Right, so.
You guys, tightlacing takes years, especially for a waist that small, and this is something no one seems to understand. If you do it properly, it is neither uncomfortable nor does it break your ribs. It is body modification, and it is motivated by the same thing that inspires people to get 00-gauge plugs in their ears or full sleeve and back tattoos. The different corset silhouettes determine how much and what kind of changes you will make to your body.
Hourglass corsets are the best in terms of leaving your insides in place and obtaining the largest difference in the measurements between bust/hip and waist. The Edwardian
straight front (or S-curve) was originally marketed as a medical corset "designed to help women breathe freely", but then no one really thought about what effects it would have on spine and pelvis and it turned out to be a tremendously bad idea. The
wasp corset does compress the floating ribs (and I'm sure that if you try to reduce too quickly or if you do it wrong, it could feasibly break them), but in my own personal opinion in terms of moderate reductions it creates the
nicest shape.
I am tempted to embark on a tightlacing venture of my own just to prove a point, except I am not going to walk around in my corsets all summer in georgia and I haven't got any summer ones. If I remember when it is starting to get marginally less oppressively hot, I will work on knocking mine down from 25 to 21 inches just for the hell of it.
Edit: I just found
this as I was GISing hourglass corsets. Clearly whoever drew that has never been party to properly fitted corsets.