The Well-Shaped Woman

Let us turn now to the ideal shape for a woman. She should be more rounded and softer than a man. In a woman, the sub-cutaneous fat is usually thicker, and the muscles and the bones are less prominent. The connective tissue, and not the muscles, moulds a woman's figure. Her body is less bulky, and more slender than a man's.

While her waist is narrower, her loins and hips are fuller. In women, the trunk is like a vase standing on the wider pedestal of the hips. But in man the vase appears to overlap the pedestal slightly. Her limbs are not so bulky and do not have muscular contours. Her shoulders are neater and more sloping. The bony projection of her shoulder is more marked. Her pelvis is lower than a man's. It looks wider because of the relative narrowness of her waist and the lesser development of her thighs.

Although a degree of plumpness is normally present, this should not be at the expense of the bony projections and the principle muscles. Her collar-bones should stand out slightly; the small dips (the collar-bone hollows) above them, of which they mark the lower boundary, are no more a sign of thinness than the fact that the ridge of her tibia shows through the skin of the leg. It's a sign of overweight if you can no longer see the collar-bones.

Her stomach should be flat. Her hips-bone should show through the skin, as should the edges of the lowest ribs. This is not so in the case of her hip joints and the lowest vertebrae, which should be slightly "cushioned.

In the lower limbs, we should guess, rather than actually see, the main muscular lines. Her calves should not showthe overdeveloped muscles so common in dancers. They should be slim and not bulgy. Her ankles must be neat, blending gently into the lower part of the calf. The joints of her lower limbs, both knees and ankles, should be slim.. While the thighs should be completely together when you stand bolt upright (nothing is more unsightly than the triangle of light which appears at the top of the thighs between the legs in thin people), this should not be because their inside surfaces are padded with fat, which frequently happens with cellulites.

The neck should have a clean line and never be scraggy. There should normally be a groove at the nape running up to the back of the head. Where there is undue fattening, this groove fills up with layers of fat, most prominent at the base of the neck.

The face should be well filled-out. The breasts should be sufficiently fat to be rounded although not too large or they may drop. The same applies to the buttocks.

The ideal shape which I have just described is the right of every young woman. It can and should also be that of the older woman, even of the mother of many children whom she has breast-fed, if she knows how to take the necessary precautions.