um, didn't mean to post that twice, or to drift. What I was trying to say is that part of the difference is not between looks and feel, but what is generally appreciated vs. what is generally considered, accepted, tolerated as fashionable. I don't think fashion is arrived at by a general consensus. Fashion leaders aren't mainly in the business of appreciating women.

And the mystery of women's clothing, why nothing seems made to fit, is probably just because they aren't made to fit. They're made to sell. A study of the A.M.A. as a system of health services looks like chaos, but a study of it as a money-making system looks like a fine-tuned, well-oiled machine. I suspect there's something about prodding people's insecurities that taps the impulse to buy, to buy not only clothes and appearance-products, but all sorts of things. This is my theory about it, and I don't think it's a brilliant conspiracy, just what evolves when people are trying like crazy to sell stuff.

In military training there's sometimes a mind-game trick of issuing recruits ill-fitting uniforms, then giving them better ones at the completion of training, as though they've arrived at a new self. So I think it's better for sales to present a difficult, almost impossible ideal, keep people feling uneasy, if you can.

So people keep saying fuller-figures are coming back in style, and nothing happens. J. Garofalo keeps masquerading as an unattractive woman (and as a non-celebrity) and it's conventionally, but not actually, credible. I think the root is the difference between producing things for use, or for sale, and fashion unconsciously finds the expression of that aspect of the culture. Hope that was more to the point of the original question.

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joeclone