,
you too tightly, excuse me, then it might make you crazy.
But isn't that funny though? Isn't that funny that? Yes,
that's an extreme exam bull but so many things that
women do to sort of fit what society tells them
they're supposed to look like, in this case literally fitting
(16:09):
like literally tying a corset around themselves to fit. Yes,
I mean, this is what waste training is today, and
it's what we've been doing for hundreds of years now,
just wearing different kinds of shapewear and moving our bodies
or not moving our bodies in certain kinds of ways
in order to emulate an ideal. And right now, I mean,
(16:29):
think about the kinds of more quote unquote bombshell silhouettes
that are in vogue. It is Kim Kardashian, Indeedavanti's and
Christina Hendrix and Nicki Minaj, and absolutely nothing wrong with
those women being seen as sex symbols. The question is
how far are we going to go to try to
(16:51):
look like them? And when we come back from a
quick break, we'll talk about more ways in which that
waste training really doesn't work. So if you go into
(17:11):
Instagram and search the hashtag waste training, you will get
so many photos, Caroline, I sat there for a good
let's just say five minutes, which is a whole minute.
It's a long time to look at waste training photos
and videos, and there are so many selfies. That's the
whole thing too, is that this waste training fat is
(17:32):
not just about working out on your own. It's a
very public performance as well, because you've got to do
the selfie. Compared to ashion as a selfie, so you
got to take the selfie. And of course also if
you are one of those people selling waste trainers, then
you definitely got a selfie to show off. Hey, ladies,
(17:53):
look at me and my trainer. Don't you want to
look like me? Let me sell you one if it,
if it really worked, would would you need so many selfies?
Well that's an excellent question. But I also think that
it's just part of the entire fad and our entire
culture today because think about fitspiration, workout selfies in general.
(18:14):
I mean the times that I have necessarily seen photos
of snooky weightlifting. It's so far are you following fucking Caroline?
I don't know. Maybe I have my indulgences on Instagram.
Thank you, I like, I like, I like, I like.
(18:35):
It better to imagine that you're just like being bombarded
with like snooky workout pictures, like wherever you go, just
like pops up. You just can't avoid them. It's all
pop up ads all the time. But in real life
they pop up on the sidewalks, in the bathrooms, in
my closet. Um. But but it's true though, like there
are those particular kinds of celebrities in quotes or fit
(19:00):
mis Instagram stars who who are constantly posting photos of
themselves working out. Does Kim legitimate question? Does Kim Kardashian
have her own brand a voice trainer? No, she doesn't.
But I have a pet theory that the Kardashian sisters
(19:21):
initially got into just kind of testing the waters of
this whole waist training thing, because of course it's with
a k is a Kardashian product waiting to happen. What
I wonder if the case would be backwards, like somehow,
I don't know how that would work somebody who does logos.
I'm sure you could figure it out. Are we already
working at the logo for Kardashian corsets with a K? Absolutely?
(19:43):
I want to get on on this on the ground floor. Well, Caroline,
I mean, I will say, if we want to beat
them to the punch CEE and see see C C C.
Christen and Caroline's corsets. But yeah, no, yeah, because that's
how those things are really spelled. So yes, but actually
it's just a pizza shape like a corset. Help, but
treat yourself, you know. Well, okay, so the people are
(20:08):
dying to know, and I'm a little curious too because
I am such I'm I'm one step beyond skeptic, which
is a poop o er. I think a professional pooper.
I think it's hashtag disdain. So so I need I
need to know, and the people need to know if
these things actually work. Well, here's the thing. Okay, there
are other people that I have talked to who still
(20:30):
swear up and down waste trainers work. I mean, you
have Jessica Alba, who famously told some tabloids sometime that
right after she had a baby, she wore a waste trainer,
and it shrunk her uterus back to its pre baby size.
And here are the waste training myths that we need
to debunk because listen, listeners, I waste anytime in our
(20:55):
lives wearing an uncomfortable corset and getting just sweaty stomachs.
It's hard enough for me to our pants. I know
it's true. So the fact of the matter is that
waste trainers just compress your stomach and push fat around.
They don't actually get rid of the fat, right, Because
(21:19):
what gets rid of fat eating healthier, eating less fat,
eating less exercising, getting active, burning those calories, working that core,
working that core. Well, there was that trainer talking to
Harper's Bizarre magazine that we read, saying it's not just
about wearing it, it's about exercising while you wear it
(21:40):
to help spot reduce the stomach. And here's the thing.
When it comes to spot reducing, that is not actually
it's not possible. That is not how our bodies work.
If your stomach gets really, really really sweaty, as it
does when you wear this thing, or when I'm wearing pants,
like Caroline is wearing your trash bag pants every day
to work, it is very loud switches all around. That
(22:05):
doesn't mean that your stomach is the only thing that's
going to right right right. I mean, we we touched
on that concept in our in our episode on cankles,
and that you you can't. There is aerobic exercise and
strength exercise and stretching exercises that you can do for
your whole body that will benefit your health overall and
(22:28):
might shrink address size or whatever. But you're not going
to spot reduce an ankle or spot reduce a stomach.
Sure you can do all the sit ups and crunches
and ad work in the world, but you still have
You're still gonna have if you have fat, you have fat.
It's not just like going to be like we're going
to migrate to the arms and the legs instead, let's
(22:50):
go fat shells. Here we go, because it's straight to
your boobs. We're not wanted. Let's go else, Let's go
straight to your But you're welcome. If only that is
how it works, if you just kind of I think
our little impression of fatsils just made me like them
a little more. Hey Caroline, Hey just gotta hang out here, Okay,
(23:11):
stay in the boots, don't go anywhere else, stay put.
And the thing to keep in mind is too, if
you do wear a waste trainer and you're exercising and
you're saying, all of a sudden, my body is so
much slimmer, it has to be that thing about how
much you're eating. Yeah, you can't eat as much when
(23:33):
you wear these things. So yes, your body will very
much change, probably change shape in some way or another
by virtue of wearing these, but it's not the healthiest
way to do it. And when it comes to that
post pregnancy weight loss factor, the uterus shrinks in its
(23:54):
own time. Squeezing it back down is not how that
works well. And we should mention too that there are
medical reasons why some people might wear a corset like garments.
