Posted 11:58 AM by Blah blah

A Woman's Tummy: The New Sexy Spot (Trends)

At Gender's Last Frontier (NY Times):

"Flipping through Us or People, a reader is left wondering whether Dame Judi Dench is the only living celebrity who has not been photographed with her navel proudly on view....

'The breast has become merely an accessory of the plastic body,' Ms. Bordo said. 'When everyone looks like Barbie, that kind of body can still remain an aesthetic ideal, but it almost ceases to have an erotic appeal.' [I disagree! -RG]...

Research done by Dr. [Devendra] Singh has shown that men deem women ideal when their waistlines represent 70 percent of their hip size. Many believe the narrower the waist in relation to the hips, the curvier — and presumably more appealing — the body in question.

In a sense, the renewed interest in the stomach, a body part exclusive to neither sex, perfectly serves two cultural imperatives: one that demands a kind of androgyny among women (acquire rippled tummy, wear low-riding jeans, look like a male underwear model or hip-hop star), and the other requiring them to prize child rearing....

With the exposed bellybutton now a public signal of a woman's interest in yoga, sex, motherhood, looking like J.Lo or all of the above, it is not surprising that a micro-industry has emerged to create various adornments for it."