Padding is thin cushioned material sometimes added to clothes. It is often done in an attempt to soften impacts on certain zones of the body or enhance appearance by 'improving' a physical feature, often a sexually significant one. In fashion

Fashion

Fashion, a general term for a currently popular style or practice, especially in clothing, foot wear, or accessories. Fashion references to anything that is the current trend in look and dress up of a person...

, there is padding for:

• Breasts - sometimes called falsies
  Falsies
  In fashion, falsies is a term used in American English to denote padding for use in a brassiere to create the appearance of larger breasts. The term is also, more rarely, used for pads which create the appearance of larger buttocks. In both cases, there is a note of amusement conveyed by the term...
  
  
• The male crotch - usually called a codpiece
  Codpiece
  A codpiece is a covering flap or pouch that attaches to the front of the crotch of men's trousers and usually accentuates the genital area. It was held closed by string ties, buttons, or other methods...
  
  .
• Height - usually in shoes and often called elevator shoe
  Elevator shoe
  Elevator shoes are shoes that have thickened sections of the insoles under the heels to make the wearer appear taller. An elevator shoe, like the platform shoe's heel can be made from different soles like plastic, wood, or rubber...
  
  s.
• Width of shoulders, called shoulder pads
  Shoulder pads
  Shoulder pads are a piece of protective equipment used in many contact sports such as American football, Canadian football, lacrosse and hockey. Most modern shoulder pads consist of a shock absorbing foam material with a hard plastic outer covering. The pieces are usually secured by rivets or...
  
   - in coats and other garments for men, and sometimes for women.

To alter features

Some padding is added to emphasize particular physical features that are usually not present. Women, for instance, rarely have prominent shoulders, but for some years shoulder pads have been added to dresses (blouses, etc). The effect was unnatural for women, but gave them a more masculine outline which was sometimes thought to be of benefit in business situations.

Padding in undergarments is also used by some crossdressers. This may include a form of padding in the shape of male genitals worn in the underwear of a female who is passing

Passing (gender)

Passing refers to a person's ability to be regarded as a member of the sex or gender with which they physically present. Typically, passing involves a mixture of physical gender cues as well as certain behavioral attributes that tend to be culturally associated with a particular gender...

 as a male, or hip and buttock padding

Hip and buttock padding

Hip and buttock padding is used by some transgender people including transsexuals and cross-dressers. It is used to increase the apparent size of the hips and buttocks to resemble those of a female...

 worn by a male who is passing as a female.

As protection

Padding is also added to clothing for insulation

Thermal insulation

Thermal insulation is the reduction of the effects of the various processes of heat transfer between objects in thermal contact or in range of radiative influence. Heat transfer is the transfer of thermal energy between objects of differing temperature...

 or cushioning reasons. Thus, many coats and outergarments (especially those for outdoor use in cold climates) are padded with such materials as felt

Felt

Felt is a non-woven cloth that is produced by matting, condensing and pressing woollen fibres. While some types of felt are very soft, some are tough enough to form construction materials. Felt can be of any colour, and made into any shape or size....

 or down

Down

Down may refer to:* Relative direction, where down is the direction towards the centre of gravity of a celestial object.* Railroad directions, where down and up have locally significant meanings...

 or feather

Feather

Feathers are one of the epidermal growths that form the distinctive outer covering, or plumage, on birds and some non-avian theropod dinosaurs. They are considered the most complex integumentary structures found in vertebrates, and indeed a premier example of a complex evolutionary novelty. They...

s or artificial insulations. Cushioning padding is included in some sporting goods, especially those intended for use in combat sport

Combat sport

A Combat sport, also known as a Fighting sport, is a competitive contact sport where two combatants fight against each other using certain rules of engagement , typically with the aim of simulating parts of real hand to hand combat...

s (eg, fencing, some martial arts, etc). Garments intended for actual use in combat were once commonly padded (e.g., by the ancient Greeks under armor, or by the Japanese until the mid-19th century), but have largely been replaced by light armor made of, for instance, Kevlar

Kevlar

Kevlar is the registered trademark for a para-aramid synthetic fiber, related to other aramids such as Nomex and Technora. Developed at DuPont in 1965, this high strength material was first commercially used in the early 1970s as a replacement for steel in racing tires...

. If included in a vest, such armor makes a bullet-proof vest.

Padding is also sometimes used during corporal punishment

Corporal punishment

Corporal punishment is a form of physical punishment that involves the deliberate infliction of pain as retribution for an offence, or for the purpose of disciplining or reforming a wrongdoer, or to deter attitudes or behaviour deemed unacceptable...

:

• to prevent the punishee getting injured on the front side from scaving against the wood or metal while squirming from the pain purposefully inflicted on the backside.
• sometimes on a punishee who is wholly or partially undressed for strokes administered on the bare skin, especially severe caning
  Caning
  Caning is a form of corporal punishment consisting of a number of hits with a single cane usually made of rattan, generally applied to the offender's bare or clothed buttocks or hand . Application of a cane to the knuckles or the shoulders has been much less common...
  
  , to avoid accidental damage when the wrong part of the body (e.g. the reins) is hit instead of the target (usually the buttocks or back).