The corset is a reinforced, lacing garment which is designed to fasten around the torso, and then lace tightly to reduce the waist size and lend shaping and support to the remolded figure. For many decades, it was a staple of women's wear, a foundational garment that gave a woman an hourglass-shaped figure. In modern fashion, it is a style or lifestyle choice, depending if you corset occasionally, or devote yourself to it as a form of body modification.

Contrary to many stories that get passed around, women at the turn of the 20th century were not having ribs removed so that they could have their waists pulled down even tighter. Surgical technique just wasn't that good. What can be confirmed is that women always discussed their waist sizes in terms of the inside measurement of their corset if it was laced closed. In other words, a woman with a 26" waist could be wearing a 22" corset, but with a gap in the back where the garment wasn't laced closed entirely. Also clear evidence of photographic retouching has been found, whereby pictures of women wearing corsets have been modified so that they appear to be pulled down even further.

It has been shown that starting to corset at a young age can produced marked and permanent changes to the torso shape. However, there have been women and men who have also started corseting as adults who have achieved some extremely dramatic reductions. So really, if you have always wished to explore tight-lacing, there's nothing to any of the comments about age that hold true. What does hold true is the commitment to the waist reduction. All people who have used corsets to produced body modifications have been willing to alter the rest of their lifestyle around this practice. The true devotees do wear corsets very close to twenty-four hours a day, even when sleeping. It's that discipline that produces the changes, not the intensity of the corseting.

Many people comment that wearing a corset isn't that comfortable and my own experiences have shown me that most often being uncomfortable in a corset is a sign that either the garment is not the right size and shape for the wearer, or they've pulled themselves down too far too quickly. Just like water can wear away stone, corseting can make radical body changes, but they are best done in gentle and slow increments. A corset is most often worn laced with an open gap in the back busk when it's new, and then over weeks or months, the wearer slowly laces it more tightly, until the garment can be comfortably worn laced all the way closed. At that point the wearer can stop or they can purchase a smaller-sized corset and begin to repeat the whole process over again.