Ideal

Someone who keeps my hours is inevitably exposed to lots of late night television and the inescapable horrors therein: infomercials. The most odious by far are the diet/weight loss programs that bombard you with before-and-after photos. And my reason for hating these infomercials isn't due to self-esteem issues or anything like that.

It's the women.

It shows these skeletal waifs who I am expected to accept as attractive, though I could probably play their ribs like a xylophone. Frightfully thin, jump-around-in-the-shower-just-to-get-wet thin. And I don't buy it. For many of these women, the before photos are far more attractive. One woman bemoaned that she used to be a size sixteen. She complained how she always felt fat, but now she was so happy as a size three. They show the before image, and I think, "Damn! She used to look really good!" Lush body, full of curves, with the classic hourglass shape. Some women are blessed with a figure that bears a little extra weight proudly, even if the woman herself does not.

It's a complete and utter shame. Women should be made of curves, not angles.

Seeing all this size bullshit (and bullshit it is--why are most women so sensitive that they can't stand to see a measurement label on their clothes?), I realized that I don't really know how the whole sizing chart is broken down. So I Googled, and I found this. I thought about the measurements I generally prefer to see on women, and this is what I figured: my ideal woman falls within the range of sizes ten to sixteen.

Just one more bit of evidence supporting the fact that I was born in the wrong century.