Where Is the Waist? Editorial

September 15, 2010

Where Is the Waist? Editorial

By M-J de Mesterton

Where is the waist? That's what I wonder every time I look at photos of the newest "fashions." What is new about the same old tragic clothing-concepts bobbing up again, masquerading as innovative?

For the past ten years, pants and skirts have consistently been manufactured without even coming close to the waist, yet they are touted as the "latest." To paraphrase General Honoré of Louisiana, someone's "stuck on stupid." I thought last spring that the tide of bad clothes was turning, but having perused some catalogues this month, it is apparent that clothing designers are still denying their customers ample fabric to cover their "plumber's cracks."

Snide cracks about "mom jeans" and thoroughly ignorant comments calling anything that indeed does come just up to the natural waist "high-waisted" are still being heard and read by those of us who actually remember where the waist is located on the human corpus: the place for belts, sashes, snaps and buttons is an inch or two above the navel, depending upon one's height. The designer of the human body gave us the waist as an elegant way of keeping our pants, skirts and trousers from falling down; also to enhance our corporeal proportions. The true waist never comes below the navel, and it certainly cannot be found two inches above one's crotch. Garments are falling down from where they rest on the hips, and the fashion world has insisted on staying down in the gutter after what seems to be a devastating, permanent fall from elegant, figure-enhancing style.

Fashion-victims are afraid now to go against the hideous dictum that you must wear your clothes no higher than the hip. This is a big mistake, because if one follows the lines of his or her body, they will see that clothes descending from the waist lengthen the legs, while clothes that only come up to the hips turn even the slimmest among us into pot-bellied, short and sloppy-looking people who would have been laughed-at throughout the previous decades and centuries.

Wearing six-inch heels to compensate for the bad deeds done to your figure by stingy clothing manufacturers and designers does nothing but make one look even sillier. Extra-high heels will damage both your feet and back, and will not give back the height robbed from you by idiotic torso-stretching trousers and skirts. For men, extra-long trousers do not visually lengthen your legs; rather, they make you look dumpy.

The fail-safe, time-tested method of developing real glamour and style is to dress in natural, luxurious cloths and fabrics from the waist-down; wear two-to-three inch heels if you are a woman, and keep your trousers from heaping into a puddle on top of your shoes if you are a man. And don't forget the stockings and socks. No one will notice that you are not blindly and self-destructively following bad fashion. But, they will wonder why on earth you look so good, while their trousers are slipping into the mire together with all sense of style.

Now, there is the waist, our anchoring feature of elegant style. Pants, trousers and skirts constructed without it are a waste!

Waist-to-Height Ratio and Your Health: an easy-to-use page that tells you how to find your waist, recommends its ideal measurement for your height, gender and age, calculates your body-mass index and displays one's optimum daily caloric-intake.

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