In 2014, during an episode of RuPaul's Drag Race, judge Michelle Visage examined Adore Delano's sequined sleeveless dress and asked, "Are you tight at the waist?" Adore Delano, referring to her natural figure, replied, "I'm gaulled like a hog," a phrase that became part of the show's vocabulary. This phrase signified the opposite of the term "snatched," which refers to a perfect, hourglass figure. The term "snatched" has its roots in the culture of ballrooms in the 1980s and 1990s. In the early seasons of Drag Race, judges showed little enthusiasm for natural waists and queens who avoided padding at the hips. The concept of "snatched" has influenced the market for shapewear, with sales expected to exceed 11 billion euros by 2033. In the second half of the 2000s, celebrities like Kim Kardashian revived the popularity of Hervé Léger's bandage dress. At the beginning of the 2010s, the "bodycon" era created a demand for tight, shaping undergarments. Even as body-hugging dresses went out of fashion, interest in shapewear remained. In 2019, Kim Kardashian launched her own line of shapewear, SKIMS, now valued at nearly 3.5 billion euros. Recently, the compression trend has shifted from the waist to the face with products like SKIMS' "jaw bra," which promise to sculpt the body from head to toe. The cultural obsession with body shaping dates back several centuries. The act of maintaining a firm face and body through socially acceptable means, such as physical exercise, supportive undergarments, or cosmetic surgery, has long been a symbol of self-respect and respectability. The idea that a well-mannered woman should modify her body with a corset dates back to the 16th century. Throughout Europe and the Americas, corsets fulfilled many functions, including correcting children's posture, supporting the body during physical labor, and even being worn by military personnel and dandies of the early 19th century. In 1745, a Swiss man visiting England noted that "everyone wore the corset." According to Valerie Steele in her book The Corset: A Cultural History, corsets were symbols of "social status, personal discipline, artistic sensibility, respectability, beauty, youth, and erotic appeal." For women of the upper class, it was crucial to display one's features to show one's rank. For women of the lower classes, imitating the elites became a means of trying to access social mobility. Even when corsets went out of fashion in the 1920s, the importance of having a well-groomed, sculpted appearance was maintained. To achieve this, one monitored their diet, exercised, and resorted to other body-shaping techniques. However, excessive body modifications, such as overly tight lacing, were considered artificial, dangerous, and ostentatious. The most lasting image of corsetry is that of the extremely corseted hourglass figure, the source of many controversies. According to Rebecca Gibson, associate professor of anthropology at the University of Virginia Commonwealth and author of The Corseted Skeleton: A Bioarcheology of Binding, the public's outrage and alarm around excessive corseting was a Victorian phenomenon. Extreme lacing forced the waists to take on dimensions that were as unnatural as possible. Critics denounced these artificial hourglass figures and claimed to have seen some measuring barely 38 to 41 centimeters. As early as 1848, an issue of the weekly The Family Herald warned about the dangers of extreme corseting. In the second half of the 19th century, the enthusiasts of extreme corseting were the "bad girls" of their time. They were seen as either silly women ready to mutilate their bodies to follow the fashion or as dangerous women tightening their waists for sexual pleasure. The outrage against women who practiced extreme corseting came from all sides, from conservative authors to feminist clothing reformers. From 1867 to 1874, The Englishwoman's Domestic Magazine published more than 150 letters on the subject of extreme corseting, both defending and opposing this practice. According to Valerie Steele, many of these letters were in fact thinly veiled pornography, with anonymous authors describing sadomasochistic encounters in lacing schools. Some women gained great fame for their deliberately exaggerated waist. Polaire, a French cabaret artist and one of the first movie stars, became an international phenomenon due to her hourglass figure. At the height of her career, she corseted herself so much that her waist reached just 40 centimeters. Victorian photographers regularly used retouching techniques and optical illusions to give models the hourglass figure popularized by Polaire. The hourglass figure, and the effort some go through to achieve it, remains both a source of contempt and admiration. In 2019, during the Met Gala, Kim Kardashian made headlines for her spectacular hourglass figure in a flesh-colored Thierry Mugler dress. Her slim waist generated both anger and envy on social media. However, her ultra-sculpted waist was due to a custom corset made by the famous corsetier Mr. Pearl. Much of the reaction to her outfit had a Victorian tone, with