The Meaning of Bust Size

Today’s focus is breasts, but the arguments apply to every inch of fashion’s obsession with the ideal body type.

Even I am guilty at times of lamblasting fashion’s dispensing of breasts and hips in their definition of ideal beauty. Most women have curves, I argue and we don’t look like boys.

What a disempowering statement from a feminist like myself!

What I mean to say is that the 34AAA woman is every bit the ‘real woman’ as the 38C, but it aggravates the heck out of me that for the last decade mostly male — and often gay —  fashion designers have dictated a body image devoid of typical female physical attributes.

This week Crystal Renn is bowing to accolades in Look magazine, wearing High Street clothing British style. The Daily Mail refers to Crystal as a size 14 model, translated size 10 US.  She’s looking voluptuous, healthy and scorchingingly sexy.

Crystal Renn wears her sexuality like a perfect-fit white glove.

We agree that Crystal Renn isn’t a coat rack — the favored body shape by many high-end designers.

First Mad Men’s Christina Hendricks was whittled down to fashion-appropriate size as a Barbie doll. Now she has ‘met the Photoshop wand death’ in her new campaign for London Fog.

Christina Hendricks isn’t allowed to inspire us in full. That famous hourglass shape figure — which doctor’s recommend as the healthiest body shape for women — has got to go. Hendricks has hips, damn it. And hips do not belong on a woman, say today’s fashion Photoshop police.

The ads, shot by Nino Munoz, feature the divine “Mad Men’ star in a sizzling iconic trench coat.

Crystal Renn is photographed looking as if she’s just spent quality time in a loving encounter with Baptiste Giabiconi, Karl’s favorite muse and man in his life.

Most bloggers — including us — wish that Crystal Renn didn’t suck up to Karl Lagerfeld quite so effusively in her recent comments. But this is her right, of course, as a professional. We’re on record as saying we believe that Karl Lagerfeld is misogynistic in his views of women and we will hold that position until he has a much longer record of pro-female behavior and comments about women.

Today’s Daily Mail joins the plus-size clothing discussion on behalf of British women. Nearly 40 percent of the adult female populations now wears size 16 and over (NOTE: in American sizing that’s size 12 and over)

A quarter of women now wear size 18 (American size 14), representing a 45% increased in just five years.

The 2009 Mintel chart above is educational, not only in highlighting the dramatic rise of size and weight among British women, but in demonstrating clearly the increases across age groups. Aging populations are often given as the reason for a rise in obesity, but every age group is increasing in size, although the dramatic increases are most pronounced after age 35.

Presumably the obesity drop off after age 74 reflects the reality the overweight people have shorter life span.

This chart mirrors a similar situation in the US, but not in France or Italy. Anne’s Sensual and Superyoung online narrative explores the reasons why women are disproportionately obese in America and some other countries.

Jezebel deserves a ‘high five’ for staying on top of the Photoshop controversies, calling our attention to the extensive Photoshopping done by Ann Taylor on their website.

The Ralph Lauren Photoshop debacle was challenging enough, followed by a quick skirmish with Nordstrom a few weeks ago.

Sitting here staring at the ‘improvements’ that needed to be made to this Ann Taylor model, to make her ready for Internet prime time confirms to me, once and for all, that real women model images aren’t good enough for even America’s mainstream retailers.

We’re not talking Bergdorf Goodman here.

I’m so tired of this Photoshop issue — but truly commend Jezebel for staying on the case — that my strong irritation and frustration in the Ralph Lauren case is now turning to resentment against fashion generally. I know the price that women pay for never being ‘good enough’ for business.

We’re always in need to new and improved. The size of American women’s past buying power guaranteed that we would get a triple dose of this messaging at the hands of advertising marketing strategists.

In fact, American business thrives — not on servicing women and celebrating us — but by making us feel inadequate in our own skin. No amount of “you, too, could be this beautiful” ad copy will improve my mood on this subject, now that I’ve decided to dig in my heels.