Yeah we mentioned earlier, wearing a brace for scoliosis to
help straighten the spine, or wearing non surgical lap bands
(24:17):
for people who have had bariatric bypass surgery. Um I
mean scoliosis. Braces are designed to actually support your bones,
they're not meant to reshape anything internal. And you also
have to keep in mind that bariatric patients are also
adhering to specific dieting regiments. It's not like people are
(24:40):
just handed some sort of band or support device and
like magically they're better or thinner or whatever. Um, there's
more that needs to happen to change your body. Well.
I wonder though, if part of the waste trainer appeal
is how where in it when you go to work
(25:01):
out you do look thinner. Maybe it's psychologically tricks you
into wanting to work out more because you're instantly seeing
results in quotes, Yeah, I mean total placebo effect. Perhaps
we've seen that with compression garments too, with for for athletes. Yeah,
And speaking of compression garments, there's also increasing research that
(25:26):
that kind of apparel that ostensibly improves blood flow during
workouts is also placebo effect. It might be good to
wear after a workout to reduce swelling, but unless your
doctor has recommended that you wear those calf compression socks
or the arm bands, I mean, you can feel like
(25:47):
you can get like a whole head to toe suit,
the scuba suit if you really want one. Now they're
so popular that it's really just our minds tricking us
into thinking that we're getting more bang for our work
out book. Yeah, because the study we read about that
NPR reported on they gave compression garments to a bunch
of athletes and told them to go work out or
(26:08):
go work out without them. See how your workouts affected
And the only people who actually performed better with the
compression garment where the people who already believed that those
garments would help them. Is it a little like Emperor's
New clothes going on? It is? But like super like
more more sassy, more sassy, and so expensive and yeah,
a little shiny, Yeah, and shapewear, all of spanks are
(26:32):
not off the hook either. No, wearing spanks is not
the same as wearing a waste trainer. But if you
wear shapewear, especially super super tight shapewear that it's probably
too small for you, for hours and hours at a time,
is not doing your insights any favors either. No. And
(26:54):
I just think about those interviews I've read with celebrities
on the red carpet who are like, I'm wearing too
pairs of spanks to really suck it in, And I'm like,
can you feel your toes? Can please tell me? Can
you feel your extremities? Are you okay? Well, here's the thing, Caroline.
My answer would be no, because I prefer to wear
the spangs on my toes to really get that slim,
(27:16):
slender look, you know for sandal season, right to to
really get those finger toes. My toe love handles are
out of control. But you gotta wear blousy shoes. The
puppy shoes are so forgiving. The route right really hides
hides the curve. Yeah, and in a in a nice
zebra print you you won't even see him. But no,
(27:39):
for reals, um that whole shapewear thing, wearing it for
extended periods of time, Like Chris and said, well, it
may not be as serious an effect as wearing a
corset wearing a waste trainer, it's still going to have
an effect. It's still going to result in a compressed stomach,
possibly compressed intestines and colon. You also could experience things
(27:59):
like indigestion and shallow breath. I can vouch for the
shallow breath thing of putting one of those things on,
like those suckers, and you've gotta like, you gotta give
yourself an extra three hours to get ready, just so
you can lie down and pull it up so it
gets like right under your boobs because you still want
to be wearing just like a pretty bra over your
your freak is shapewear. And by the time you finally
get that sucker on your sweating and you're like, I,
(28:22):
I want to take a deep, refreshing, rejuvenatory that's not
a word breath, but I can't because I'm being sucked
in and my colon who knows where that went? Well?
And then Caroline, if you start to feel tingling, numbness
or pain in your thighs, it's probably due to peripheral
nerve compression, which is also related to wearing shapewear for
(28:45):
extended periods of time, which you can also lead to
blood clods. So great, and you mentioned being sweaty and
this being covering a large portion of your body, Folks,
Shapewear also leads to yeast and bacterial infections because it's
not very breathable. You're getting some moisture in there, and
(29:07):
follicles can get clogged. I believe foliculitis is one of
the most common conditions that dermatologists are now seeing among
women in particular who wear shapewear every day. Your skin's
gotta breathe, Your skin's gotta breathe. That's the largest organ
in your body. And yes, I don't know if we
just blew anybody's mind that you can get yeast infections
(29:30):
and yeast colonies on your skin that are not just
in the vaginal area. And for people who experience irritable
bowel syndrome but wear shapewear because especially due to that
intestinal compression that happens, it can be it can throw
that that balance off even more. And when it comes
(29:53):
to our urinary tract health, a lot of times when
women wear spanks, they report existing the urge to go
to the bathroom because you don't want to have to
take that whole thing off and then have to put
it back on again. And so we hold our pe
to put it scientifically, which can promote U t eyes.
Oh mine had a hole really yeah? Mine mine were
(30:16):
open crotch like much like Queen Victoria, but so much tighter. Yeah,
but it's still awkward because you still don't want to
pee in them because it's not like it's just fully
open and there's a lot of kind of wrangling and
maneuvering that has to happen. And so well, yes, in
the pair that I possessed you might have been able
(30:39):
to pee, It's not like it was completely unimpeded, and
so you might still end up holding it unimpeded. I
was unintentional. I mean doctors say that. Listen, They're fine
for special occasions, if you need to walk the red
carpet where your banks like we do all the time,
or whatever brand of shape where you prefer. But wearing
(31:02):
it every day and wearing it super duper tight is
just hands down not great for your body. And circling
back to waste training. With all of this, the best
thing that you can do for your body is exercise,
strengthen your core, work those muscles, and eat healthily if
(31:26):
you can. And you know what if as you're doing that,
your body shape does not conform to the hour glass
that is popular right now. First of all, weight five
ten years and another shape is going to come in style.
