Monocled Alchemist

Twiggy gets the credit for the skinny fashion. But should she? Trends are signs of the times.

Article published in Parade magazine, 10th February, 1968

Changing Shape | Parade | WHO had the most famous feminine shape in 1967 — and is all set to keep a straight line as a sex symbol m 1968? Twiggy, of course. A gal who really needs a label to indicate which is the front.

If you think that her all-the-same silhouette doesn’t cut much ice with envious women and admiring men just ask the next six people you meet what they know about Jenny Lewis.

The chances are that, while they could talk and talk about Twiggy, Jenny Lewis will need some mind-searching. Yet she was Miss United Kingdom with a 36-23-36 figure — the sort of curves supposed to demote Twiggy as effectively as they could disguise her.

Where the big-name girls in the modelling and photo business go the rest of womanhood, sooner or later, follows. Not that they will be completely conscious of the fact. Even if there’s a Twiggy in every 1968 girl struggling to show herself, very few of them will deliberately try to alter their shapes to imitate her. They needn’t. Nature will do it for them.

Changing Shape | Parade

Plenty of remarkable things are happening to the feminine figure of the late sixties. First, girls are getting curves much earlier: often before they leave junior school. That’s something unknown in their grandmothers’ day. Thirteen or fourteen was the age when womanhood began to show itself.

Next, there’s an easing of the weight increase. The average height of a British girl in her late teens has gone up by just under an inch. But the average weight has dropped by 5 lb since the end of the last war.

THE remarkable thing about shape changes in human beings is that they seem to be almost universal. The goddesses who go before the cameras don’t really set a pattern; they are just tip-top examples of the New Girl.

The big bosom was not a feature of the famous figures of thirty years ago — just one generation back. Greta Garbo, Bette Davis, and all the rest of them had many gorgeous attractions, but a large bust measurement wasn’t one of them.

The 36-plus for the first of the vital statistics became a magnet during the war, when lots of people were thin because food was rationed and too many girls wore uniform or concealing factory overalls.

Changing Shape | Parade

A girl who was obviously well-fed and very feminine became the ideal in the pin-up pictures of millions of servicemen. And those actresses fortunate enough to typify her needed only a tape measure to find fame and fortune. So the big names were Marilyn Monroe, Jayne Mansfield, Sabrina, and similar busty beauties.

All over the world young women duly obeyed the trend and got curvy. And now, whether their boy friends like it or not, it’s certain that they will be buying jumpers a couple of sizes smaller as their bust measurement droops.

Especially if they have seen the first film to cash in on the flat-chest trend — Thoroughly Modern Millie. Who’s going to allege that Julie Andrews, reverting to the bosomless popsie of the nineteen-twenties, isn’t attractive?

Though the current shape changes are intriguing doctors and anthropologists, because of the rapidity with which they are happening, there is nothing new in this mysterious phenomenon of natural alterations in women’s appearance as part of their eternal campaign to attract men.

Changing Shape | Parade

The first of the really beautiful women — still accepted as perfect specimens — were those who lived in ancient Athens. But they were hefty. The statue of the Venus de Milo is thick-waisted and wide-hipped. Her breasts are high and wide apart. She is athletic and there is evidence of muscular arms and legs.

By the Middle Ages the ideal girl had a figure shaped like an S; her breasts were tiny, and her stomach bulged. She was no taller than a 13-year-old girl today.

When Elizabeth I was on the throne the ideal girl in England had become tall and slim, with round breasts, a thin neck, and very long legs, but in Italy a different diet produced huge women, with large behinds, great thighs and heads which looked tiny on their comfortable bodies.

But the fat did not affect the bosom, which was exposed and rouged at social functions. It remained small and round.

It took the Victorian woman, condemned to cover up her charms, to outwit the killjoys by developing a large behind, and if Nature didn’t co-operate she wore an involved ‘falsie’ of wire and wood under her skirt to make up for her physical deficiency.

These shape changes, occurring gradually over several generations, are now believed to be due to changes in diet.

The Venus de Milo grew into the perfect woman she was thanks to a diet of varied cereals, olive oil and wine. The Sikhs of Northern India are tall and virile because their diet is mainly whole wheat, green vegetables, and milk. The Japanese are small, have poor eyesight, and are energetic because generations have lived mainly on rice and fish. The large upper lip given by cartoonists to Irishmen is a commonly seen feature, and it is due to the potato diet of earlier generations.

Changing Shape | Parade

ONE of the most uncanny examples of the way food elements absorbed from the local soil can change appearance is seen in the comparatively few American families who can trace their ancestry back to English emigrants who crossed the Atlantic in the wake of the Pilgrim Fathers.

They have long lived in the same land as the Red Indians they ousted, and though their diet is different the cereals and vegetables have derived nutrients from the same source.

The result has been that their English character has disappeared, and they have adopted the appearance of Red Indians in many features: thin lips, broad foreheads, black or very dark brown hair, and a lean, erect frame.

Of course, psychological as well as physical factors help to change the shape of human beings. The “Thoroughly Modern Millie” of the nineteen twenties was the first girl to enjoy some degree of equality with men. She wanted to prove it with a boyish figure.

When poverty is rife fatness becomes desirable as proof of having enough to eat. A fat girl, in countries where food is scarce, suggests that her family is well off and will have a nice dowry. A man with a double chin and a pot where his stomach should be implies to the girls that he can keep her in comfort.

Nowadays, in Britain and the Western countries, food isn’t short and poverty rare. So there is no need to be fat to prove one is the fortunate exception. And with the accent strongly on youth, the implication that over-weight means age, will virtually guarantee that the Twiggy figure becomes as universal as the 36-24-36 female torso of the past few years.

Changing Shape | Parade

And what of the men? It’s significant that reducing diets for males have never been so popular as today.

Along with the slimness demanded for tight-fitting trousers and unpadded coats there is the trend to tallness accentuated by higher heels.

Apart from these desired changes to exploit male fashion trends, enlightened diet during infancy and childhood has existed long enough to alter the male face. His nose is bigger and his eyes smaller. The jawbone is jutting out farther and the teeth are bigger. Though he weighs no more than his grandfather he is much taller, notably because his legs, and not his body, are longer.

So the shape of both men and women are changing quite dramatically. Partly these alterations are involuntary and nothing can be done about them even if one wished to do so. It would take some generations to make a real switch against nature’s chosen trends.

Attractive human

But a lot of them are voluntary as men and girls instinctively try to emulate their idols. This can be a tough, slow job as diets are followed and exercises carried out.

The disguise experts are ready to help things as they always have. You can be sure that bras will be flattening instead of accentuating; belts will heave in the masculine tum; and colours and clever clothes-cutting will produce an optical illusion of the Attractive Human, 1968, even if he or she is really something of a fraud when seen in the bath-room mirror.