Mind you, I’m not crawling in the corner to hide out on this topic.

With no filler, no botox, and no slimmed down waist, I took fabulous photos of myself last week, without an ounce of retouching. They are today’s equivalent of Polaroids, taken sitting in front of my computer in artistic sunlight.

My guy loves them, as do my friends, and most importantly — myself.

Having loved style my entire life, I find myself resentful of all the improvers. Frankly, I have tons of beautiful clothes in my closet and will only support brands that show American women as the beautiful, gorgeous creatures that we are.

If fashion can’t take me as I am, I’ll buy microloans for poor women, rather than new clothes.

The Ann Taylor model image is deformed.  I’m astonished that their marketing department — after all the hoopla over Ralph Lauren and Crystal Renn — made the decision to distort women’s bodies in this way. One would assume that after the Ralph Lauren flap, image-makers would take a chill pill.

The grey-hair trend continues for fashionable women of every age. The initial buzz this week focused on Kristen McMenamy’s long grey locks on the September 2010 issue of Vogue Italia. The real jolt is seeing Lady Gaga grey on the cover of Vanity Fair’s September 2010 issue, shot by Nick Knight. (See all the photos on Sensuality News.)

Kristen McMenamy, now 46,  remains one of the first of the older models to go grey. Here she is in the current issue of youth culture/fashion bible “Dazed and Confused”.

The NYTimes is running a major style article on the dearth of plus-size fashions in the marketplace. We’ve read the article and also the comments, which are generally:

1) The ‘plus size’ customer has such a wide variety of needs, that within our own subgroups of women size 14 and over, even Lane Bryant isn’t satisfactory — much as they are devoted to servicing this woman. The text references endless physical combinations of sizes that must be developed to properly service today’s larger-size customers who have an endless configuration of proportions.

2) The politics of obesity indicate that retailers should be compelled to service all the needs of the larger woman. The lack of suitable size options is all the fault of selfish business enterprises, who are worried about their bottom lines.

Both the article and comments suggest that the challenge of great clothes for larger women is the fault of business. As expected the undercurrent is one of fat-discrimination against larger women.

Updated July 23, 2010: The sexy motherhood, intimate photos of Crystal Renn in French Vogue, Aug 2010 should end concerns that Renn is losing too much weight. She looks fabulously Smart Sensuality healthy. All photos in Private Studio.

Crystal Renn has lost weight since her book tour. On the left is Crystal Renn as a size 10 modeling for Chanel in St. Tropez, May 2010. Updated June 22, 2010 Anne here. I just watched the Crystal Renn video on this morning’s Today Show. My perspective on her situation hasn’t changed. Today Crystal Renn appeared healthy, more athletic as she appeared in the Chanel cruise show, and not at all the woman in the Nicholas Routzen photos below.

1) It’s very possible that photographer Nicholas Routzen in shooting down on Crystal Renn captured her thinnest angles. Fashion photographers (this was for charity t-shirts) are trained to find a woman’s thinnest angles and Routzen succeeds in his mission.

If I hadn’t watched the Today Show video, I would be more concerned about Crystal’s psyche. And now the Aug. 2010 French Vogue photos confirm just what a difference camera angles and what Routzen calls a small about of photoshopping achieve in making a woman look totally different.

Updated July 22, 2010  When Bed Bath & Beyond and Walgreens start carrying Booty Pops, butts are back in business.

The American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery, reports nearly 5,000 butt lifts performed in the U.S. last year, a 37% increase over 2008. Such procedures can cost from $8,000 to $15,000.

Booty Pops are a lot cheaper than surgery, although like all uplifts — including the Victoria’s Secret Bombshell bra — there’s a moment of reckoning when women must come clean with their real self bodiy.

