Update

I have put tightlacing on hold for a short while due to back problems. I have had it sorted out by my chiropracter and am just letting it settle for a few days before I continue. The thing about corsetry is that while it on it's own is very very unlikely to cause you harm it can accentuate existing problems. I have a spine that is built very much like a two year old's tower of blocks - all slightly out of cinc due to years of falling off motorbikes, bicycles and pretty much anything else that can be fallen off of. The corset made me realise exacly how much my back was out by.  by the middle of last week, I had laced down by 4" of the 6".

The Tightlacing Saga's. (Chapter 1)

A couple of months ago, I started toying with the idea of tightlacing again. Those who have been with me from around about the Cretateous age remember that I tightlaced down to a 20" at one time but stopped when I got very ill about five years ago in order to give my body a chance to heal properly.
Skip forward a few years and I started feeling the need for a little more discipline in my life.  Being a complete hedonist, I decided that this need was probably a sign that I am going soft in the head and so I ignored it....and ignored it..... and then gave in to it (probably because I am a hedonist and therefore have no willpower - how's that for a paradox!) The other reason that tipped me over the edge is that putting my jeans on in the morning started to involve a complicated routine of bouncing and pulling.

And so I made myself a new tightlacer. It is beautiful - The base is a vintage pure cotton sleeve lining that is white with a black pinstripe and it has a broad visible maroon petersham reinforcing strip with the same maroon binding top and bottom and ivory narrow petersham boning panels. The play of colours is very bold, but still understated. I always promised that I would never own a white tightlacer as the are too high-maintenance for my liking, but I kept been drawn to the fabric and at the end of countless trips to suppliers over a period of weeks, it was still the only thing that I liked. So there, I now have a white tightlacer.

I put it on for the first time this morning. Ben helped with the back and for once, didn't make my intestines ooze out of my ears which really was a pleasant surprise, Particualry as I hadn't had breakfast yet and so still had a need for them.  It is a nice feeling to be back in corsets again, Although there is still the worry that I am going to have to completely replace my wardrobe.
It is now about five hours on I expected to be a lot more uncomfortable than I am. New tightlacers are on a par with new really stiff leather boots and the wearing in process is the same with the exception that the chafing and bruises are usually on my hips and not my ankles. I have had a little back-ache, but to not have back-ache at all is a very foreign concept to me so that is all normal and a small cramp in my side which is more that likely caused by me trying to behave normally while tightlaced - something that is impossible. It is still very loose at the top and has some space at the hips, but that will fill out as I pull he waist in over time and it has an alarming amount of space at the back. I always find that intimidating, but hey, it's something to work towards. I am pretty tired because I have been on my feet for hours and have in total had one banana and a cup of tea that had polar bears frolicking in it by the time I got to finish it. One banana, then i was full. That bit is depressing. I have completely fallen out of the habit of corset eating - small meals often. and have fallen into the one gigantic meal when I get around to it habit which is probably going to be the hardest thing of all to break. I have also already decided that my next one needs to be about an inch and a half longer at the bottom. This one is a great one for when I am sitting all day, but I need one for days like today when I am on my feet all day too.
This is going to be a log of how thing go from here. I am not sure at this stage how far I want to take it, but time will tell. One of the great myths is that tightlacing is incredibly painful. It isn't. It is restrictive and it is certainly not easy, and except for a bit of backache while your body adjusts to actually been upright, if it is painful, you are doing something very very wrong.

from these two, you can see how mush space there is still at the top particulary. The corset is also still really crinkly because it is so new. Tightlacers usually take about a month to wear in completely. The trick to it all is really just to listen to your body, take it as it comes and relax. I do think that that is also pretty good advice for general life.

I have about four inches at the back to still pull in. By the time I have gone down the six or so inches that the corset demands it will only have about an inch all the way down the back (unless I lose more weight than I anticipate)

Note: I finally took it off after 10 hours, which I think is pretty good. I was expecting to last four. As long as I keep active I am ok, but at the end of it, I had been standing fairly still for about two hours and my back was screaming. Although it was a relief to stretch out, it is always quite sad to take it off. A corset is one of those strange things that irritates you while it is on (particulary while you're not used to having it around) and you miss it when it's not there. I'm not ready to sleep in it yet, so I'll start with days and move up from there. I think that I am very lucky, partially because I have been through it all before and as with tattoos, the mind blows the unpleasant bits out of proportion which has the unexpected side effect of making you breathe a sigh of relief when you realise that it really isn't that bad at all. The other thing is that I am very very flexible. that makes life soooo much easier :)

Corset Myths 01 - In the Victorian era, all women tightlaced

This is a huge one. Pretty much everyone who passes through our shop has heard (and usually believe this one) In some ways it isn't a bad myth as it gives people some sort of understanding of what a corset entails. most people understand what I am talking about if I use the words "Victorian Corset."  What I have more trouble with than this myth, is people who think that any little top with a bit of ribbon in it is a corset.

Let's put it this way. This myth is equivelant to people, 100 years in the future saying "all women in 2010 had gigantic silicon boobs squeezed into Wonderbras" based on what was said by our media.  The majority of women in the 19th and early 20th centuary did wear corsets, but in much the same way that the majority of women today wear bras. There were the odd ones who took corsetry to the extreme and as with all extremes, these are the ones that people remember, but most women wore corsets as a bit of day to day support. Our average tightlacer today is far more extreme than most of the extreme tightlacers of yesteryear. 
Before I go any further, let me just explain to those of you who don't know, what a tightlacer or tightlacing is. A tightlacer is a person who wears steel-boned corsets (tightlacer or tightlacing corset) on a permanent basis for body modifying reasons. The corsets are usually worn 23 hous a day, seven days a week, and are taken off only to bath and exercise. Some people wear them in order to minimise their waists, sometimes to ridiculous extremes (think Guiness Book of Records, world's smallest waist / Cathy Jung, Ethl Granger, Spook) who, while I aplaud their discipline, I do not agree with their aesthetics, Extreme is seldom beautiful.  Most wear corsets to perfect their proportions and give support under clothing. And there are few things more pleasing than a perfectly corsetted waist under a perfectly fitted suit.

There are plenty of records from the 19th C of women (and men) who tighlaced down to sizes of 12", 13", 14", of the much laudered Finishing Schools, and of tighlacing families however most of these have been proven to be fantasies usually published by the "National Enquirer" of the day.  Not one of the so called Tighlacing Finishing Schools has been proven to have existed and it is now a known fact that tightlacing was frowned upon, paticulary by the upper eschelons of society.  In fact the women who did tightlace were the feminists of the day. A corset gives a woman a confidant air and enhances her sensuality along with her natural assets,  Men (and I am generalising here so don't get on your high horses) always have been, but were especially then due to the political upheavals in society afraid of a confidant sensual woman. Basically put, corsets took women out of the kitchen and away from the kids (it is difficult to correlate a corseted woman with the image of a pregnant one) and put them firmly in the public eye - exacly where no-one including Queen Victoria wanted them to be.
Over the years, corsets have followed the shapes of outer fashions, moulding and sculpting the body to the fashion of the day, As outerwear changed, so did corsets, not the other way around. They supported the bust, and helped perfect proportions to let every women look gorgeous in fabulous clothes, exactly like bras, and still over 100 years later, like corsets do today.