Photo: Disney
Disney’s latest adaptation of the classic “Cinderella” opened this weekend at movie theaters across the country, but since its premiere last week, it seems nobody can stop talking about how very tiny actress Lily James‘ waist is.
MORE: What the ‘Perfect’ Body Looked Like 100 Years Ago
James—who plays Cinderella— told E! News her teeny waist in the film was the result of a corset and a liquid diet. “When [the corset] was on we would be on continuous days, so we wouldn’t stop for lunch or a lovely tea—you’d be sort of eating on the move,” she said. “In that case, I couldn’t untie the corset. So if you ate food it didn’t really digest properly and I’d be burping all afternoon in and it was just really sort of unpleasant. I’d have soup so that I could still eat but it wouldn’t get stuck.”
While wearing a restricting corset doesn’t sound all that enticing based on James’ description, sales of undergarment are very much on the rise, spurred by not only “Cinderella” mania but also Kim Kardashian (who’s flaunted wearing a corset on Instagram) and designers like Alexander Wang, who showed corsets in his most recent collection.
Vintage-inspired lingerie e-commerce site What Katie Did has seen sales of its corsets rise by 50 percent in the past three months. The store’s founder, Katie Thomas, told The Sunday Times: “Suddenly we’ve got Kim Kardashian on the scene with her tiny waist and big hips—it’s amazing to have someone with that kind of figure be popular again—she’s allowing us girls with curves to get back in there a bit.”
eBay has similarly seen an uptick in sales of corsets, reporting a 54 percent increase in sales since December.
MORE: 20 Ways to Fake a Hot Body
Still, health experts caution women to be careful where corsets are concerned (there’s a reason these things haven’t been in vogue since the Victoria era, after all). Mary Jane Minkin, a clinical professor at Yale School of Medicine, told Women’s Health: “It’s … uncomfortable, restricts your movements, and if you wear it really tight, it can even make it difficult to breathe and theoretically could cause rib damage.”
So yeah, probably best to stick with marveling over Lily James’ corsetry for now.