“It’s part of the whole outfit,” says Ms. Benson, a 25-year-old assistant to a music manager. Wearing the Booty Pop brand of underwear, which contain egg-shaped foam pads to plump up the posterior, “I look better, I feel better, and as a result, I act better,” she says. via Wall Street Journal

The French Effect

We wish American women would do squats for our posteriors, but we’re thrilled to see an important part of female anatomy be fashionable again. 

We featured ‘les fesses’ in winter 2009, as another example of French influence on female body imagery worldwide and the fact that the French government was undertaking a cultural study of “les fesses” and their role in society.

Note to Readers: We have moved this story forward, based on the explosive interest in Anne’s comment on the NYTimes article about French women and aging. It was originally written in Oct. 2008.See Aging French and American Women Aren’t In the Same Life Game.

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I’m passionate about sexy, older women, because I am one.

Sunday’s excellent Washington Post article on the sex lives of French women rings true to me. Thankfully, I spent endless weeks of my life as an aging Victoria Secret executive, working in France and Italy.

Just to reinforce Pamela Druckerman’s hypothesis that aging French women have it better, Dove’s 2007 Global Study about Beauty  confirmed a 20 year difference between American women and French/Italian/Brazilian women on the topic of when a woman’s beauty peaks.

Imagine looking in the mirror at 25 and believing that it’s all downhill from there. Yes, I’d rather be French!

Age of Ideal Beauty

Dove (Campaign for Ideal Beauty) asked the question ‘what is the age of ideal beauty’? By country responses to the answer ‘twenties’ were:

USA 48%; GBR 41%; FRA 11%; ITA 16%; BRA 18%.

Conversely, by country responses to the answer ‘forties” were:

Aged between 20 and 53, and with dress sizes ranging from 8 to 18, the unknowns were chosen through a search for on social networking site Facebook, reports the Daily Mail UK.  

In a strategy fraught with emotion and hate mail already, Ultimo steps into Dove’s Real Women campaign shoes, inheriting an existing halo effect among some women.

S-Drivers and the Superyoung

The June 2010 Emily DoDonato photos in Elle France, shot by Ricardo Tinelli, create the perfect moment for me to tell you about our new literary trip to the south of France, making our way up to Portofino and the land of “la dolce vita”.

Key words and new content are buzzing at Anne of Carversville.  I’m writing about S-Drivers: Sexuality, Sensuality, Smarts, Sensitivity, Spirituality, and Self. 

The book — don’t we all have one inside us — is being uploaded into the #7 S-Driver spot: Superyoung. We have a title: Sensual and Superyoung. It’s everything that I stand for and have evolved to in the last decade. 

The background of the original 80,000 word manuscript — focused on the health benefits of sex, exercise and being Superyoung — is explained in “Sensual and Superyoung | Anne’s Sexual Aging and Vitality Book. 

Now the scientific story of the health benefits of sexuality and aging with vitality will be updated and told with the benefits of three years of intense Internet writing on Anne of Carversville and Sensuality News. 

Corsets have always been considered glamorous (perhaps not by every woman who wore one) but surely in old movies and even on a woman like myself. 

A dramatic of lingerie statement, corsets are making a comeback.

The most simplistic psychological route to explain the trend is the popularity of corset-lovers like Dita Von Teese, who enjoys a strong following among young women. Lady Gaga wears corsets. And pinups are back in style. 

On a personal level, we see a more psychological relationship with women and corsets.

The non-thinking feminist response is to say that women should throw their corsets in the trash can, along with our bras. Fifty years after the second-wave of feminism has more or less stalled in America, we see corsets in a new light.

Corsets are Womanly

In a decade when fashion’s ideal woman looks like a guy — meaning she has no hips or breasts — corsets are unmistakably female.  If ever a female is a statement about woman power — it’s Madonna, who has enjoyed success on her terms, living life as a Smart Sensuality woman. 

What a great day, discovering John Currin’s paintings on Kanye West’s blog and getting back together with Currin’s wife Rachel Feinstein, who I know from her street videos. I simply can’t imagine what these two talk about in bed at night, but there can’t possibly be a dull moment.