It's true that men seem to like curvier and women with a little plumpness, rather than women are too skinny, from what I've heard from men directly, plus reading and hearing men on TV, in magazines, on the Internet, and other places.

One thing you might not know is, one of the excuses magazines use for continuing to put skinny models in their magazines is that the designers only give them one or two sizes in the clothing they have for the models. The designers claim (according to the magazine people who have said this) it would be too expensive to send clothes of different sizes. To me, this is bullcrap! We can change things!

I seem to recall somewhere that women are less likely to buy magazines with men on the covers. Don't quote me on that, though. I know I'd enjoy seeing some hot guys on the covers. But I think the reasoning is that women are interested in looking good, and they look to women on the covers for makeup and fashion ideas.

There was a time when fat women were hot. You see the way some artists painted curvy women. Women's beauty standards have changed over the centuries. We've done some crazy things for beauty, and we still do. I tried to quickly find a photo, but I couldn't find one, of a tool once used to shape the foot for high heels. But, if you want an interesting history of footwear, including a photo of some uncomfortable-looking high heels, see http://podiatry.curtin.edu.au/history.html. Of course, you're familiar with the corset. Even today, we do things we think of as normal, but if you think about it, they're rather extreme, for beauty. We get surgery for minor flaws! And, while it's been done for centuries, I'm sure, we do stick needles through our ears--and other parts--so we can stick metal decorations through them. Many (men and women) consider tattoos beautiful, and some people even get into body modification, which can be quite extreme.

In other cultures, they do all kinds of things many of us think is weird, but it's really not so different from us. In Thailand, there are the Padaung "Giraffe Women". I remember a TV show featuring celebrities going to lands that aren't so modern as ours, and some went to an African land, where the natives laughed at how weird it was that one of the American members had a pierced tongue! Some of the Africans had pierced noses, as I recall, or something else that many in American society would consider weird.

Um...what was the topic again? LOL!