Statement 3: Wasp-waist corsets

“Some women have naturally small waists. But rather than regard such forms as beautiful, they should be viewed as defective. These wasp waists may have been transmitted to them from their mothers, as the result of their indulgence in the sinful practice of tight-lacing, and in consequence of imperfect breathing.” ^{17EGW, Health Reformer, November 1, 1871; emphasis supplied.} A few lines later she quotes from a contemporary periodical, The Household: ” ‘But my waist is naturally slender,’ says one woman. She means that she has inherited small lungs. Her ancestors, more or less of them, compressed their lungs in the same way that we do, and it has become in her case a congenital deformity.” ^18Ibid.UEGW 183.1

Ellen White’s unsparing denunciation of the nineteenth-century fashion of “tight-lacing” the female abdomen appears reasonable, but the attribution of this to genetic transmission of acquired characteristics—inconsistent with current science—is not from her pen, but is a quotation from a contemporary periodical. Ellen White’s own expression stops short of full assertion. “These wasp waists may have been transmitted to them from their mothers.” ^{19Ibid.; emphasis supplied.} The word “may” indicates reservation about the reliability of the quoted source, distancing her from endorsement of its explanation.UEGW 183.2