Imagine yourself with the body you’ve always wanted; the proportions you’ve always wanted. Choose your exact waist, bust, and hip measurements. Now describe it. I bet you’d call it flawless, beautiful, perfection. If the body you had in mind was tiny in the middle and voluptuous above and below, maybe you’d call it the exact hourglass figure. If it had an equally as tiny waist, yet a barely-there chest and hip, maybe model-esque is what you’d say. Either way, the “perfect body” and “average” have never been synonyms.

Take Gigi Hadid for example. She definitely isn’t most people’s definition of average. Her five-foot-ten-inch frame and slim silhouette make her the stereotypical poster child for her profession as a model. I don’t know about you, but I can’t reach her height short of getting stilts, and my weight isn’t changing anytime soon. This is not to mention other people around the world go to great lengths to achieve a body like hers.

Just look at Weight Watchers. I’ve never seen a Weight Watchers commercial that talked about a person losing only five pounds. A person has to have lost at least fifty pounds for it to be impressive. But Weight Watchers is one of the more healthful get-slim-quick schemes. Despite some past claims that the sodium levels in the company’s meals are much too high, Weight Watchers has never been considered an unreasonable diet.

If you don’t know what I’m talking about, some more unconventional diets include the Tapeworm Diet, the Chewing Diet, the Cotton Ball Diet, and the Master Cleanse. Some of these methods of losing weight are more dangerous than others. The cotton ball diet is based on the idea that cotton balls expand when they are wet. Soak some cotton balls in orange juice, eat them and your stomach will fill immediately, but be full of polyester fibers.

According to ABC News, managing editor of the website Diets in Review, Brandi Koskie, said that “swallowing a synthetic cotton ball is like dipping your T-shirt in orange juice and eating it.”

I’ve never had a shirt craving before.

It’s easy to be tempted by diets that seem quick and simple, but the health effects of eating cotton balls just aren’t worth the risk. Instead of having the beautiful body you’d always wished for, you’ll get a blocked digestive tract. So if you’ve always wanted to have a figure like Hadid’s that’s okay, but do it the old-fashioned way: eat healthy foods and exercise regularly.

Just recently, however, people have been willing to test out tricks to achieve a body of the opposite extreme: mega curvy. One glance at Nicki Minaj and you’ll know what I’m talking about. Essentially, if you can see your waist without a magnifying glass, you’re doing it wrong.

I’m not sure if this body shape is often achieved naturally, but it sure can be achieved with a bit of help from a waist trainer, just a fancy way of saying corset. Something that “trains” your waist to be itty-bitty sounds a lot more appealing than the bone-crushing, barely-breathing stigma that comes in reference to wearing a corset, though. So “waist trainer” it is.

The claims behind the products are clearly appealing. Whether you want the extreme contrast that Minaj achieves between her bust and waist lines or just a slightly more shapely figure, companies that sell waist trainers claim to have the answer.

Hourglass Angel is one brand of waist trainers that makes pleasant-sounding claims. On their website, they promise customers that their garments “can reduce your waistline up to several inches while stimulating thermal activity and perspiration in your core.” Basically, they squeeze you tightly until your stomach gets hot and sweaty.

It’s very scientific.

But if the tight pressure on your stomach or the lack of scientific backing in their claims doesn’t turn you off, then at least consider the opinions of doctors. Dr. Paul Nassif told E! News that waist trainers can potentially cause “internal organ compression causing kidney, gastrointestinal, and lung issues.”

Besides the potential to strangle your organs, many doctors, like spinal surgeon Dr. Paul Jeffords, agree that the slimming bands have merely temporary effects. “If I were to take a rubber band and wrap it around my finger tightly and leave it there for an hour, I’m going to have this indentation in my soft tissue, but it’s not going to be permanent. An hour later, my finger is going to look normal again,” Dr. Jeffords told USA Today.

Now I’m not saying that people shouldn’t strive to achieve the figure that will make them happy, but the extremes that Hollywood portrays are not the answer. The body that is not flaunted by the media’s most covered celebrities should not be defined with the negative connotation associated with being “average” because the self-mutilation that ensues the pursuit of that definition of perfection is only harmful.

Define perfection how you want, but if your kind of perfect is going to hurt you, reconsider.