And second of all, it is perhaps time for us
(31:46):
to reevaluate how these aspirational body types can really wreck
our own body images and our own health. Yeah. I mean,
this isn't the first time on the podcast that we've
said that it's probably not a great idea to think
of bodies as trends. Everybody is a different body and
(32:08):
that's all right. And you know, as long as you're
taking care of yourself, you know, I think you can
leave the waiste trainer behind and awesome that people who
are waste training are exercising, that's fantastic. Just take the
waist trainer off because even if you might see results immediately,
if you stop wearing it for a few days a
(32:30):
couple of weeks, your body will resume it's pre waste
training shape. So it's just like crash dieting. Yeah, and
I mean, Kristen, you know, I I bet before too long,
when you when you log into your Instagram account, uh,
you won't even see Kim Kardashian wearing that or snook
(32:51):
Eer whoever is bombarding you with their exercise images. It
will be something else, like in a year from now. Yeah.
But I will say one other disturbing thing about this
is that it's not just women doing it. Teenagers are
doing it as well. Right, we just don't waste train please.
We did read that one article from the doctor who
saw the young girl who had developed all of this
(33:12):
numbness because she in addition to her entire soccer team,
we're wearing shapewear under their soccer uniforms. No, it's not
worth it. We need to love our bodies, especially especially
if you're already using it to be active and athletic.
There's no there's no need for shapewear on the soccer field,
(33:32):
and there are ways to wear and enjoy corsertry and
even shapewear, Like we said, special occasions totally fine, we
get it, but it's reaching this like fever pitch that
is a little concerning, to say the least. So we
(33:53):
I know there's got to be at least some waste
trainers in the audience, and I really want to know
from you what you think about all of this, or
if there are any corset fans who are so tired
of people confusing corsetry as you wear it with waste training.
Let us know all of your thoughts. Mom Stuff at
(34:13):
how stuff works dot com is our email address. You
can also tweet us at mom Stuff podcast and messages
on Facebook, and we've got a couple of messages to
share with you right now. Well, I have a letter
here from Nicole in response to our Electronic Women episode.
(34:35):
She says, well, I'm no longer active in the scene.
I used to be heavily involved in electronic music in
the nineteen nineties and into early two thousand. I was
one of the few women, to my knowledge, who was
actively writing and releasing electronic music at the time in
the scene I was involved in. I ran my own
studio full of SyncE and Mac based sequencing and recording programs,
(34:55):
a record label, and released electronic music here in the
States as well as in roup in Japan. Go Nicole,
I want to clarify some terminology you brought up in
addition to expanding some ideas about what electronic music is today,
I noticed you all used the term DJ to speak
of modern electronic music. DJ, of course, is for disc jockey,
(35:16):
and while I was creating music, DJs were typically the
people who were behind the turntables spinning music other artists created. Usually,
and this wasn't always the case, they were not the
ones creating the music themselves. When I was composing music
using synths and computers, I never called myself a DJ,
even while I worked with some of them on occasion
creating music in their shows. DJ was a label that
(35:39):
did not show the scope of what I and many
of my contemporaries were doing at the time, Square Pusher,
a f X Twin, Richard Divine, and many others. Well.
Much of the work we were all doing in this
intelligent dance music scene had an element of dance music.
It was more complicated and nuanced than what was coming
out in clubs and raves, thus the term intelligent being
(36:00):
used to describe it. So I believe electronic musician might
be a more appropriate term to use to distinguish between
those who spin and those who compose music that DJs
use in their shows, in addition to the other types
of music they create that arn't for the dance floor. Also,
it would have been great to bring up the role
of electronic music in today's film scoring. There's a scarcity
(36:20):
here of women, sadly, but I think that by relegating
electronic music today to existing only in the dance music scene,
it's controlled by DJ's, it's limiting composers, especially for small
budget films, rely heavily on the use of electronic equipment
to sequence, orchestrate and score the pieces they do for films.
I hope this helps expand some of the concepts you
all brought up. Thank you, Nicole, and obviously the ten
(36:42):
hour podcast that we did on women in Electronic Music
could expand to fill a month, and so we are
so appreciative of people like you who are sending us
in all of wonderful extra information. Well, speaking of expanding
our insights, I've got an email here from alexand Andrea
about our podcast on Dolora Suerta a little while back.
(37:04):
She writes, I've been listening to your podcast for a
few years now and I love it. I bet you
get tired of hearing that and ps, Nope, we never do. Um,
she writes, I do have some comments regarding your Dolora
square To episode of some time ago. Yes, she is
a strong Latina woman. Yes what she did had a
profoundly positive effect on our country. And yes, as a
(37:25):
transplanted New Mexican, I'm even more proud and even a
little bit ashamed that her students aren't taught who she is. However,
there is a long, very long history of strong Latinas
throughout the Southwest in Mexico. Two examples that come to
mind are the women of the Silver City Minor Strike
and the Solda Datas. The Silver City Minor Strike in
(37:46):
the early fifties would not have been successful without the
hard work and dedication of Latinas who took the men's
places in picket lines and even struck for improved living conditions.
The Solda data, while sometimes worst into what amounted to
slave labor, or a group of strong Latinas who cooked, cleaned,
and took care of men in every imaginable way, including
(38:09):
fighting alongside them. I guess what I'm saying is is
that this s say, pointy attitude is something that is
a characteristic we see in Mexican and Mexican American women
throughout history. Dolora Squerta's work is and has been wonderful,
but she comes from a long, long line of hard
working Latinas who know how to pull their own weight
and the weight of their entire family, men included. Keep
(38:32):
up the great work, Alexandra, and thanks so much for
highlighting those women. Alexandria. And if you listeners have women
you'd like to highlight or waste train notes you'd like
to send our way. Mom Stuff at house stuff works
dot com is our email address and drilling to all
of our social media as well as all of our
blogs and videos, including one on feminist waste training. Then
(38:56):
you know where to go. It's stuff Mom never told
you dot com For more on this and thousands of
other topics. Is it How stuff Works dot com
Welcome to Stuff Mom Never Told You from House top
works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Caroline,
Pat and Kristin. Today we are talking about something that's
related to Kim Kardashian some other celebrities on Instagram, and
(00:23):
something that's really actually a little uncomfortable to talk about,
mainly because it's literally uncomfortable. It's it's waste training. Yeah, whearing. Course,
it's while you work out. Yeah, there's nothing about that.
