Recent News and Articles on the Keywords: our + waists + gone  Related to the article below (Last Update: 8/5/2008)

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Where have our waists gone?

 With her toned stomach and slim hips, Liz Hurley has a figure which is often described as curvaceous. But her curves actually reflect how much our figures are changing.

Rather than boasting the hourglass shape of yesteryear's screen idols, Liz proves that the flat stomach has replaced the waspish waist as the sought-after look of today. Her waist measures 26in, while Liz Taylor, the style icon of the Fifties, was famously a tiny 22in.

'This just goes to show that women are getting straighter,' explains fashion expert Brenda Polan. 'The old ideal of a 10in difference between bust and waist belongs to history. Today's role models are women such as model Gisele Bundchen, who have an ample bosom but a toned stomach and narrow hips and thighs.'

Over the past 40 years, our waists have thickened by four inches. In the Fifties and Sixties, the average British woman boasted an enviable hourglass shape with her 36B-24-36 statistics.

Now, the average figure is a far straighter 36C-28-38. American women, who are 15 years ahead of us in terms of lifestyle and diet, have seen their waists expand to an average of 30in.

Professor Stephen Gray, of Nottingham Trent University, has spent the past three years surveying 8,000 British women aged from 18 to 90.

He explains: 'Women's skeletons are generally sturdier than they were because they are better nourished and more athletic. With athleticism comes an expanded rib cage and more muscle; that means women are no longer strictly hourglass-shaped.

'Diet is a huge factor. In the Fifties, British women were eating a much healthier diet as a result of post-war rationing, so they were significantly smaller.

'Butter and meat were hard to come by, so vegetables were a staple food and the diet was rich in fibre and minerals but low in fat.'

Then there is the question of exercise. While women of the Fifties were walking to the bus stop, millennial woman is driving to work, and may go to the gym for exercise.

That means she can concentrate on working out a particular area of her body, such as her stomach. But women's loss of the waist isn't just about nutrition and gym work, it's about fashion too.

Prof Gray continues: 'As underwear has become less restrictive and more sensual, the hourglass fashion or nipped-in waist has been replaced with a desire to have a flatter stomach. Every-day underwear does not hold in the stomach or contort the waist for you, like corsets used to do.'

Brenda Polan agrees that fashion has had an enormous influence on women's body shapes: 'The hourglass figure evolved because, on a primitive level, men read fertility into large breasts and ample hips - two attributes which are emphasised by a tiny waist.

'A woman with large breasts, voluptuously displayed above a corseted waist and padded hips, became the textbook fertility goddess for the post-war period, when contented domesticity and prolific breeding was what society needed.

'Think of Marilyn Monroe, Gina Lollobrigida, Sophia Loren and Jayne Mansfield.

'But fashion exists primarily to find new ways of arousing sexual desire. And so, only a decade later, the ideal body shape switched to tiny breasts and hips, and childish, stick-like legs. 'The "youthquake" of the Swinging Sixties meant the younger you looked, the sexier you were. Twiggy, the era's role model, symbolised all these young women's aspirations to be as far removed from how their mothers looked as possible.

'The erogenous zone slipped south and it became, courtesy of the miniskirt, all about legs - the waist became irrelevant. Think of Julie Christie, Cilla Black, Jean Shrimpton and Jane Asher.

'The waist has had a tough time ever since. The women's movement in the Seventies ensured that the fertility goddess stayed in the closet. The Eighties gave it a bit of a whirl, reinventing the waspie corset and padding shoulders, largely because that made the waist look smaller. But it was a pretty futile effort as most women preferred boyish leggings and tunic tops.

'A modern woman would be horrified if she caught sight of herself with an Elizabeth Taylor tum. It's just not sexy any more. What is deemed sexy is a flat stomach - currently very much on show thanks to low waistbands and cropped tops, and navel rings.

'The difference is that, while the waist is exfoliated, moisturised and tanned, no one is suggesting it should be particularly narrow.'