Waist beads are one of the kinds of dangling jewels that you wear around the waist. Beads are embedded in a string and tied just below the navel. They are also known as belly beads. In Egypt, people call them as ‘girdles.’ Like all other jewels they, too, add up to woman’s feminity, even it might be the prettiest trend your eyes will ever witness. There are certain myths as well regarding their spiritual powers of these waist beads. If you are trying to swank your twenty-eight inches waist that’s precisely where waist beads come handy. Simply place it around your waist, tie it up and off you go with your steamy look.

[Read More about Girdles]

Initially, they were made up of plain beads, but since everything goes through continuous evolution so did the waist beads, to be more versatile. You can add stones, shells, gold fittings and other enticing gems to the string that is majorly brimming with beads.

History of Waist Beads

Waist beads have their roots anchored in Africa and overlap with Egypt as well. They came into existence around the 15th century as a status symbol. The natives had different views about its uses and miracles. Traditional African women used to wear them often on their bare skin and rarely under their clothing. Egyptian women wore them to allure men while belly dancing. Sometimes scented, women used them to allure their partners since they signified their sexuality. They were also thought to have some healing powers. When used with stones, waist beads were the means of spiritual healing as well. Wearing waist beads is also part of Ghanaian culture. It is a traditional ornament and necessary dowry for women. Usually, babies wear waist beads at Ghanaian naming ceremonies, and young girls also wear waist beads as a sign of femininity. The web of this culture then extended and reached middle-east where it has taken up a notch and women started admiring it and carrying it along with their bodies.

Now, waist beads are worn by women from different countries and cultures to celebrate, decorate, confidence building, tracking weight gain and weight loss, body shaping, and at the same time, they also symbolize spirituality, womanhood, protection, wealth, female empowerment, fertility, and sexuality.

What Does the Color of Waist Beads Signify?

The natives had same spiritual beliefs associated with the colors of the beads embedded in the string. According to folklore, different hues of waist beads impart different properties. The major ones are:

• Red waist beads: For sexual signals, energy, self-confidence, vitality, passion, power, love, and desire.
• Blue waist beads: For knowledge, wisdom, trust, loyalty, devotion, faith, peace, and healing.
• Green waist beads: For prosperity, harmony, encouraging, fertility, growth, abundance and hope.
• Yellow waist beads: For calming nerves, happiness, joy, and clarity.
• Gold waist beads: For wealth, power, preciousness, and high quality.
• Pink waist beads: For romance, love, friendship, appreciation, femininity, sweet, kindness and tenderness.
• Orange waist beads: For warmth, enthusiasm, success, attraction, and creativity.
• Purple waist beads: For mysterious, luxury, ambition, independence, magic, and spirituality.
• Black waist beads: For protection, elegance, authority, depth, and formality.
• White waist beads: For innocence, purity, humility, youth, cleanliness, light, virginity, and goodness.
• Brown waist beads: For earth, stability, honesty, strength, natural, reliability, and comfort.
• Silver waist beads: For serenity, dreams, grace, glamour, insight, and female energy.

Uses of Waist Beads

They are more than just pretty glass beads hanging from your belly. They hold some enticing qualities that have dragged them right from 15th century to this date. The empowerment they give to women can never go unnoticed. The most prominent misconception you might come across regarding waist beads is that only zero size ladies use these, which is farthest from the truth. There are plenty of grannies with 52” inches waist and are still adhering to the tradition of hanging them around their waistline.

The primary four uses of the waist beads are:

1. Maturity and growth
2. Intimate appeal
3. Body shaping
4. Symbol of chastity

1. Maturity and Growth

In Africa, waist beads were usually used to signify the changes a female body goes through over the years. Young female, as soon as they hit puberty, were made to wear these waist beads to ensure people, specifically men that they have reached just the right age of marriage or mating. They also symbolized female features that made them a whole lot different from men and their masculine features.

2. Intimate Appeal

Women usually wear waist beads around the waists for seduction. Females would try to give off a sense of sexuality to their husbands and lovers. Wives used to communicate their intimate appeal silently via these exquisite beads ending up provoking sexual desires in men. Sometimes women from Yoruba would scent their beads and rattle them swiftly in front of their partners and drive them crazy.