It sounds great. I'm a very heavy exercise breather. Like
I'm I'm embarrassing. I'm it's it's embarrassing for me and
everyone around me, Like on the treadmill when I'm running,
(00:45):
I can't imagine how much worse it would be if
I were wearing like a restricting garment around my middle. Yeah,
I don't think that you would get too far on
that treadmill. It sounds like if I just pass out,
you need a fainting couch, perhaps next to the treadmill,
so that you could gracefully fall in my modern day courset. Yes,
and Caroline, I've been wanting an excuse to learn more
(01:07):
about waste training, not because I am interested in training
my waist um. But because I've been seeing billboards around
Atlanta for waste trainers. Oh yes, I've seen some billboards,
and some girlfriends of mine have mentioned it, and I mean,
I'm aware of Kim Kardashian and I may or may
(01:29):
not follow her on Instagram because that's that's just what
you do. And she and her sisters take selfies every
now and then of them wearing these waste trainers, and
it has partially things to Kim, but also two stars
like Jessica Alba and Amber Rose. A lot of other
women have turned to waste training, and it's also become
(01:54):
one of those cottage industries like selling scented candles or
perfumes or tupperware out of your home. I'm serious, where
women are now selling them too to their friends. So
it's a whole little little industry that's bubbled up. That's
really interesting because unlike tupperware, which actually does keep your
(02:17):
food fresh, waste training does not actually help you get
in shape. Oh but waste trainers would beg to differ,
and they may beg that I will decline. Well, this
is going to be is be a highly heated conversation.
It sounds like heated, because well, you gotta work up
a sweat to burn off. I am literally sweating in
(02:37):
my corset. Are you wearing a corset right now? Just
a mental the mental bombs. Well, this is true, Caroline,
that if you wear a corset it will change the
shape of your waist. It absolutely will. Now, of course,
when you take off that corset after a while, it's
a different case. But let's not get ahead of ourselves. Um.
Generally speaking, the nose and of waste training is something
(03:03):
that women have been doing for a long time ever
throughout the history. Of course, it's this was more technically
referred to as tight lacing, of lacing your corset and
wearing it in such a way to achieve a smaller
and smaller looking waist. Yeah, whereas today refers particularly to
exercising wearing a a sort of a belly band type
(03:26):
waste trainer. New ag that sounds like it's en yea
and enny of course that you're you're an Enya courset.
It's so so peaceful. But the one that that I
saw Kim Kardashian wearing in a lot of pictures, it's
not like she's wearing, you know, the silken whalebone corset
that victorians were donning in in the course, it's popular age.
(03:48):
She's wearing something that's it's like, it's like a sporty corset.
It's a sporting course, but a lot of them are
still steel bone and restrict your mobility. And for intensive
waste trainers, you not only wear them to exercise, but
it's also recommended that you wear them four to six
hours a day during your daily routine. If you're really
(04:09):
intense about it. You'll even sleep in the thing if
you can manage to sleep in it. Yeah. And it's
supposedly wearing this corset, whether you're working out in it,
sleeping in it, or all of the above, is it's
supposed to promote water weight loss around the midsection and
make it almost impossible to eat a regular sized meal.
I mean, you know, if you're feeling super constricted and
(04:32):
your stomachs pulled in and you feel like your whole
rib cage is kind of getting sucked in, I've been
eating like a big cheeseburger dinner, isn't going to feel
like it's the best idea. Yeah, you can't make it
physically impossible to stuff yourself. Yeah, And so anatomically speaking,
the whole goal is to narrow that space between your
hips and your rib cage. And expert corset maker and
(04:54):
where Autumn atom speaking to wracked swears by not only
the way slimming effect of wearing a corset more of
corset than a Kim Kardashian style waste trainer, but also
just the impact of standing up straight. Well, I can
see that you want a posture posture helper, Yeah, I
mean the pot But when you sit up straight, it
(05:15):
naturally causes you. As my MoMA taught me growing up,
it teaches you to hold in your stomach. You naturally
constrict those abdomen muscles a little bit more. Um. But
it is important, as we're talking about waste trainers and
corsets to not confuse fitness oriented waste training with fetish
(05:37):
oriented tight lacing, because when it comes to modern corsetry,
some people will wear corsets as we think of them
in the more Victorian Edwardian context, for historical garb, but
some also will wear them for fetish purposes. You really
enjoy that kind of tight lacing. It can be a
(06:00):
form of bondage. And Kelly Lee Decay is someone who
knows a lot about this and does not want to
be associated with wasted training. Yeah, she has a teeny
tiny waist when she puts on her corset, it's just
sixteen inches, and she is no newbie to this whole thing.
I mean, she's been wearing this teeny tiny corset for
(06:20):
seven years or more. She says, I'm not a waste trainer.
