🌞 The Golden Cincher

The Benduti tribe is well known for worrying a lot about flexibility, all adopt contortion as a lifestyle from birth. And it's never been a rich tribe, since its people only treasure contorting skills and often consider stretching assistance as a valid payment method.

However, even the Benduti have some valuable artifacts, such as the Golden Cincher, which is like a crown that marks the most talented youth in the tribe. It is passed every month to the next youth of the month, who is not only capable of passing a lot of trials, but can also bear the cincher itself.

The honor of wearing this Cincher is the main reason why the Benduti also embrace tight-belting as one of the forms of contortionism. Many young people diligently train their bodies for this monthly day of extreme trials, during which their very limits are tested, but they also train their waists day and night in order to be able to endure the award itself.

The training is usually carried out by tightening flexible branches of the rubber tree around the waist and spending as many hours as possible during the day while the branch is worn as tight as possible. After maxing out the tightness, they extract glue from the same tree and put it on the branch to get a solid grip and wear this natural belt for several days until cutting it off.

Usually after taking off the branch they gain a great boost to their torso rotation, backbending, frontbending and sidebending skills, so the rubber belt is often cut off right before this special day. That explains why most youths participating in the trials have such thin waists.

It is believed that the Golden Cincher was a gift from the deity of the Sun, given to a legendary Benduti contortionist many centuries ago after they managed to please the Sun with their contortion performance. People believe this because it still looks good as new after all these centuries and it's proven to have magical qualities.

The tribe's shamans put their spells on it as soon as it is closed around the waist of the next chosen one. The enchantments make it completely unbreakable over the next month, so the one can only remove it on the next special day of the festivities.

Another of its magical qualities is that the wearer's waist remains extremely small for months after taking off the Cincher, that's why one person is forbidden to participate in the trials twice in a row, they have to wait at least three full moons until they're allowed to take part in the trials again, so that people of the tribe could admire their natural tiny waist meanwhile. It's easy to calculate that only about 3-4 youths at a time can have these magically altered waists that remain the size of the neck without belts and cinchers.

Surely, the Golden Cincher is not just an award that can be put on a shelf, the youth currently wearing it is expected to perform extreme contortions daily as a proof of their position, living to be the greatest inspiration for the tribe. The Cincher is enchanted not only to be unbreakable, but also to boost the flexibility of the wearer, so the whole tribe can admire some divine contortions that the body is capable of when reinforced by the Cincher.

Many young people admire these impossible contortions with widely open eyes, dreaming to one day be the next wearer of this golden "waist-crown". Inspired by the show, they get back to their stronger older brothers, parents or teachers to try hard to beat some of yesterday's records, oversplit deeper, twist around further and tighten up that backfold a little more, then tighten their rubber branch and repeat.