Sarah Vaeth of Portland, Oregon is a painter but she is gaining notoriety for another passion: her extreme corseting fetish.
Sarah has managed to get her waist size down to 16 inches but is aiming much higher (or smaller, as the case may be) to get to 15 inches which is currently the world record for the smallest waist. To do this, Sarah wears her corset almost daily for 16- to 20-hour stretches.
She had no problems going down to 18 inches but the jump from 18 to 16 inches proved much harder.
Watch to meet this woman below.
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The 43-year-old mother said: “It’s harder physically and it’s slower, like the tighter you get, each little tiny increment takes longer.”
She got into corseting to improve her posture because hours of sitting down and painting all day promoted her slouching.
Sarah explained: “I got a little bit of a hunch just from kind of bad work habits over the years, and I stumbled on corsets online.”
Seeing the potential for correcting her slouching problem, Sarah finally ordered a corset online.
Sarah said: “I became intrigued and started looking at more and bought one and then got hooked – I realized as soon as I tried one on for the first time.
“Once I started getting really interested in corsets, I looked at a lot of historical examples and just got really fascinated with how the styles changed over time.”
Thousands of dollars later, Sarah has amassed a wide range of corsets, saying, “Although I try to find good deals, I still spend too much money on corsets.”
Sarah took a short break from corseting when she got pregnant with her daughter a few years ago but has since restarted after giving birth.
Sarah explained: “I’ve been corseting since 2012 but I had to quit for a while when I got pregnant with my daughter, so I started up again after she was born in late 2014.”
She’s aware of how extreme her hobby has become. She said: “Even in the corseting community I’m kind of a little bit on the far end of what’s typically normal.”
As to the potential damage that may occur from extreme corseting, she explained why she’s not concerned.
“I just don’t think there’s any evidence that that can happen, the current living record holder is Cathy Jung and she is in her mid-80’s now, so I’m not concerned.”
Even though she hasn’t reached the world record yet, she’s open to the possibility of breaking it.
Sarah said: “It’s not about the aesthetics anymore, it’s about the challenge – I want to make sure this is really going to happen, it’d be just historically really cool.”
Ron, Sarah’s husband, also isn’t worried about the potential health risks and says he fully trusts his wife: “She’s always careful to know what her boundaries are, she would not do anything to hurt herself.”
He adds that he’s not surprised that his wife is considering breaking the world record because she also has a competitive nature.
Ron said: “That is very typical, that she wants to break the record, it’s just totally what I would expect from her, it’s part of her competitive nature.”
While he fully trusts her judgment, he won’t hesitate to tell her to slow down if he feels it’s warranted.
But right now, he’s more bothered by the negative judgment Sarah gets online and in the real world.
He said: “When other people are judgmental, I get a little bit defensive, it’s natural.”
However, Sarah does have a support network comprised of friends who are also into corseting and Ron is grateful for the community.
She said: “I think that’s been the best thing about this – really wonderful, open-minded, very cool people that are out there doing this stuff.”
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