Time to realize the hourglass figure is past

Women who can no longer squeeze into their favourite jeans or black cocktail dress should forget about dieting and blame the cut of their clothes instead.

Researchers in the United States have discovered that the average woman's body shape has changed since the heyday of the hourglass figure in the 1950s. However, fashion designers are still obsessed by this curvaceous model and so many clothes are designed with fuller figures in mind.

The survey found that most modern women actually have a rectangle-shaped body... with little definition between waist, bust, hips and shoulders.

More than a fifth of the 6,318 participants in the research were spoon-shaped, with hips bigger than the bust, and 14 per cent had an inverted triangle shape, where the bust is bigger than the hips. Fewer than one in 10 possessed the hourglass curves made famous by the likes of Marilyn Monroe and Jayne Mansfield.The survey was conducted by North Carolina State University in conjunction with mannequin makers AlvaProducts.


http://news.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=2272612005

if jeans fit me on the but I'm totally pinched at waist - if they fit on the waist there's mega room in the seat - thank goodness for hip huggers

Thanks

:hi:

It's genetic, no great virtue on my part. Most of the women on my dad's side are shaped like that.

I love the cuts of 40s and 50s vintage clothes, they tend to fit me really well if they fit at all. 20s and 60s ones, where a straighter body line was in vogue, look awful almost without exception. With contemporary ones, it's a crap shoot.

IIRC, Marilyn Monroe was a size 16. She was curvy, not scrawny.

Personally I think fashions change more than women's average body shapes do, I mean DUH. Lots of women wore girdles in the 50s. They don't now.

I ain't what you'd call rectangular shaped and I hardly ever find clothes cut right for me. Sometimes I think there is a conspiracy in the industry to make clothes that don't fit most women so we will feel the need to shop often and find something new.

My bust is exactly the same size as my hips, and my waist is 10" smaller than either.

And I can't wear any freakin' clothes. To me, they seem like they're all made for women with no boobs at all, because I constantly have to buy 1-2 sizes bigger on top to not run the danger of "busting out" (so to speak). In dresses this means that I often look like I'm wearing a circus tent and all my nice curves underneath are hidden by the 2 sizes too big I had to buy to cover my bosom.

I have trouble with jeans too, because manufacturers apparently build them for rectangle women. If they fit my waist, my butt won't fit in. If I buy them to fit my butt, I end up with an enormous gap at the waist so that everyone can see my underwear.

It was this way when I was much skinnier too. I'm just a curvy woman - a C-cup when I wore a size 6. And it's gotten to the point now where I can't even stand to buy clothes anymore. It's just so depressing because everything looks like crap on me. The clothing people would get a lot more money out of me if they would just make some clothes that would freakin' fit ME! Instead of size 14 versions of Mary-Kate and Ashley Olson.

.... as the proud owner of an hourglass figure, I must correct The Scotsman.

Clothing designers have NOT been making clothes for 'the classic hourglass' for the last 30-odd years, they've been forcing women into clothes designed to fit schoolboys - no tummy, no hips, no butt curves at all.

Can anyone honestly tell me that the likes of Kate Moss, Naomi Campbell, Cheryl Tiegs, TWIGGY - for Godsakes - are HOURGLASS ?

Guess and Jordache jeans ? Gloria Vanderbilt ? Were they designed with curves in mind ?

It's only been in the last 10 or so years that some designers have acknowledged that some women actually have shapes like a REAL WOMAN and have begun to design thusly. To say that they've been doing so "since the 50's" is totally wrong.

When you see most models, they have anything BUT an hourglass. More like a McDonald's French Fry. Hourglasses are what we WANT to see, at least what I want to see.

With the exception of pregnancy and the postpartum period, I've always had a rather slim figure (which is a nice way of saying I look like an underfed twelve year old boy but for the vauge suggestion of breasts.) I'm no less a woman for my lack of curvature, I assure you what I've got works just fine. :D

For what it's worth, I can barely find clothes to fit me, either. Who the hell are they making these clothes to fit?

Interesting. Must be a genetic trait suppressed by the male (potential father)!

Thanks to Plastic Surgery