In nearly every culture in the world you will find some form of body reshaping. Depending on the methods used and the current cultural standards, people either celebrate the aesthetics or argue that the procedures are deformations. More consistently than not, humans will alter their appearances to meet an artificially created aesthetic standard.

What is body shaping? In the broadest definition, it’s an alteration of the natural body, something done to control either growth or appearance. Nearly everyone of these practices is purely for aesthetics, that is to say appearance. If a practice becomes prevalent in the culture, there is more and more pressure for all person’s to engage in the practice and sometimes it is seen as a cultural norm and not an aesthetic whim.

Some of the more recognizable forms of body shaping are

Breast Augmentation - The surgical alteration of a woman’s breasts is one of the most highly pursued and debate forms of body shaping today. It allows the restoration or exaggeration of one of the secondary sex characteristics of mature women and has been fueled by the companion cultural aesthetic of having a low percentage of body fat (something entirely contradictory to large breasts).

Body Building - Through controlled diet and repeated exercise, muscles can be forced to grow larger and denser at a rate much faster than with average daily activity.

Circumcision - The removal of the foreskin of the penis is practiced by several cultures, often for religious reasons. The organ rarely needs this minor surgery for actual functional purposes.

Corsetry - The binding of the waist to reduce it’s size has appeared on and off throughout history, dating back to Crete in ancient Greece. Most often a temporary form of body shaping, if carried out to an extreme, this can result in permanent reshaping of the body.

Foot Binding - This 17th century Chinese practice was done to very young girls, and resulted in their feet remaining small enough to fit in the palm of a man’s hand. It was believed to have started as a way to make Chinese women unattractive to the neighboring Tatar invaders, who prized long feet on women. However it became an aesthetic practice that spread through the upper class society and continued to be practiced almost to the 20th century.

Neck Elongation - The Padaung women of Burma would have brass rings welded permanently around their necks, adding them slowly from puberty until adulthood. Over time, this slow progression elongated their necks until they were many inches longer than with normal genetic growth.

Orthodonture - The ability to realign the teeth to smoothly aligned is a more modern form of body shaping and is so prevalent in Western society that children are often told it must be done to them. However this is just a present-day convention, as the actual number of cases where eating and talking are negatively affected by crooked teeth are very rare.

Plastic Surgery - A wide array of practices fall under this heading, including liposuction (removal of body fat), implants (cheeks, breasts, buttocks, pectorals, calves), rhinoplasty (nose surgery) and rhytidectomy (facelift). These methods substitute surgical technique for physical effort in making changes or allow changes that would otherwise not be genetically possible.

If you'd like to learn more on this topic, you might like
Modern Primitives
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ModCon: The Secret World Of Extreme Body Modification
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