Sharing in the Heritage Day festivities at Hope Town on March 7 was the person with the smallest waist in the world. This lady with a 15-inch waist turned heads wherever she went; people just could not believe what they were seeing.
The owner of the tiny waist is Cathie Jung and is, apparently, very used to this attention, having won a place in the Guinness World Book of Records as having the smallest waist on a living person.
Cathie’s home is in North Carolina, but she and her husband Bob, a retired orthopaedic surgeon, spend time every year on Abaco on their boat The Bobcat.
Cathie was not born with a 15-inch waist; it is the result of continuous waist training. She was born in 1937 and as a young lady her waist measured a normal 26 inches. She and her husband became very fond of the elegance of the Victorian style and loved to dress up in Victorian costume. To look elegant in those fashions Cathie needed an hour glass figure with a ‘wasp waist’ like Scarlett O’Hara. So she began wearing a corset under her costumes. The more she wore the costumes the smaller her waist became, but she did not wear corsets full time at first as she had three small children.
After her children were grown, Cathie began serious waist training and now wears one of her 25 corsets for 23 hours of every day, only taking it off to bathe. When she began, Cathie says that she never had any goal in mind; “It is all about accentuating the natural and
beautiful curves of the female figure.”
Cathie stands at 5 feet 6 inches tall and weighs 135 pounds and her uncorseted waist measures 21 inches. With the aid of a corset, her 15-inch waist is approximately the same size as a regular jar of mayonnaise! This tiny waist has taken Cathie and her husband to many countries around the world for appearances at the request of the Guinness Book of World Records, and she has appeared on many television shows including The Oprah Show, Unbelievable, the Tyrah Banks Show and 20/20. Life Magazine and the New York
Times Style section have also featured her.

Cathie Jung

“The waist training has never caused me any health problems; in fact, the corsets protect the disks,” stated this very personable lady. Now if you see a lady around town with a waist you cannot believe, you will know you have seen the famous “Queen of Corsets.”