I'm a tight laser. I'm a corset fetishist, and my
tight lysing goes beyond vanity. I love the artistry in
the construction of the corset and the people who are
a part of that culture. So no, Kim Kardashian and
Kelly Lee Decay are not pursuing the same end. Yeah,
(06:41):
And in that interview with Cosmopolitan, Decay goes on to
clarify how, yes, she's also a feminist, that this is
part of her body image and expression and her sexuality
and it's all part of the same thing. So um
So it's kind of interesting to see all of the
(07:03):
conversations that crop up any time any sort of course
a tree is mentioned. Yeah, she definitely mentions the whole
the whole choice politics thing in her feminism of you know,
you might not agree with this. You might not like this,
but you don't really get to tell me what to
do with my body. I enjoy having a sixteen inch waist,
(07:23):
so that's that's how that is. And she claimed it's
very comfortable, which probably after seven years of wearing a corset,
you you get used to it. And as expert corset
makers will tell you, if you have one that is
fitted properly to your body, it shouldn't be as uncomfortable
as we would imagine. Yeah, a lot of course. It
makers really hammer home having an understanding of anatomy because
(07:47):
ideally your organs would not be squished or or malformed
or anything like that. Um. So hopefully when you're buying
your corsets, you're buying up from somebody who knows what
they're doing. But there is always the advice to buy
one first off the rack before you get one specialty made,
because your waist just nips in so fast and I
(08:08):
think the course it's too stretch out to a degree,
I guess unless they're steel boned. Yeah, maybe that's the
whole thing of buying it off the rack first, see
how you like it, and so if it does stretch out,
you can just toss it. If you just throw it
away with all your braws, just burn, burn the course,
burn the course. That's what Victorian feminists were doing. Well,
we speaking of course, it's we need to give a
(08:28):
little bit of corset history, because while waste training is
a new exercise fad, it isn't anything new this idea
of using this kind of specific shape where to alter
our feminine silhouette. Yeah, women in Crete about three thousand
(08:49):
years ago are actually thought to be the first women
to don these corset like body shaping garments that covered
the waist and hips. So not exactly what you would
think of when you think of that stereotypical Victorian corset,
but still a body shaping garment nonetheless. But speaking of
Victorians and their course, it's we did get a lot
of great perspective from articles at our own website, how
(09:13):
Stuff Works dot com, but also Collector's Weekly, which we've
cited a number of times on the podcast, and a
lot of course IT fans as well. As these articles
do point out that there are a lot of sort
of courset wearing myths out there. Yeah, the notion that
Victorian women had their ribs removed in order to achieve
tinier waste is complete myth because ay, the medical technology
(09:37):
at the time would have made that a very high
mortality rate kind of operation. Um. And of course it's
though we're a lot of times worn, particularly for wealthier
young girls from an early age, and in that case
they might permanently bend the rib cages because if you
think about the growing developing body, if you're wearing this
(10:00):
kind of shapewear in the same way that you might
think of foot binding, yeah it can it can alter
that anatomy as well. But no one was pulling a
god in the garden of Eden and like ripping out
a rib here and there, pulling the god pull it
always pulling a god on well, I mean yeah. We
(10:21):
read this thesis by Katherine Marie Clingerman called Binding Femininity
and Examination of the Effects of tight Lacing on the
Female Pelvis, and Clingerman does mention that both girls and
boys wore these sort of binding garments for a while
in childhood because it was associated so strongly with proper development,
and so not only was the course that part of
(10:42):
proper attire for a lot of girls and women, but
it was considered part of normal, healthy development. Making sure
you grew up tall, straight and strong um and scolios
is in a lot of cases, according to Clingerman, was
blamed on not being properly laced up into your shaping garment. Well,
and these days, if you do develop scoliosis, a lot
(11:04):
of times you will wear a corset like back brace,
which is not the same thing as a waste trainer,
right exactly. And speaking of today and waste training, there's
not a lot of good opinions of it when you
when you ask the doctors about the topic. For instance,
(11:24):
Leslie Heinberg, who's the director of Behavioral Sciences for the
Bariatric and Metabolic Institute of the Cleveland Clinic, explained that, hey,
you know, if a woman wants to wear spanks to
get a smoother look, that's understandable, But wearing a course
it isn't a good choice for weight loss intervention or
even physiologically. Not a lot of doctors on the side
(11:46):
of waste training. Yeah. Doctor Caroline Apovian, who's a professor
of medicine at Boston University School of Medicine and a
spokesperson for the Obesity Society, has been pretty outspoken against
waste training. She told Health Dot com in my opinion,
it's complete nonsense. And other doctors as well, like Nicole Florence,
(12:08):
who's the co director of Memorial Weight Loss and Wellness
Center at Memorial Medical Center, highlight how even though you
might be seeing a different, more I pleasing shape on
the outside, the reshaping that is going on on the
inside isn't so good. Um. And Dr Florence, speaking to
(12:30):
Ebny magazine highlights how restricting that movement in your mid
section can also restrict your lungs, which can lead to
lung problems, as well as restricting your bowels, which can
cause constipation, Which makes me think, are we trading a
smaller looking waist temporarily for not being able to poop
(12:54):
well and lung infections? But I'm not being able to
poop and not being able to poop. Yeah, So you're
you're slimming things down just so that when you take
it off, things are a little bloated. Yeah, I mean,
and on top of that, there's a possibility of bruising
and rib pain. Um. And yeah, I mean, you're not
necessarily breaking any ribs to do this, and um. Old
(13:16):
myths about wearing corset's like misshaping your liver and giving
people tuberculosis aren't true, but it's still not very healthy
overall if you're wearing them every day for the recommended
four to six hours. Oh and by the way, if
you want to get real results, then go ahead and
sleep in it too. And one thing in reading about
(13:37):
all of this, it was in the back of my
mind the whole time, was the issue of like, Okay, well,
if you've got this outside force supporting your middle all
the time, does that not just make the muscles that
are meant to do that anyway get weaker? And I
was really concerned about this fact, and I looked it
up in there. There is some stuff on on like
(13:59):
the very atric belly band websites about like if people
are using that those types of of cinctures for non
approved medical use, and they use them for too long,
then it can cause some of those muscles to get weaker.
Because that's what your core is. Your your core, your
natural courset is to to hold you up and and
(14:21):
make sure that you are sitting up straight well. And
it's probably gonna be more challenging to strengthen that natural core,
Caroline if you develop something like oh, I don't know,
a hiatus hernia, which at one point was a certain
type of it linked to tight lacing in the Victorian era,
was named for Dr Samuel Thomas von Summering, who warned
(14:44):
against the health dangers of tight lacing and finally got
a hernia named after him, so he got that, He
got that that feather in his cap. It can also
cause Glennard's disease, which comes about if you are a
long term tight laser, and it is marked by that
muscle atrophy. But not only that, it's marked by a
(15:05):
shifting of the organs away from their natural position. That
sounds horrifying. I want my organs to stay where they are,
where they're supposed to be. I know me too. I mean,
I'm area. I already have no idea what's going on
in there, and that weirds me out enough to imagine
them moving around, because I mean, you've already think about
You've already got your uterus floating around, and so it's
(15:25):
already pushing the organs around. Crystal. Well, speaking Caroline, this
is a total side note, But speaking of your wandering
womb guys, back in the Victorian era, a lot of
them actually weren't huge fans of course a treat because
tight lacing was a thought to be a cause of hysteria.
