You have just described me. I am curvy. A little overweight, large bust, hips that proportionally match my large bust, me! (I say if you have to wear a dress to show off your body, you ain’t curvy.) Not everyone’s standard of beauty, to be sure. But some of the comments in this thread remind me there’s room for us in the spectrum, too.
ETA: Beyonce Knowles, monstro, happens to be my idealization of the perfect body. That woman is smoking and she’s the Queen of the 1% of Women I Would Fuck In a Red Hot Minute.
Heh, awesome. I’m totally rewriting my profile to this list. I’m now a stable, employed, reliable, romantic woman who is fun, financially secure and who loves animals!
Joan, played by Christina Hendricks, from Mad Men is a textbook curvy.
Behold! http://i35.tinypic.com/2lw7xfn.jpg
The cincher (ha!) is the waist. Lots of perfectly nice looking women have larger breasts and hips, but without a real waist, there’s no real curve. No overall hourglass figure, no curve - breast and hip size regardless.
Now, the accurate term for larger attractive women that lack the waist to be curvy is “zaftig”. Nothing wrong with being zaftig, and I think it sounds a lot more flattering than rubenesque.
Personally, I dig curvy women. I think they look healthy all around. Zaftig women can edge into the not-remotely-athletic category which I don’t care for. I don’t need a women to be up for a marathon, but looking like your up for a hike is a big plus.
It’s depressing how surprised I was when I realized that men love this body type. I grew up thinking women came in two categories. Skinny or ugly. :smack:
16 - 21 would have been so much easier if I had just realized that I could be hot just being me.
Oh, and as far as the actual point of this thread… I like the description a poster above gave. Boobs and hips/butt curve out, and waist curves in.
I have to laugh at a few of the pictures shown, where the women are wearing freaking corsets. Duh, of course they’ll look curvy there! That’s the point of wearing one!
Real curvy is not based on weight but on proportion. Larger bust, smaller waist, larger hips. You can be bottom-heavy curvy or top-heavy curvy (or equal top and bottom).
As someone who has pants that fit her hips but are literally 3 sizes too big at the waist, I think that’d be an example of curvyness.
The fact that curvy =! equal fat has been covered pretty well, but it’s irritating that the word really has no meaning anymore.
So, I’ve taken to describing myself as stacked. It’s not as accurate, because it only implies that I’m top-heavy. It’s a cute word though, and it doesn’t have the same baggage as curvy.
Everyone is entitled to a preference, and Nigella is certainly very pretty although not really what I think of when I think of curvy. What I take exception to is your likening a size zero to be emaciated and like a 12 year old boy. I see this a lot on this board so I’m sorry to direct this at you, but this is the most recent use of it.
Most women wear a few different sizes because of the stupid differences in clothes for women. I have clothing in a zero and a 2 for the most part. I have a couple of fours. I have a couple of shirts and a dress that I bought in the “pre juniors” department at The Limited. Idon’tlooklike a 12 year old boy.
Several of my friends are pretty much my size and they aren’t emaciated, nor are they underfed. This board seems all about defending the overweight, which is fine. What many tend to do is to do this by way of knocking anyone who is small-ish. It’s just as ignorant as the rude people who come along and make comments about people who are obese, yet for some reasons it seems to be accepted here.
Different people are attracted to different types. I think that is one of the best things about attraction in general. There is no one type of beauty that is “better” than another. It’s not too hard to find something attractive about most people around, and you’re never going to be everyone’s cup of tea. And my God, would you want to be?
Joan, played by Christina Hendricks, from Mad Men is a textbook curvy.
Behold! http://i35.tinypic.com/2lw7xfn.jpg
Yes, Christina Hendricks is exactly who I think fits the definition of “curvy” perfectly!
Let’s go to the media for an answer.
Mariah Carey has often been referred to as curvy in her career.It’s hard to see how this is fat.
Two years ago Rolling Stone did a piece on Regina Spektorusing this picture and called her curvy. Again not really overweight.
Some people in this thread wonder how “thick” is considered a compliment. I grew up in a poor Mexican-American household. I had relatives nicknamed Gordo (Spanish for fat) and Fatso, and they were actually terms of endearment. I often noticed similar attitudes among blacks and poor whites. A lot of it is these households know what real food depravation is, so that being hefty is a sign you’re doing well–an attitude lost long ago in mainstream America. As one person I forget pointed out, “if you’re poor and thin, people around the neighborhood think you’re on drugs or have AIDS”
In the Fifties “curvy” had no baggage at all. It was a compliment and did not refer to being overweight. Yet a person of that same size today might be considered to be “overweight.” Skinny" and “thin” don’t seem to mean “underweight” as they did before Audrey Hepburn came along.
It’s been fun watching other standards of beauty change also. For women, longer faces are more popular now. I see a touch more of Mediterranean looks about women’s faces than fifty or sixty years ago.
Most of the linked examples of curvy are simply hot. If you are looking at a dating site profile and when you read curvy you are thinking Melissa Ford or Beyonce, you are in for a big surprise.
Runway model thin can be attractive, but that is not what I would call normal. Normal is all those “curvy” celebrity examples given. Curvy is more like the Dove ad girl linked.
In onlineland, though, do as the translation chart says and translate to overweight.
(And no, having big tits doesn’t make you “curvy”, a square slab with tits is just that)
