That is one long blog post title.
Anyway.
Julia did the fantastic job at summarizing the basic results from our experiment, so here they are:
Red Riding Hood Reality Project
Test Results
Our stats:
Julia:
Waist – 26”
Height – 5’2”
Weight – approx. 110 lbs.
Nicole:
Waist – 29”
Height – 5’7
Weight - 130 lbs.
Day One:
Saturday, April 30th at 2:00 P.M.
Before Corset:
Julia – 26” waist
Nicole – 29” waist
After Corset:
Julia – 27½” waist
Nicole - 26½” waist
Right after donning the corsets, we went to lunch. It was certainly more difficult for us to eat while we were tightly laced up. Unfortunately, we couldn’t get our hands on any chicken wings.
*Because the Elizabethan corset (which is meant to create a silhouette not focused on shrinking the waist) actually added to the waist measurement, we decided not to use for the rest of the experiment, choosing instead to focus on the Victorian style under bust corset which does cinch the waist. Julia took off the Elizabethan corset around 3:30 and remained uncorseted until later that night.
9:00 P.M.
Nicole – 25½” waist (worn since 2 P.M. with a few short breaks)
Julia – 25” waist (worn for the first time that day)
The biggest hands we could find belong to Nicole’s boyfriend, Bryan. He’s 6’3” and his finger span (from tip of middle finger to tip of thumb) is 9½”, making the largest circumference that his hands could encircle 19”. Neither of us had gotten anywhere close to a 19” waist that day, although in Victorian times, it was common.
We didn’t get a picture just of Bryan’s hands, but to give you an idea, here’s a picture of Julia’s hands, showing you how we measured.
From tip of middle finger, following the bend of the hand to the end of the thumb.
Day Two:
May 1st at 2:00 P.M.
*Since we were no longer using the Elizabethan corset and Nicole had already done her day with the Victorian one, only Julia laced up on this day.
Before Corset:
Julia – 26” waist
After Corset:
Julia – 25½” waist (2:00 P.M.)
24½” waist (6:00 P.M.)
24½” waist (7:30 P.M.)
At 7:30 we stopped the experiment because Julia had had the corset on for 5½ hours and couldn’t tighten it anymore without feeling intensely uncomfortable.
Here are all the hand measurements:
Julia – 7” each, 14” altogether
Nicole – 8" each, 16" altogether
Bryan - 9.5" each, 19" altogether
Max (Julia’s brother) – 7½” each, 15” altogether
My Thoughts:
Click here to read Julia's thoughts.
I don't care if you want to make your character thin.
But when you haven't established a Victorian based world, clearly this is unrealistic. I didn't think the corsets would be able to shrink our waists small enough, and it didn't; since nobody in the original comments who said people could fit their hands around their waist contacted us back, we had nothing real to work against (the random skinny girl on America's Next Top Model aside).
I just hope this is a lesson to both myself when I write and to other authors and readers: tiny details? They're what make a book realistic. In a world of paranormal and dystopias and fantasies, you need to get the small details right to keep some sort of ground in any reality. This time it didn't work. Maybe next time it will.
But hopefully we won't have superbly skinny girl to get that way.
On that note, I leave you with corset lady:
Tell us your thoughts, concerns, questions, compliments, curses in the comments below!