(15:46):
So if you're if you're squeezing, you're crazy, yout around crazy,
you too tightly, excuse me, then it might make you crazy.
But isn't that funny though? Isn't that funny that? Yes,
that's an extreme exam bull but so many things that
women do to sort of fit what society tells them
they're supposed to look like, in this case literally fitting
(16:09):
like literally tying a corset around themselves to fit. Yes,
I mean, this is what waste training is today, and
it's what we've been doing for hundreds of years now,
just wearing different kinds of shapewear and moving our bodies
or not moving our bodies in certain kinds of ways
in order to emulate an ideal. And right now, I mean,
(16:29):
think about the kinds of more quote unquote bombshell silhouettes
that are in vogue. It is Kim Kardashian, Indeedavanti's and
Christina Hendrix and Nicki Minaj, and absolutely nothing wrong with
those women being seen as sex symbols. The question is
how far are we going to go to try to
(16:51):
look like them? And when we come back from a
quick break, we'll talk about more ways in which that
waste training really doesn't work. So if you go into
(17:11):
Instagram and search the hashtag waste training, you will get
so many photos, Caroline, I sat there for a good
let's just say five minutes, which is a whole minute.
It's a long time to look at waste training photos
and videos, and there are so many selfies. That's the
whole thing too, is that this waste training fat is
(17:32):
not just about working out on your own. It's a
very public performance as well, because you've got to do
the selfie. Compared to ashion as a selfie, so you
got to take the selfie. And of course also if
you are one of those people selling waste trainers, then
you definitely got a selfie to show off. Hey, ladies,
(17:53):
look at me and my trainer. Don't you want to
look like me? Let me sell you one if it,
if it really worked, would would you need so many selfies?
Well that's an excellent question. But I also think that
it's just part of the entire fad and our entire
culture today because think about fitspiration, workout selfies in general.
(18:14):
I mean the times that I have necessarily seen photos
of snooky weightlifting. It's so far are you following fucking Caroline?
I don't know. Maybe I have my indulgences on Instagram.
Thank you, I like, I like, I like, I like.
(18:35):
It better to imagine that you're just like being bombarded
with like snooky workout pictures, like wherever you go, just
like pops up. You just can't avoid them. It's all
pop up ads all the time. But in real life
they pop up on the sidewalks, in the bathrooms, in
my closet. Um. But but it's true though, like there
are those particular kinds of celebrities in quotes or fit
(19:00):
mis Instagram stars who who are constantly posting photos of
themselves working out. Does Kim legitimate question? Does Kim Kardashian
have her own brand a voice trainer? No, she doesn't.
But I have a pet theory that the Kardashian sisters
(19:21):
initially got into just kind of testing the waters of
this whole waist training thing, because of course it's with
a k is a Kardashian product waiting to happen. What
I wonder if the case would be backwards, like somehow,
I don't know how that would work somebody who does logos.
I'm sure you could figure it out. Are we already
working at the logo for Kardashian corsets with a K? Absolutely?
(19:43):
I want to get on on this on the ground floor. Well, Caroline,
I mean, I will say, if we want to beat
them to the punch CEE and see see C C C.
Christen and Caroline's corsets. But yeah, no, yeah, because that's
how those things are really spelled. So yes, but actually
it's just a pizza shape like a corset. Help, but
treat yourself, you know. Well, okay, so the people are
(20:08):
dying to know, and I'm a little curious too because
I am such I'm I'm one step beyond skeptic, which
is a poop o er. I think a professional pooper.
I think it's hashtag disdain. So so I need I
need to know, and the people need to know if
these things actually work. Well, here's the thing. Okay, there
are other people that I have talked to who still
(20:30):
swear up and down waste trainers work. I mean, you
have Jessica Alba, who famously told some tabloids sometime that
right after she had a baby, she wore a waste trainer,
and it shrunk her uterus back to its pre baby size.
And here are the waste training myths that we need
to debunk because listen, listeners, I waste anytime in our
(20:55):
lives wearing an uncomfortable corset and getting just sweaty stomachs.
It's hard enough for me to our pants. I know
it's true. So the fact of the matter is that
waste trainers just compress your stomach and push fat around.
They don't actually get rid of the fat, right, Because
(21:19):
what gets rid of fat eating healthier, eating less fat,
eating less exercising, getting active, burning those calories, working that core,
working that core. Well, there was that trainer talking to
Harper's Bizarre magazine that we read, saying it's not just
about wearing it, it's about exercising while you wear it
(21:40):
to help spot reduce the stomach. And here's the thing.
When it comes to spot reducing, that is not actually
it's not possible. That is not how our bodies work.
If your stomach gets really, really really sweaty, as it
does when you wear this thing, or when I'm wearing pants,
like Caroline is wearing your trash bag pants every day
to work, it is very loud switches all around. That
(22:05):
doesn't mean that your stomach is the only thing that's
going to right right right. I mean, we we touched
on that concept in our in our episode on cankles,
and that you you can't. There is aerobic exercise and
strength exercise and stretching exercises that you can do for
your whole body that will benefit your health overall and
(22:28):
might shrink address size or whatever. But you're not going
to spot reduce an ankle or spot reduce a stomach.
Sure you can do all the sit ups and crunches
and ad work in the world, but you still have
You're still gonna have if you have fat, you have fat.
It's not just like going to be like we're going
to migrate to the arms and the legs instead, let's
(22:50):
go fat shells. Here we go, because it's straight to
your boobs. We're not wanted. Let's go else, Let's go
straight to your But you're welcome. If only that is
how it works, if you just kind of I think
our little impression of fatsils just made me like them
a little more. Hey Caroline, Hey just gotta hang out here, Okay,
(23:11):
stay in the boots, don't go anywhere else, stay put.