several media outlets highlighting her "anxiety" about wearing the corset. Throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, literature and art mocked women with extreme corsets. An illustration from 1777 titled Tight-Lacing depicts an old, ugly woman holding a bedpost while a servant laces her corset. Another illustration from 1879 in the men's magazine La Vie Parisienne titled Considerations on the Corset shows a housewife leaning against a fireplace, while her husband, servants, and even a dog pull on the laces on one side, while an army of cupids pull on the other side. An illustration from 1898 depicts a husband and a maid tightening a woman's corset so much that she splits in two. Shorter hems and wider waists of the 1920s, combined with advances in materials used for shapewear and undergarments, led to the decline of the corset in terms of daily wear, but the desire for a sculpted silhouette remained. As medicine became more professionalized and cosmetic surgery became a separate field, body modification was transferred to the operating room, where surgeons promised a sculpted appearance from head to toe. At the beginning of the 20th century, doctors praised the merits of paraffin wax for correcting the collapse of the nasal septum, one of the effects of syphilis. Liquid paraffin was injected into the nasal cavities of affected patients, giving them the same plumped-up look that collagen injections promise today. Although ephemeral as a trend, these injections were also praised for their ability to smooth wrinkles and fine lines, which sparked public interest. Throughout the 20th century, debates on the morality, feminist implications, and cultural significance of cosmetic surgery made the quarrels of the Victorian era on extreme corseting seem outdated. The first cosmetic surgeons argued that wounded men would need surgery to find employment. Artists quickly became interested in it as well, hoping that a physical retouch would make it easier for them to access certain roles. Soon, people from all walks of life supported the idea that a younger face could help their careers or marriages, although the stigma surrounding rejuvenating cosmetic surgery persists. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, celebrities suspected of having modified their faces through surgery made headlines. According to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, its affiliated members performed 25.4 million "minimally invasive" cosmetic procedures in 2023, an increase of 9% compared to the previous year. Reality TV stars and influencers have become the "bad girls" of cosmetic procedures, reshaping their faces as deliberately as their waists and proving that empires worth billions of dollars could be built on body modifications. As Victoria Pitts notes in In The Flesh, a contemporary history of body modifications, "human bodies are completely shaped and transformed by cultural practices." However, when they are undergone by women, these procedures are often seen as gendered forms of self-mutilation until they are more widely accepted. This threshold seems to have been reached regarding the injection-saturated face that characterizes the recent period. In viral videos, celebrities and influencers explain which surgical procedures they have undergone and have not undergone, while others tell of having reversed surgical procedures. Michelle Visage herself, once not very enthusiastic about Drag Race contestants avoiding the "snatched" look, now hosts a show called Botched Presents: Plastic Surgery Rewind, where participants are accompanied through the process of reversing past procedures. The "snatching" has once again changed meaning. The hour is no longer for the completely bound beauty standard, but for redrawn, more natural-looking silhouettes. The promise of SKIMS' "jaw bra" relies on a more natural approach to "snatching": reshaping at home by wearing the same compression garments used after a cosmetic procedure to reduce swelling, but without the pain and costs of the procedure itself. "Several years ago, it was 'the bigger, the better.' Bigger lips, bigger butt, bigger breasts," explains David Rosenberg, a cosmetic surgeon at Rosenberg Plastics in Beverly Hills, California. "Today, I hear the word 'snatched' all the time. Patients want smaller, more natural breasts, softer lips, and a more harmonious silhouette. We are no longer going for 'Look at me,' but rather for 'She just looks like that when she wakes up.'" Perhaps this new minimalist and more sculpted look is a reaction to the recent past where full cheeks, plump lips, and generous buttocks were the norm. Rebecca Gibson observes that these changes tend to be cyclical, with waves followed by comebacks: "Fashion itself generally follows a ten-year cycle. You have a backlash and then a backlash to the backlash. I think we are currently facing a reaction to the last ten years." As culturally accepted body modifications return to effortless beauty, only the future will tell who will be pointed out for going too far, either through careless neglect or ostentatious vanity.