Corsets don't give women 13-inch waists, and other lies

In the titular role of Disney's new live-action version of Cinderella, Lily James plays a beaming, beautiful, fairly passive spin on the fairy tale princess. She somehow has less agency than her animated counterpart, but the two do have one tiny thing in common: a minuscule waist.
Just look at this comparison:

 To achieve the itsy-bitsy effect, James wore a corset. In press interviews, she complained that the garment wouldn't let her swallow whole foods — unsurprising, considering how constrictive it seems to be.
Critics have been fairly outspoken about James' unrealistically reduced waist in the movie. Victoria Lambert wrote for the Telegraph that she would not let her daughter see the new Cinderella because "what I dislike about [director Kenneth] Branagh’s version is that his vision is one in which young women are most attractive when they have a waist the size of a preteen." At the Washington Post, Emily Yahr called James' waist "alarmingly nonexistent."
As my colleague Todd VanDerWerff wrote in his review of the movie, "The message seems clear. On the most magical night of her life, Cinderella's waist is size negative two." James, meanwhile, maintains that though the dress was uncomfortable, she is perfectly healthy.
Corsets, of course, are made to help suck in a woman's stomach and emphasize her waistline, shrinking it down in proportion to her ribcage and hips. Throughout history, women have used corsets to refine their waists and emphasize their curves. Corsets also often serve as land mines in conversations about body image, fat-shaming, and women's rights.
But they don't have to.