And the thing to keep in mind is too, if
you do wear a waste trainer and you're exercising and
you're saying, all of a sudden, my body is so
much slimmer, it has to be that thing about how
much you're eating. Yeah, you can't eat as much when
(23:33):
you wear these things. So yes, your body will very
much change, probably change shape in some way or another
by virtue of wearing these, but it's not the healthiest
way to do it. And when it comes to that
post pregnancy weight loss factor, the uterus shrinks in its
(23:54):
own time. Squeezing it back down is not how that
works well. And we should mention too that there are
medical reasons why some people might wear a corset like garments.
Yeah we mentioned earlier, wearing a brace for scoliosis to
help straighten the spine, or wearing non surgical lap bands
(24:17):
for people who have had bariatric bypass surgery. Um I
mean scoliosis. Braces are designed to actually support your bones,
they're not meant to reshape anything internal. And you also
have to keep in mind that bariatric patients are also
adhering to specific dieting regiments. It's not like people are
(24:40):
just handed some sort of band or support device and
like magically they're better or thinner or whatever. Um, there's
more that needs to happen to change your body. Well.
I wonder though, if part of the waste trainer appeal
is how where in it when you go to work
(25:01):
out you do look thinner. Maybe it's psychologically tricks you
into wanting to work out more because you're instantly seeing
results in quotes, Yeah, I mean total placebo effect. Perhaps
we've seen that with compression garments too, with for for athletes. Yeah,
And speaking of compression garments, there's also increasing research that
(25:26):
that kind of apparel that ostensibly improves blood flow during
workouts is also placebo effect. It might be good to
wear after a workout to reduce swelling, but unless your
doctor has recommended that you wear those calf compression socks
or the arm bands, I mean, you can feel like
(25:47):
you can get like a whole head to toe suit,
the scuba suit if you really want one. Now they're
so popular that it's really just our minds tricking us
into thinking that we're getting more bang for our work
out book. Yeah, because the study we read about that
NPR reported on they gave compression garments to a bunch
of athletes and told them to go work out or
(26:08):
go work out without them. See how your workouts affected
And the only people who actually performed better with the
compression garment where the people who already believed that those
garments would help them. Is it a little like Emperor's
New clothes going on? It is? But like super like
more more sassy, more sassy, and so expensive and yeah,
a little shiny, Yeah, and shapewear, all of spanks are
(26:32):
not off the hook either. No, wearing spanks is not
the same as wearing a waste trainer. But if you
wear shapewear, especially super super tight shapewear that it's probably
too small for you, for hours and hours at a time,
is not doing your insights any favors either. No. And
(26:54):
I just think about those interviews I've read with celebrities
on the red carpet who are like, I'm wearing too
pairs of spanks to really suck it in, And I'm like,
can you feel your toes? Can please tell me? Can
you feel your extremities? Are you okay? Well, here's the thing, Caroline.
My answer would be no, because I prefer to wear
the spangs on my toes to really get that slim,
(27:16):
slender look, you know for sandal season, right to to
really get those finger toes. My toe love handles are
out of control. But you gotta wear blousy shoes. The
puppy shoes are so forgiving. The route right really hides
hides the curve. Yeah, and in a in a nice
zebra print you you won't even see him. But no,
(27:39):
for reals, um that whole shapewear thing, wearing it for
extended periods of time, Like Chris and said, well, it
may not be as serious an effect as wearing a
corset wearing a waste trainer, it's still going to have
an effect. It's still going to result in a compressed stomach,
possibly compressed intestines and colon. You also could experience things
(27:59):
like indigestion and shallow breath. I can vouch for the
shallow breath thing of putting one of those things on,
like those suckers, and you've gotta like, you gotta give
yourself an extra three hours to get ready, just so
you can lie down and pull it up so it
gets like right under your boobs because you still want
to be wearing just like a pretty bra over your
your freak is shapewear. And by the time you finally
get that sucker on your sweating and you're like, I,
(28:22):
I want to take a deep, refreshing, rejuvenatory that's not
a word breath, but I can't because I'm being sucked
in and my colon who knows where that went? Well?
And then Caroline, if you start to feel tingling, numbness
or pain in your thighs, it's probably due to peripheral
nerve compression, which is also related to wearing shapewear for
(28:45):
extended periods of time, which you can also lead to
blood clods. So great, and you mentioned being sweaty and
this being covering a large portion of your body, Folks,
Shapewear also leads to yeast and bacterial infections because it's
not very breathable. You're getting some moisture in there, and
(29:07):
follicles can get clogged. I believe foliculitis is one of
the most common conditions that dermatologists are now seeing among
women in particular who wear shapewear every day. Your skin's
gotta breathe, Your skin's gotta breathe. That's the largest organ
in your body. And yes, I don't know if we
just blew anybody's mind that you can get yeast infections
(29:30):
and yeast colonies on your skin that are not just
in the vaginal area. And for people who experience irritable
bowel syndrome but wear shapewear because especially due to that
intestinal compression that happens, it can be it can throw
that that balance off even more. And when it comes
(29:53):
to our urinary tract health, a lot of times when
women wear spanks, they report existing the urge to go
to the bathroom because you don't want to have to
take that whole thing off and then have to put
it back on again. And so we hold our pe
to put it scientifically, which can promote U t eyes.
Oh mine had a hole really yeah? Mine mine were
(30:16):
open crotch like much like Queen Victoria, but so much tighter. Yeah,
but it's still awkward because you still don't want to
pee in them because it's not like it's just fully
open and there's a lot of kind of wrangling and
maneuvering that has to happen. And so well, yes, in
the pair that I possessed you might have been able
(30:39):
to pee, It's not like it was completely unimpeded, and
so you might still end up holding it unimpeded. I
was unintentional. I mean doctors say that. Listen, They're fine
for special occasions, if you need to walk the red
carpet where your banks like we do all the time,
or whatever brand of shape where you prefer. But wearing
(31:02):
it every day and wearing it super duper tight is
just hands down not great for your body. And circling
back to waste training. With all of this, the best
thing that you can do for your body is exercise,
strengthen your core, work those muscles, and eat healthily if
(31:26):
you can. And you know what if as you're doing that,
your body shape does not conform to the hour glass
that is popular right now. First of all, weight five
ten years and another shape is going to come in style.
