The name 'hourglass' comes from the shape it gives to the wearer's figure, rather like an hourglass — the waist is small, with the ribcage tapering sharply to the waist and the hips flaring outwards (wide shoulders, wide ribcage, narrow waist, wide hips). Some dislike the shape, claiming that the nipped-in waist looks unnatural, and that with the aim of getting the smallest waist possible, an hourglass figure can look like "pillow being cinched in by a belt".
The hourglass corset is associated with very small waists. However, it is likely that hourglass corsets were not laced as tightly as the straight-fronted corsets fashionable at the beginning of the twentieth century. An Hourglass Body Shape is considered to be the most ideal body shape because of its proportions, both upper and lower half are in line with each other.
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