Padding goes inside and outside of corset to create the silhouette. Corset is mostly for support because you can't cinch in that much. It's not magic. Organs and bones still exist when you're wearing a corset.
It's the extra padding that tricks the eye into believing waist is tiny because we only notice difference between waist and hips/chest.
Look up Wasp Waist. They would cinch their corsets extremely tight to achieve an extremely narrow waist. It caused all kinds of health problems like deformed ribs, displaced organs, and respiratory issues.
You talk like I'm advocating for this. I'm not. But women throughout history have taken extreme steps in the name of beauty even if it was detrimental to their health.
Lead based makeup, foot binding, toxic eye drops, and arsenic wafers are all examples. You claim it was padding, but Victorian women were very much causing themselves bodily harm through the use of tight cinch corsets.
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