The New York Times Style Magazine
WOMEN’S FASHION FALL 2004

POSTERIOR MODERN
Taking the Gluteus to the Maximus.
BY MARY TANNEN

THIS WOMAN is walking down the street ahead of me, ordinary looking, but as she passes, every male head swivels. I can almost see dotted lines streaming from popping eyes to bobbing cheeks. And then I think, Of course, buttocks are the new breasts. Every culture and every time has its template for the ideal female form. Here in the United States, after more than 50 years of breast fixation, the bottom has come into its own. Jennifer Lopez’s generous seat may be driving the trend, or it may just embody, so to speak, the current ideal. It doesn’t take a degree in anthropology to tie the new silhouette to the ascendance of African-American and Hispanic influence in entertainment (e.g., that hip-hop classic “Baby Got Back”).

Tight jeans, long a favorite on the street, are going high end, as if were. Stretch denims from designers like Seven for All Mankind are cut mercilessly close and embellished with pockets and stitching to accentuate the afferdeck. So, too, the tight new skirts lovingly cup the curve.

Does this mean that women are at last maturing into greater acceptance of their bodies? Will that classic swivel and squint at the rear take its place in the Museum of Lost Gestures alongside the medieval pose of hands folded over the abdomen? In a word, no.

Gluteus Lopez comes easily only to the young and genetically favored. While the preferred breast, a large globular fat deposit carried high on an otherwise slender body, rarely occurs in nature, it is a snap to fake compared to the buttock of choice – a round, firm but supple muscle-and-fat combination carried high on an otherwise slender body. The breast, pliable and floating, is easily molded. The buttock is not.

The last time fashion favored this silhouette it gave us the bustle. This time the posterior is meant to be seen naked, or nearly, and unless you are willing to go for padded underpants, you will not be able to buy your seat off the rack.

In Los Angeles, Burr Diehl…has been bottom feeding, so to speak. Her Bar Method workouts are so effective that the term “bar butt” is entering the local dialect….

<Back