3. Body Shaping

In western Africa, people use it as an instrument than as a jewel. Ladies would try to fathom their body shape according to it. It also used to give them an insight upon weight loss or weight gain. People also use it as an indicator of pregnancy since it shows the baby bump. When the waist beads start getting tight, that means you are gaining weight so watch out. On the contrary to it, when the waist beads start getting loose, it’s a green signal about losing weight.

4. Symbol of Chastity

In western Africa, a virgin will wear waist beads, and during the wedding night, the only person allowed to remove them is her husband, which makes the wedding even more symbolic.

How to Fit the Waist Beads to Your Body?

You don’t have to be slim and trim to carry any jewel, but when it comes to waist beads, you’d want yourself to be smart as to carry them with just the right amount of grace. To fit them around, you will have to measure yourself up, and there is a whole protocol for it.

1. How to Measure Yourself

It greatly depends on where you want to tie them, around the hips or the waist. Usually, they are tied just below the naval and above the hips. Now you have to measure the correct part of your waist. You can easily do it yourself or else may ask for an expert help for accuracy.

Following steps should be taken into consideration to make the correct measurements:

• Remove any layers of clothing that may be blocking your waist.
• Take your measurement and then stand up straight, hold the measuring tape right behind you, and bring it around your waist so that it overlaps at your navel. The tape should be parallel to the floor and fit snugly around your torso. Avoid digging it into your skin.
• Read the tape and then look at the place on the tape where zero end overlaps with the other end of the measuring tape. The overlapping point is your right waist measurement.
• Have it checked by any other friend as well or double check it yourself to avoid any possible human error.

2. Precautions While Taking Measurements

• Don’t hold your breath since it would affect the measurement.
• Don’t dig the tape into your skin.
• You should stand straight.
• Raise or better yet, remove any clothing before taking the measurement.

Waist Training to Lose Some Extra Inches

You have to lose something to gain something, well, in this case, you have to lose some extra pounds and belly fat to get that steamy slim look. Waist beads adorn the waist only if it’s slim enough, it can also get along with the bulky waist, but that would compromise your grace. So to carry it with enough confidence you have to let go of surplus body fat. Thinking of getting it done overnight is one of the biggest misconceptions. You have to work and work pretty hard. There isn’t any shortcut, but the longest road ensures your success if you opt for it. The beginning will always be the hardest, but you will get along if you have enough motivation and determination.

Following are the ways that can offer you that zero size look by shrinking your waist:

1. Exercise

Exercise has a wide horizon of activities; it would not only get you slimmer look but also cut off the chances of getting heart diseases. The body areas where you need to work are your abs and waistline. Do planks, cycling, running, and rope skipping. Don’t neglect your legs, work on them as they help you in standing straight hence minimizing the burden around your tummy. Don’t burden yourself instead opt for working in intervals.

2. Diet

Diet, not in its least of the meaning, means to stay hungry. It means to eat in small proportions and avoid high-calorie intake. Those whose calorie intake is high, have the highest waist to hip ratio. Let go of carbs and focus on protein diets. Avoid fizzy drinks because they do no good and rather add to your belly fat making the weight loss journey more difficult for you.

3. Lifestyle Changes

A sedentary lifestyle is one of the leading causes of obesity, even if you have a sedentary one, try to take out some time for exercise and brisk walking.

4. Waist Trainer

Waist trainer is a steel boned corset that modifies your body in hour-glass shape. The product comes in different fabrics. It has nothing to do with weight loss; it only modifies your waist shape into something presentable. To gain better results you have to wear it for minimum eight hours. The only precaution to look forward is to avoid wearing it during exercise and sleep. These ways can promise you the body you have always dreamt of having.

Conclusion

Waist beads trend has come this long because of the empowerment it gives to its users and all the jewelry maniacs around the globe. With their uses ranging from deeply spiritual to merely cosmetic, people have always looked at waist beads with plenty of admiration. It gives you that seductive, desirable and voluptuous looks that can hardly go unnoticed. If you are looking for a weight loss tool, this is the thing to grab on. It helps you in tracking the weight loss. When the beads roll down your waist, it means you are losing weight, and when the waist beads tighten up, you will get to know that it’s the other way around. If you are one of those Sufi-rustic souls, try wearing them with stones, the ripple of positive vibes it would create around you would be of unparalleled beauty. They are for every woman, regardless of creed, tribe and body shape.