Hourglass figure

The hourglass is one of four female body shapes. The other shapes are the rectangular, inverted triangle, and spoon. The hourglass shape is defined as a woman whose body measurements, the circumference of the bust, waist, and hips, are a wide bust, a narrow waist, and a wide hip that has similar measurements to that of the bust. This body shape is aptly named for its resemblance to that of an hourglass where the upper and lower half are wide while the portion at middle is narrow in circumference making the ratio wide-narrow-wide. Women who exhibit the hour glass figure are proven to be more admired which puts pressure on other women who are less attractive to strive to achieve the hour glass figure. This in return leads to body dissatisfaction which can cause eating disorders in young women from all over the globe.

It has been proposed by scientists that the evolutionary reason for the female body shape is in part due to sexual selection. Bipedalism may be related to the differences of the female and male body shapes. During pregnancy a woman’s body is transformed so it is properly able to carry the baby. To prevent the center of gravity in a women’s body from being off balance, it is believed that evolution could have favored fat deposits in the gluteal region and the thighs.

Fat distribution in women is at its highest from the early teens to late middle age. Sex hormones play an important role in specific regions of the body helping with the regulation and accumulation of fat. Fat distribution occurs in women because estrogen lessens the adipose distribution to the abdominal region, and stimulates fat growth in the gluteofemoral region. Testosterone, on the other hand, has the opposite effect. While estrogen lessens the production of fat in the abdominal region, testosterone stimulates the growth of fat in the abdominal region. This distribution means that women are more likely to be curvy thus making the hour glass figure a desirable and somewhat achievable body type.

In the 1930s American goods such as the Coca-Cola bottle were exported for the first time to Jamaica. Today in the Jamaican culture the Coca-Cola bottle has now become the representation of a perfect women’s body. Women with curves that are shaped to look like the bottle get the highest compliments from men while skinny women get mocked and made fun of.

In the mid to late 1800s, during the Victorian era, the hourglass corset was used to accentuate the hourglass body shape that had become popular and ideal. It acted on the waist by compressing and reducing the size of the woman’s waist by force. The corset is iconic with the image of a woman being helped by her maids. The maids are pulling on strings at the back of the woman’s corset in order to tighten it and reduce the size of the wearer’s waist. The hourglass corset varied and developed as time passed but the design and intention of the corset remained the same at the core – the reduction of the waist line in order to create the ideal hourglass body shape where the bust and hips were similar in measurement while being much wider than the narrow waist.

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Wikipedia