What a jumble of stuff going on in this thread!

Pants: they come in various sub-sets in the U.S. Some of them: juniors, misses, womens, petite, and up into the X-sizes, etc. Juniors have no hips, Misses have waists and hips, women's have fuller cut butts and hips and still some waist, and so it goes. I still wear Misses most of the time, but depending on the style and such, will occasionally buy a pair in the Women's range. The even sizes tend to denote the misses, the odd sizes the juniors and women's. I think. Don't quote me. I don't have trouble buying pants that fit, as long as I try on enough pairs. Sometimes I take them home and hem them. I wear a lot of belts. If you sew, a lot of options are available, and it is possible to make jeans and slacks that look just like the ones that come from the department store.

Bras: One name--Victoria's Secret. They make wonderful bras of all sorts. Personally, I like the non-padded demi kind that still let nipples show (believe it or not, American women DO have nipples). I enjoy being of a relatively smaller size (36B); nursing two children reduced my size some. You can buy thongs and slinky stuff in Victoria's Secret and the clerks don't bat an eye. Those garments don't stop at the small sizes, they are also made for the more robust shapes. Their models may be slim with incredible busts, but they understand that most women aren't shaped like that.

Our level of fitness determines how much we jiggle, and our cultures are such that prolonged physical labor is a rarity for a lot of people, so some of us jiggle more than we would given different amounts of labor. It seems silly to go to the gym to work out if one has a load of firewood to split and stack. Me, I lately get my exercise by carrying around 50-pound bags of thinset, 35-pound cases of tile, cans of paint, furniture, etc., and when I don't feel like staying indoors, I have a half acre of yard to tend. I don't have time for the gym, but I'm also in the best shape I've been in since my mountain climbing and park rangering days ceased 15 years ago. I don't jiggle much, but I have begun to realize that the traffic sometimes slows in the street out front when I'm bent over working in the garden. . . not bad as I breeze past my middle-40's.

SRS