Why time's running out for the hourglass figure (sorry chaps)

By Hannah Betts

Updated: 10:34 EST, 17 May 2010

There was a time, not so long ago, when my hourglass figure cast me firmly into fashion exile.

On the rare occasions that I took my tallish, in-and-out size 12 figure on shopping expeditions to designer boutiques, I was given the kind of frosty reception usually reserved for habitual shoplifters.

I still grimace when I recall the skinny little minion who, having struggled to contain me in one of her wispy tight garments, waved a disparaging hand over my breasts and hips and declared: 'These are not Armani.'

Enviable curves: Christina Hendricks, left, and Scarlett Johansson

Today, she'd be laughing on the other side of her face. After years of trying to squeeze my plumptious derriere into skinny jeans and pencil skirts, the hourglass figure is back in fashion.

For proof, you need look no further than the likes of Scarlett Johansson, Salma Hayek and Penelope Cruz.

Or what about Mad Men's buxom Christina Hendricks, named by Esquire magazine this month as the sexiest woman in the world?

Or even our own wholesome, home-grown stars Nigella Lawson, Gemma Arterton, Kate Winslet and Rachel Weisz?

Scientists have long argued that a voluptuous shape may reflect a woman's increased fertility, genetic fitness, general health, and even - dare I say it? - superior brain function.

The hourglass ideal has its roots in Elizabethan England, when women enhanced their curves with corsetry, bustles and layer-upon-layer of structured petticoats. Over the centuries, underwear has become ever more advanced and elaborate and, when fashion has required it to, can emphasise the female physique and produce curves of rollercoaster proportions.

The past century witnessed an oscillation between the hourglass and the androgynous as the feminine ideal.

The ripe-buttocked, Edwardian woman may have been resplendently rounded, but the flapper who succeeded her looked decidedly boyish with her tightly bound breasts and disguised hips.

World War II heralded the zenith of the bombshell physique: luscious in-and-out proportions so devastating that they reminded smitten servicemen of weaponry.

Post-war poster girls continued the trend. With her barely contained 35-22-35 statistics, Marilyn Monroe was hourglass embodied. 

Dying breed: Hourglass figures like Kate Winslet, left, and Salma Hayek's are becoming less common

Ever strategic, she would tamper with her heels to set her figure all a-wobble.

'Look how she moves,' as Jack Lemmon sighs in Some Like It Hot. 'Like Jell-O on springs.'

In more recent times, the catwalk has been taken over by the straight-up-and-down bodies of models such as Kate Moss, Jodie Kidd and Agyness Deyn.

Now, in yet another flip in fashion favouritism, a study by underwear manufacturer Triumph International has found that the hourglass has returned to favour as the feminine ideal, with half of British men and women citing it as their favourite choice out of seven body shapes.

But just when it seemed safe to put on a bikini and get back in the water, science has dealt us yet another bitter blow.

Curvaceous may be fashionable again, but latest research suggests that the hourglass figure is on the decline.

We may be desirable all over again, but we're a dying breed, a throwback to a by-gone age when full hips and waspish waists were a coveted sign of a woman's aptitude for childbirth.

In Britain, the main threat to the hourglass is that of escalating paunch. The average woman's chest and hips are 4cm bigger than in the Fifties. She is 5cm taller (167cm), a size 16 rather than a 12, while her weight has risen from 62kg to 65kg.

Most upsetting for hourglass aficionados is her ever-expanding waist. The average female girth has shot up from 27.5in in 1951 to 34in and counting. They are shedding their curves.

Why should this be the case? According to anthropologist Professor Elizabeth Cashdan of the University of Utah, our careers may be to blame.

She believes that high-powered working women are less likely to have the classic shape of a tiny waist with wide hips and large bosom due to the stress levels associated with their jobs. 

Fashion favouritism: The boyish figures of Agyness Deyn, left, and Kate Moss remain popular on the catwalk but do not reflect the shape of the average woman

She claims, in societies where women are more economically independent, they are more likely to carry greater fat about their waists.

Like so many things, this comes down to our hormones. In a curvaceous figure, concentrations of oestrogen will have dictated where bulk is laid down.

Typically, in women of childbearing age, this has focused on the buttocks, hips and thighs - hence the hourglass shape.

Only with the menopause, when oestrogen is reduced, has fat shifted from these 'feminised' areas toward the 'masculine' storage areas around the stomach and waist.

Professor Cashdan studied data from 33 non-Western populations and four European populations. She examined waist-to-hip ratios, calculated by measuring someone's waist, then hips and dividing the first figure by the second.

She also found that Western women's multi-tasking lives are increasingly fuelled by the release of the hormone androgen. This yields invaluable workplace qualities such as strength, stamina and competitiveness.

However, it also produces that rather less desirable office accessory - the spare tyre.

Cortisol, another stress-busting hormone, similarly predisposes a woman to an executive paunch. Instead of traditional Coca-Cola bottle or guitar-shaped bodies, contemporary women boast 'grocery shop' figures more analogous to apples, pears or courgettes.

A study of more than 6,000 women carried out by investigators at the North Carolina State University found that 46 per cent were courgette- haped, just over 20 per cent pear, under 14 per cent apple, and only 8 per cent hourglass.

Though canny celebrities may use silicone to alter their measurements and give themselves more classical proportions, most mere mortals will remain pear or courgette-shaped.

Before long, the closest that 21st-century woman will get to an hourglass will be boiling herself an egg.

Nowadays, it seems, the hourglass is worshipped precisely because it has become such a precious rarity - hence the obsession with actress Christina Hendricks, aka Mad Men's luxuriantly voluptuous Joan Holloway.

She is celebrated precisely because her body remains such a luscious anomaly amid Hollywood's androgynously honed physiques.

It is human nature to hanker after the things we can't have. How else are we to explain the unstoppable rise of devices such as shape-wear knickers that suck in expanding waistlines to create the illusion of smooth curves, or gel-filled, cup-boosting bras, and dresses with concealed pull-in panels?

British women spend an absolute fortune on such items. I have been asked several times whether my breasts are 'real' - something else that reinforces the sense that I am a member of a soon-to-be-extinct species.

At the same time, after spending so many years in fashion Siberia, I'm rather enjoying sitting back and watching other women struggle to attain the shape I've had since my teen years.

I'm loving my curved calves, thighs and bottom. And why on earth would I desire a straight torso?

Who can forget the sight of Agyness Deyn, the supermodel de jour, photographed last week on a beach sporting a skimpy bikini?

Designers may covet this striking looking clothes horse, but off the catwalk, in the harsh light of day, her waistless, shapeless figure looked like that of a teenage boy.

Personally, I relish the fact that my frame is different to that of my lover. The hollow at my waist naturally invites a hand.

I remember the man who held me close there while we danced and whispered: 'You set my world curved.'

At the end of the day, every bone in my body may be feminist, but I will always relish the fact that their arrangement is so resolutely feminine.

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