Trained Muscles Can Be Used As Natural Corset

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 12, Issue 95, 15 September 1948, Page 3

Trained Muscles Can Be Used As Natural Corset

While the thought of the New Look is uppermost in women’s minds these days we should not forget the care of the figure which is equally as important as any new fashion. The muscles can be used as a natural corset, giving narrower hips and a firm neat waistline. The woman who says, “I am too tired to do exercises,” probably thinks in terms of floor work, which may entail back bending, kicking, raising the body from the ground, swinging and' stretching. But the best exercises of all for the control of the figure, reducing the width of the hips and slimming the waist line can be done by posture, by small movements of the muscles made in the ordinary course of the daily routine. While these movements demand thought because they involve balance, soon they become automatic. It is the wrong kind of sitting which causes the over broad hips because with wrong sitting the muscles are allowed to sag and above them the whole structure of the body changes its balance. A woman who sags down like a sack into a chair is sure to get up more tired

than when she sat down. She is also weakening her muscles and spoiling her outline. Instead of this collapse into a chair the tired woman would do much better to sit squarely well back on the seat of a firm chair. By sitting squarely she is balanced on the very muscles meant by nature to take her weight and devised specially for sitting, her*back forming a slight angle with the back of the chair. Instead of caving in at the chest she now sits with her chest slightly more forward than her hips, the head in a line above the chest and hips, the chin in and the neck strongly balancing the head above the spine. Sitting like that a woman can overcome fatigue in a very short time while the muscles automatically do their work. Relaxing is a totally different thing from sagging. By keeping the bodyline balanced on the sitting and standing muscles any woman can immensely improve her figure. Holding herself in this way and also walking with easy knees a woman cannot fail to slim her hipline and waist. Her clothes will fit and look better and her state of fatigue will largely disappear. When a woman’s spine is badly used and sags and the muscles perforce get flabby, grace and firmness must necessarily say good-bye to the figure.