And second of all, it is perhaps time for us
(31:46):
to reevaluate how these aspirational body types can really wreck
our own body images and our own health. Yeah. I mean,
this isn't the first time on the podcast that we've
said that it's probably not a great idea to think
of bodies as trends. Everybody is a different body and
(32:08):
that's all right. And you know, as long as you're
taking care of yourself, you know, I think you can
leave the waiste trainer behind and awesome that people who
are waste training are exercising, that's fantastic. Just take the
waist trainer off because even if you might see results immediately,
if you stop wearing it for a few days a
(32:30):
couple of weeks, your body will resume it's pre waste
training shape. So it's just like crash dieting. Yeah, and
I mean, Kristen, you know, I I bet before too long,
when you when you log into your Instagram account, uh,
you won't even see Kim Kardashian wearing that or snook
(32:51):
Eer whoever is bombarding you with their exercise images. It
will be something else, like in a year from now. Yeah.
But I will say one other disturbing thing about this
is that it's not just women doing it. Teenagers are
doing it as well. Right, we just don't waste train please.
We did read that one article from the doctor who
saw the young girl who had developed all of this
(33:12):
numbness because she in addition to her entire soccer team,
we're wearing shapewear under their soccer uniforms. No, it's not
worth it. We need to love our bodies, especially especially
if you're already using it to be active and athletic.
There's no there's no need for shapewear on the soccer field,
(33:32):
and there are ways to wear and enjoy corsertry and
even shapewear, Like we said, special occasions totally fine, we
get it, but it's reaching this like fever pitch that
is a little concerning, to say the least. So we
(33:53):
I know there's got to be at least some waste
trainers in the audience, and I really want to know
from you what you think about all of this, or
if there are any corset fans who are so tired
of people confusing corsetry as you wear it with waste training.
Let us know all of your thoughts. Mom Stuff at
(34:13):
how stuff works dot com is our email address. You
can also tweet us at mom Stuff podcast and messages
on Facebook, and we've got a couple of messages to
share with you right now. Well, I have a letter
here from Nicole in response to our Electronic Women episode.
(34:35):
She says, well, I'm no longer active in the scene.
I used to be heavily involved in electronic music in
the nineteen nineties and into early two thousand. I was
one of the few women, to my knowledge, who was
actively writing and releasing electronic music at the time in
the scene I was involved in. I ran my own
studio full of SyncE and Mac based sequencing and recording programs,
(34:55):
a record label, and released electronic music here in the
States as well as in roup in Japan. Go Nicole,
I want to clarify some terminology you brought up in
addition to expanding some ideas about what electronic music is today,
I noticed you all used the term DJ to speak
of modern electronic music. DJ, of course, is for disc jockey,
(35:16):
and while I was creating music, DJs were typically the
people who were behind the turntables spinning music other artists created. Usually,
and this wasn't always the case, they were not the
ones creating the music themselves. When I was composing music
using synths and computers, I never called myself a DJ,
even while I worked with some of them on occasion
creating music in their shows. DJ was a label that
(35:39):
did not show the scope of what I and many
of my contemporaries were doing at the time, Square Pusher,
a f X Twin, Richard Divine, and many others. Well.
Much of the work we were all doing in this
intelligent dance music scene had an element of dance music.
It was more complicated and nuanced than what was coming
out in clubs and raves, thus the term intelligent being
(36:00):
used to describe it. So I believe electronic musician might
be a more appropriate term to use to distinguish between
those who spin and those who compose music that DJs
use in their shows, in addition to the other types
of music they create that arn't for the dance floor. Also,
it would have been great to bring up the role
of electronic music in today's film scoring. There's a scarcity
(36:20):
here of women, sadly, but I think that by relegating
electronic music today to existing only in the dance music scene,
it's controlled by DJ's, it's limiting composers, especially for small
budget films, rely heavily on the use of electronic equipment
to sequence, orchestrate and score the pieces they do for films.
I hope this helps expand some of the concepts you
all brought up. Thank you, Nicole, and obviously the ten
(36:42):
hour podcast that we did on women in Electronic Music
could expand to fill a month, and so we are
so appreciative of people like you who are sending us
in all of wonderful extra information. Well, speaking of expanding
our insights, I've got an email here from alexand Andrea
about our podcast on Dolora Suerta a little while back.
(37:04):
She writes, I've been listening to your podcast for a
few years now and I love it. I bet you
get tired of hearing that and ps, Nope, we never do. Um,
she writes, I do have some comments regarding your Dolora
square To episode of some time ago. Yes, she is
a strong Latina woman. Yes what she did had a
profoundly positive effect on our country. And yes, as a
(37:25):
transplanted New Mexican, I'm even more proud and even a
little bit ashamed that her students aren't taught who she is. However,
there is a long, very long history of strong Latinas
throughout the Southwest in Mexico. Two examples that come to
mind are the women of the Silver City Minor Strike
and the Solda Datas. The Silver City Minor Strike in
(37:46):
the early fifties would not have been successful without the
hard work and dedication of Latinas who took the men's
places in picket lines and even struck for improved living conditions.
The Solda data, while sometimes worst into what amounted to
slave labor, or a group of strong Latinas who cooked, cleaned,
and took care of men in every imaginable way, including
(38:09):
fighting alongside them. I guess what I'm saying is is
that this s say, pointy attitude is something that is
a characteristic we see in Mexican and Mexican American women
throughout history. Dolora Squerta's work is and has been wonderful,
but she comes from a long, long line of hard
working Latinas who know how to pull their own weight
and the weight of their entire family, men included. Keep
(38:32):
up the great work, Alexandra, and thanks so much for
highlighting those women. Alexandria. And if you listeners have women
you'd like to highlight or waste train notes you'd like
to send our way. Mom Stuff at house stuff works
dot com is our email address and drilling to all
of our social media as well as all of our
blogs and videos, including one on feminist waste training. Then
(38:56):
you know where to go. It's stuff Mom never told
you dot com For more on this and thousands of
other topics. Is it How stuff Works dot com
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