The hourglass is one of four female body shapes. The other shapes are the rectangular, inverted triangle, and spoon. The hourglass shape is defined by a woman's body measurements, the circumference of the bust, waist, and hips. Hourglass measurements are considered to have a wider bust, a narrow waist, and a wide hip, which 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 middle is narrow in circumference, making the ratio wide:narrow:wide. Women who exhibit the hourglass figure are proven to be more admired. This can put pressure on other women, who's body measurements are much different, to strive to achieve the hourglass figure. This can lead to body dissatisfaction which can cause eating disorders in young women from all over the globe.
Video Hourglass figure
Evolution of Female Body Shape
It has been proposed by scientists that the evolutionary reason for the female body shape is in part due to this sexual selection. Sex-typical body shapes (a man's muscular physique and a woman's hourglass figure) are an outcome of evolutionary adaptation in reproductive fitness because they convey information about gene quality, health and fertility, which are important elements for mate 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.
Maps Hourglass figure
Body Weight and Hormones
When it comes to Body Weight and Hormones, it is depended on the females family background and what she can expect to receive in future determination and changes while she goes through puberty. Around the time of developmental changes, fat distribution in women is at its highest from their 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 hourglass figure a desirable and somewhat achievable body type.
History
A women's body has faced through decades of depiction and ridicule. The first representations of truly fashionable women appear in the 14th century. Between the 14th and 16th centuries in northern Europe, bulging bellies were again desirable, however the stature of the rest of the figure was generally thin. This is most easily visible in paintings of nudes from the time. When looking at clothed images, the belly is often visible through a mass of otherwise concealing, billowing, loose robes. Since the stomach was the only visible anatomical feature, it became exaggerated in nude depictions while the rest of the body remained minimal. In southern Europe, around the time of the renaissance, this was also true. Though the classical aesthetic was being revived and very closely studied, the art produced in the time period was influenced by both factors. This resulted in a beauty standard that reconciled the two aesthetics by using classically proportioned figures who had non-classical amounts of flesh and soft, padded skin. In the nude paintings of the 17th century, such as those by Rubens, the naked women appear quite fat. Upon closer inspection however, most of the women have fairly normal statures, Rubens has simply painted their flesh with rolls and ripples that otherwise would not be there. This may be a reflection of the female style of the day: a long, cylindrical, corseted gown with rippling satin accents. Thus Rubens' women have a tubular body with rippling embellishments. While the corset continued to be fashionable into the 18th century, it shortened, became more conical, and consequently began to emphasize the waist. It also lifted and separated the breasts as opposed to the 17th century corsets which compressed and minimized the breasts. Consequently, depictions of nude women in the 18th century tend to have a very narrow waist and high, distinct breasts, almost as if they were wearing an invisible corset. La maja desnuda is a clear example of this aesthetic. The 19th century maintained the general figure of the 18th century. Examples can be seen in the works of many contemporary artists, both academic artists, such as Cabanel, Ingres, and Bouguereau, and impressionists, such as Degas, Renoir, and Toulouse-Lautrec. As the 20th century began, the rise of athletics resulted in a drastic slimming of the female figure. This culminated in the 1920s flapper look, which has informed modern fashion ever since. The last 100 years envelop the time period in which that overall body type has been seen as attractive, though there have been small changes within the period as well. The 1920s was the time in which the overall silhouette of the ideal body slimmed down. There was dramatic flattening of the entire body resulting in a more youthful aesthetic. 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 coke bottle got the highest compliments from men while skinny women were mocked and ridiculed for having this idolized body shape.
Hourglass Figure and The Corset
In the mid to late 1800s, during the Victorian era, the hourglass corset was used to accentuate the hourglass body shape that became popular and ideal. It accentuated the women's waist by compressing and reducing its size by force to allow a woman who had a straight figure have the pleasure to display the hourglass. 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. Even though, the corset in this time frame was able to give women the body of their dreams, it was also very harmful and damaging to their bodies in a chronological duration. This well-known historical attempt at changing a woman's body shape--corseting of the waist to make an hourglass figure--left lasting effects on the skeleton, deforming the ribs and misaligning the spine.
The Hourglass Figure and Women's Fashion
The return of the hourglass figure has been influenced by many different things including the different roles women play at home and in the work place. This displays that women in today's society have more control over what they look like. In the '60s women celebrated liberation by wearing skimpy mini skirts, in the '70s during the feminist movement bohemian fashion emerged, and in the '80s the fight for equality in the work place led to many women choosing attire that drew less attention to their bodies.
Hourglass Figure and Plus-Size In The Fashion Industry
The hourglass figure is perhaps the most prominent body shapes out of the four as well as being the iconic body shape in the fashion industry. Such fashion designers as Christian Dior have designed clothes with specifically the female hourglass body shape in mind. Fashion designers of today continue to design clothes that fit the hourglass body shape even when the body shapes of modern women are changing and becoming much more varied. Even now when plus-size is included in the fashion industry as well as being more commonly produced by various groups of clothing designers, the hourglass size is a great influence on the design of plus-sized clothes. Models of the plus size clothing still retain that hourglass figure albeit bigger than the models of regular clothing. Research surveys conducted in Britain by the University College London and the London College of Fashion found that less than 10% of women had an hourglass body shape. The smooth and narrow waist continues to dominate in fashion designs meant to cater to plus-size women even when that particular body shape, the hourglass, is not commonly found. Although the fashion designs have remained relatively untouched, the reality is that women's bodies are changing and modernistic fashion body shape ideals, primarily the hourglass body shape, are relatively uncommon for the average woman to have.
Research
Recent research indicates men's preference of the hourglass figure on women. These studies found that this shape was even more preferential than breast size or facial features. Despite most men being drawn initially to the woman's cleavage, it was her hips and waist that were in fact what they found most attractive. Scientists discovered that the perfect size waist-to-hip ratio of 0.7, or a waist that measures 70 percent of the circumference of the hip. Some examples of women who possess or have possessed the "perfect" body were Marilyn Monroe, Jessica Alba and Alessandra Ambrosio. It should be noted that scientists have concluded that having such a figure is good for a women's health and increases her rate of fertility. With all the benefits to having this gifted frame, Scientists have also made a recent discovery in research. They found that only 8 per cent of women now have the sort of hourglass figure flaunted by curvaceous 1950s film stars such as Sophia Loren. Designers and manufacturers continued to make clothes to fit a slim-line version of that figure. Of the 6,000 women's body shapes analysed, 46 per cent were described as rectangular, with the waist less than nine inches smaller than the hips or bust. Just over 20 per cent of women were bottom-heavy "spoons", or pear shapes, with hips two inches larger than busts or more, while almost 14 per cent were "inverted triangles" - women whose busts were three or more inches bigger than their hips.
References
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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