Curving the Curple

Even before Robert Herrick cast his eye at his retreating Julia and memorialized "that brave vibration each way free," most of humankind has admired women from both sides. Americans, for reasons that are obscure, have in recent years kept their eyes chiefly in front, and above the waist. The U.S. female bottom, in fact, has been treated like an embarrassment -- flattened, cinched in, and obfuscated into the monobuttock, which appears in nature only in the wasp and other unpleasant creatures. U.S. girdle makers long ago discovered that for export overseas they had to provide a different treatment of fundamentals, minus the firm back panel that compresses the U.S. figure so sternly.

At long last, the U.S. woman is joining the rest of the world. The curved curple is In, and the monobuttock is on its way to a new divisive splendor. First evidence was the recent popularity of stretch pants and tight slacks, which were obviously wasted if what they stretched or were tight over was not the real personality of the wearer. The final nudge is the new fashions. "Last year's girdle won't properly fill out this year's dress," says Executive Vice President Walter A. Schieman of Peter Pan Foundations Inc. And Formfit is feeling its way toward a new kind of falsiefication which it calls "cosmetic corsetry." "Women are tired of the flat paper-doll look," says a Formfit spokesman. "The new figure is going to be much more alive and much more three-dimensional going away."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.