Skip to content or view mobile version

Home | Mobile | Editorial | Mission | Privacy | About | Contact | Help | Security | Support

A network of individuals, independent and alternative media activists and organisations, offering grassroots, non-corporate, non-commercial coverage of important social and political issues.

Hidden Article

This posting has been hidden because it breaches the Indymedia UK (IMC UK) Editorial Guidelines.

IMC UK is an interactive site offering inclusive participation. All postings to the open publishing newswire are the responsibility of the individual authors and not of IMC UK. Although IMC UK volunteers attempt to ensure accuracy of the newswire, they take no responsibility legal or otherwise for the contents of the open publishing site. Mention of external web sites or services is for information purposes only and constitutes neither an endorsement nor a recommendation.

Beauty dumbed-down - why clothing sizes are being upped

sceptical | 03.09.2004 18:14

It's official. Beauty is being dumbed down. Feminist journalists across the country and proclaiming in their columns of irrelevance that the "hour glass figure is dead".

It's official. Beauty is being dumbed down. Feminist journalists across the country and proclaiming in their columns of irrelevance that the "hour glass figure is dead". The source of this triumphalist and premature statement is the revelation that clothes sizes are going to be re-jigged.

It appears that the modern, fatter, woman is not keen on being told she is a size 14 when in fact she would rather be a 12. The sizings, based on 1950s measurements of women, are said to be outdated and "not in touch with the 21st century realities". Ahh, so its the sizings that are too small, and not the women that are too big?

Those of us who happen to be male should be smiling already at this little gem of what is termed, "chick logic", that is the non-logic of females. Another interesting point is the fact that whenever we are being told by self-righteous journalists to accept yet another unsavoury aspect of life, usually as a result of feminism, liberalism, socialism, selfishness or greed, that the term "the 21st century" is used. That term is almost an implication that anyone who dislikes or would rather a particular change not happen is somehow still living in another century altogether and needs to rejoin the rest of enlightened humanity to suffer without question.

What should be a shock is, the waistline of the average woman has soared from 27.5 inches to 34 inches. This horrendous. Rather than ordering a large-scale national fat camp to combat this, they want to re-do the sizes! Rather than celebrate our attractive women, we are bending over backwards to accommodate the less attractive, and thereby devaluing true beauty.

Perhaps I am unusual, perhaps as someone who rather likes the hourglass figure, and slim waistlines, I am alone in condemning this excercise in dumbing down, in expunging from the records all evidence that the average woman had a smaller waist and that a size 8 is a size 8, and not a "new" size designed to appease someone who has had one Big Mac too many. I don't think I am unusual at all. In fact, I would suggest that the vast majority of men in this country would rather the sizings remain as they are.

================================
The hour-glass figure
Studies have shown that men prefer women with a waist to hip ratio of 0.7. You can calculate your own using this formula:

waist measurement ÷ hip measurement = ratio.

This seems to apply whatever the woman's overall weight. A group of researchers even compared this ratio with the average ratio of Miss America winners over the years. It was exactly the same. This ratio would seem to make sense as an indicator of a woman's reproductive health. When women age their waist tends to become less pronounced as they put on fat around the stomach. This coincides with them becoming less fertile.
================================

The sizings remaining as-is would strike a blow for standards in this country. Standards of beauty - yes beauty because a slim woman with a good figure, an hourglass figure, is the gold standard of beauty among whites. We have seen this all before, with the "everyone must win" doctrine allowing all grades A* - E as passes in the GCSEs whereas previously only A* - C earned a pass. The logic that everyone must be given a small size regardless of their actual size, in order to make them feel good, akin the Emperors New Clothes is a flawed one.

Keeping the sizings as they are gives those that cannot fit into the smaller sizes something to aim for, whereas making the sizes larger only exacerbates the problem because the incentive to reduce a size will no doubt be taken away by the fact that they can go down a size by simply staying as they are. Of course there will always be pressure for women to be slim, but the question begs, how slim? If a size 14 is now a size 12, and a size 12 is now a size 10, will that also be considered slim? Will our definition of what is slim be "enlarged" by this inflation in sizings? These questions cannot be answered as yet.

A journalist in a provincial newspaper for Wales The Western Mail suggested that the likes of Jennifer Lopez and Beyonce were the ones that were seen to be abnormal because of their hour-glass figures. What rubbish. For a start to lump Jennifer Lopez who is a Cuban of Spanish/Southern European racial extraction, with a mixed-race mulatto in the form of Beyonce, should be a hanging offence. Secondly, it is the hour-glass figure that should be considered normal, and fat stomachs abnormal. Ask any warm blooded man whether he would prefer a "boy like" woman with no figure and a large waist or a slim classically beautiful woman with an hour glass figure.

The argument for inflating clothing sizes also wrests on the process of normalisation. Not the technological normalisation, but a social normalisation. A process where the abnormal is gradually shifted into the realm of the normal and accepted. We have seen this with homosexuality, which was once abhorred by the vast majority of normal people, but now is well on the way to being considered normal, although not quite yet. This was done over a period of decades, with the media, politicians, and even the church playing a part. The result of that has been the allowing of homosexual organisations to push schools and left wing local councils into allowing "gay" propaganda to be included on the syllabus for sex education lessons in schools. Other forms of unfortunate behaviour are also being normalised, the idea that there are no consequences to cheap behaviour and sexual promiscuity by women has resulted in a massive increase in rapes over the past two decades. Evidently there are consequences to these things.

