Wasp waist refers to a woman's fashion silhouette, produced by a style of corset

Corset

A corset is a garment worn to hold and shape the torso into a desired shape for aesthetic or medical purposes...

 and girdle

Girdle

A girdle is a garment that encircles the lower torso, perhaps extending below the hips, and worn often for support. The word girdle originally meant a belt. In modern English, the term girdle is most commonly used for a form of women's foundation wear that replaced the corset in popularity...

, that has experienced various periods of popularity in the 19th and 20th centuries. Its primary feature is the abrupt transition from a natural-width rib cage

Human rib cage

-See also:*Terms for bones*Terms for anatomical location*Articulation of head of rib-References:* Clinically Oriented Anatomy, 4th ed. Keith L. Moore and Robert F. Dalley. pp. 62–64...

 to an exceedingly small waist, with the hips curving out below. It takes its name from its similarity to a wasp

Wasp

The term wasp is typically defined as any insect of the order Hymenoptera and suborder Apocrita that is neither a bee nor an ant. Almost every pest insect species has at least one wasp species that preys upon it or parasitizes it, making wasps critically important in natural control of their...

's segmented body. The sharply cinched waistline also exaggerates the hips and bust

Breast

The breast is the upper ventral region of the torso of a primate, in left and right sides, which in a female contains the mammary gland that secretes milk used to feed infants.Both men and women develop breasts from the same embryological tissues...

.

In the 19th century, while average corseted waist measurements varied between 20 and 23 inches, wasp waist measurements of 18 to 16 inches were not uncommon and were often striven for as the reigning standard of feminine

Femininity

Femininity is a set of attributes, behaviors, and roles generally associated with girls and women. Though socially constructed, femininity is made up of both socially defined and biologically created factors...

 beauty

Beauty

Beauty is a characteristic of a person, animal, place, object, or idea that provides a perceptual experience of pleasure, meaning, or satisfaction. Beauty is studied as part of aesthetics, sociology, social psychology, and culture...

 in the period.

Among the multitude of medical problems women suffered to achieve these drastic measurements were cracked and deformed ribs, weakened abdominal muscles, deformed and dislocated internal organs, and respiratory ailments. Displacement and disfigurement of the reproductive organs greatly increased the risk of miscarriage

Miscarriage

Miscarriage or spontaneous abortion is the spontaneous end of a pregnancy at a stage where the embryo or fetus is incapable of surviving independently, generally defined in humans at prior to 20 weeks of gestation...

 and maternal death

Maternal death

Maternal death, or maternal mortality, also "obstetrical death" is the death of a woman during or shortly after a pregnancy. In 2010, researchers from the University of Washington and the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia, estimated global maternal mortality in 2008 at 342,900 , of...

.

See also

• Body dysmorphic disorder
  Body dysmorphic disorder
  Body Dysmorphic Disorder is a type of mental illness, a somatoform disorder, wherein the affected person is exclusively concerned with body image, manifested as excessive concern about and preoccupation with a perceived defect of his or her physical features...
  
  
• Breast augmentation
  Breast augmentation
  Breast augmentation denotes the breast implant and fat-graft mammoplasty procedures for correcting the defects, and for enhancing the size, form, and feel of a woman’s breasts...
  
  
• Corset controversy
  Corset controversy
  The corset controversy is an ensemble of letters and articles concerning the corset that appeared in newspapers and periodicals in the 19th century.-Introduction:...
  
  
• Foot Binding
  Foot binding
  Foot binding was the custom of binding the feet of young girls painfully tight to prevent further growth. The practice probably originated among court dancers in the early Song dynasty, but spread to upper class families and eventually became common among all classes. The tiny narrow feet were...
  
  
• Labiaplasty
  Labiaplasty
  Labiaplasty is a plastic surgery procedure for altering the labia minora and the labia majora, the paired tissue structures bounding the vestibule of the vulva. The indications for the correction of labial hypertrophy are two-fold: the correction of defect and deformity, and the cosmetic...
  
  
• Neck ring
  Neck ring
  Neck rings are formed with one or more spiral metal coils of many turns worn as an ornament around the neck of an individual. In a few African and Asian cultures neck rings are worn usually to create the appearance that the neck has been stretched. Padaung women of the Kayan people begin to wear...
  
  
• Polaire
  Polaire
  Polaire was the stage name used by French singer and actress Émilie Marie Bouchaud .Born at Agha, Algiers, Algeria, according to her memoirs she was one of eleven children of whom only four - Emilie, her two brothers Edmond and Marcel, and a sister, Lucile - survived infancy...
  
  
• Tightlacing
  Tightlacing
  Tightlacing is the practice of wearing a tightly-laced corset to achieve extreme modifications to the figure and posture and experience the sensations of a very tight corset. Those who practice tightlacing are called tightlacers...