You know how certain photographs of Bollywood actress make them look surprisingly slim on fashion magazine covers?  Did you think the obsession with making women look like ultra-thin models became possible only with air-brushing techniques and now using Photoshop?

This image of a dancing girl taken in Madras many decades ago has been altered, pretty obviously, to give her a small waist.  I suspect the print was used for postcards at the turn of the 20th century, when Western women wore corsets that gave them the Gibson Girl look. To make this model more attractive to the British chaps in India and visiting tourists, an employee of the photography studio painted out parts of the negative. 

Giving ladies smaller waists wasn’t a very common practice in the West, but even high-end studios made subtle “improvements” to the figures of corseted ladies having portraits made if the sitters requested it.  Most changes were less obvious than this buxom dancer’s unlikely new waist size.  Her simple dark saree has been greatly reduced on her right side, and a bit was erased on the left too.  And what did they do with the pallu?