The normalisation of abnormally fat waists and misshapen figures on women is designed to appeal to the large number of "modern" women who have these problems. Like a mirror designed to make the person using it look thinner this measure is just a con-trick and will fool nobody - at the moment. Come 20 years time will size 14 be considered the peak of slender beauty? I should hope not, but with the rising rates of laziness and over-consumption, and the idea that sizes can be altered just to fit an increasingly abnormal population, only makes this more likely.

Another factor with this story is that, once again, the 1950s are shown-up to be a decade where women were slimmer and had curvier figures, divorce rates were much lower, people had more sex (yes this is true) and men were men, women were women, and there was no mistaking which was which. A pre-feminist paradise by the sounds of it...

sceptical

Comments

Display the following 5 comments

  1. Whoever posted this... — notcaveman
  2. actually — sceptical
  3. reminder — propaganda
  4. scary — antifascist
  5. Scarier Still — Independent Left
Upcoming Coverage
View and post events
Upcoming Events UK
24th October, London: 2015 London Anarchist Bookfair
2nd - 8th November: Wrexham, Wales, UK & Everywhere: Week of Action Against the North Wales Prison & the Prison Industrial Complex. Cymraeg: Wythnos o Weithredu yn Erbyn Carchar Gogledd Cymru

Ongoing UK
Every Tuesday 6pm-8pm, Yorkshire: Demo/vigil at NSA/NRO Menwith Hill US Spy Base More info: CAAB.

Every Tuesday, UK & worldwide: Counter Terror Tuesdays. Call the US Embassy nearest to you to protest Obama's Terror Tuesdays. More info here

Every day, London: Vigil for Julian Assange outside Ecuadorian Embassy

Parliament Sq Protest: see topic page
Ongoing Global
Rossport, Ireland: see topic page
Israel-Palestine: Israel Indymedia | Palestine Indymedia
Oaxaca: Chiapas Indymedia
Regions
All Regions
Birmingham
Cambridge
Liverpool
London
Oxford
Sheffield
South Coast
Wales
World
Other Local IMCs
Bristol/South West
Nottingham
Scotland
Social Media
You can follow @ukindymedia on indy.im and Twitter. We are working on a Twitter policy. We do not use Facebook, and advise you not to either.
Support Us
We need help paying the bills for hosting this site, please consider supporting us financially.
Other Media Projects
Schnews
Dissident Island Radio
Corporate Watch
Media Lens
VisionOnTV
Earth First! Action Update
Earth First! Action Reports
Topics
All Topics
Afghanistan
Analysis
Animal Liberation
Anti-Nuclear
Anti-militarism
Anti-racism
Bio-technology
Climate Chaos
Culture
Ecology
Education
Energy Crisis
Fracking
Free Spaces
Gender
Globalisation
Health
History
Indymedia
Iraq
Migration
Ocean Defence
Other Press
Palestine
Policing
Public sector cuts
Repression
Social Struggles
Technology
Terror War
Workers' Movements
Zapatista
Major Reports
NATO 2014
G8 2013
Workfare
2011 Census Resistance
Occupy Everywhere
August Riots
Dale Farm
J30 Strike
Flotilla to Gaza
Mayday 2010
Tar Sands
G20 London Summit
University Occupations for Gaza
Guantanamo
Indymedia Server Seizure
COP15 Climate Summit 2009
Carmel Agrexco
G8 Japan 2008
SHAC
Stop Sequani
Stop RWB
Climate Camp 2008
Oaxaca Uprising
Rossport Solidarity
Smash EDO
SOCPA
Past Major Reports
Encrypted Page
You are viewing this page using an encrypted connection. If you bookmark this page or send its address in an email you might want to use the un-encrypted address of this page.
If you recieved a warning about an untrusted root certificate please install the CAcert root certificate, for more information see the security page.

Global IMC Network


www.indymedia.org

Projects
print
radio
satellite tv
video

Africa

Europe
antwerpen
armenia
athens
austria
barcelona
belarus
belgium
belgrade
brussels
bulgaria
calabria
croatia
cyprus
emilia-romagna
estrecho / madiaq
galiza
germany
grenoble
hungary
ireland
istanbul
italy
la plana
liege
liguria
lille
linksunten
lombardia
madrid
malta
marseille
nantes
napoli
netherlands
northern england
nottingham imc
paris/île-de-france
patras
piemonte
poland
portugal
roma
romania
russia
sardegna
scotland
sverige
switzerland
torun
toscana
ukraine
united kingdom
valencia

Latin America
argentina
bolivia
chiapas
chile
chile sur
cmi brasil
cmi sucre
colombia
ecuador
mexico
peru
puerto rico
qollasuyu
rosario
santiago
tijuana
uruguay
valparaiso
venezuela

Oceania
aotearoa
brisbane
burma
darwin
jakarta
manila
melbourne
perth
qc
sydney

South Asia
india


United States
arizona
arkansas
asheville
atlanta
Austin
binghamton
boston
buffalo
chicago
cleveland
colorado
columbus
dc
hawaii
houston
hudson mohawk
kansas city
la
madison
maine
miami
michigan
milwaukee
minneapolis/st. paul
new hampshire
new jersey
new mexico
new orleans
north carolina
north texas
nyc
oklahoma
philadelphia
pittsburgh
portland
richmond
rochester
rogue valley
saint louis
san diego
san francisco
san francisco bay area
santa barbara
santa cruz, ca
sarasota
seattle
tampa bay
united states
urbana-champaign
vermont
western mass
worcester

West Asia
Armenia
Beirut
Israel
Palestine

Topics
biotech

Process
fbi/legal updates
mailing lists
process & imc docs
tech