The culture of being beautiful is an old mannerism with humans, though it has got more to do with the fairer sex. Every age, region, culture and tradition has its own essence of beauty. Right from the earliest period of history, different standards and parameters of beauty have been closely guarded and zealously maintained by different generations. But one thing is for sure; the image of an ideal beauty is something that is hard to come by.

The western society seems to be deeply engrossed with the thoughts of a perfect body size and ideal weight. Everyone in the society, men, women and even the adolescents are influenced by the pressures around them to adhere and conform to some ideal parameter of body structure and figure. And it was a serious issue among the women. The ideal figure tends to be one that is most difficult to attain in that particular period of time. On occasions when there are a lot of people maintaining the ideal shape, the yardsticks for the ideal figure would change in such a way that it is something extraordinarily harder to attain.

The ideal shape a woman changes with the tide of time. Different eras of history have seen various ideal shapes of women. Body consciousness, with an essence for fashion and style became noticeable among the masses since the Victorian Age. Victorian women loved a fleshy, plump and full-bodied structure. In order to accentuate their hips, they had a practice of wearing tight corsets on their waist. A tight and slim waist gave them a 'full-buxom, wide buttock' look. In spite of health complications with the use of the corset, women indulge in the practice just to be trendy. It set a precedent to the present culture of women giving up everything (health and otherwise) just to make a style statement.

With the onset of the twentieth century, slender became the in-thing. Having an athletic figure with an ideal height of around 5'4” and a weight of twenty stones was the epitome of women's fashion statement in those days. However, from being athletic, the fashion went to another extreme of cultivating a washboard profile or a flapper-thinness in the 1920s. The hourglass figure of the Victorian Age had a complete rev

ersal here. Women looked as if they had no breast. But in the late 1950s, Marilyn Monroe set the record straight with a heavy bust line. Pamela Anderson further glorified it in the 1990s with the silicon-embedded cleavage in the Baywatch serial.

In the recent past, being slim and slender has held sway in the fashion and modeling circles. With the entry of Twiggy in the modeling scene in the 1960s, it's hot and happening to have a pencil thin figure or a prepubescent boy look. And thinner goes the fashion trend, as the weight of an ideal beauty queen that was just 8% less than an average woman in 1975 is 23 % less now. But these days, the ideal slim body needs to be well toned with a sporty fitness.

With the invasion of the mass media in the private lives of the people, maintaining an ideal shape has become second nature to the womenfolk. Sometimes, you see the ideal figures through TV, magazines and billboards more frequently than you see your friends or family members that the ideals begin to look normal and their figure easily attainable. But the stark reality is that people undergo silicon implants and liposuction to fine-tune and shape up their hips and buttocks.

The future looks bleak if the present trend continues. What would come of us if the quest for animated anorexics and gravity -defying breasts continue? Phentermine is the answer to all our prayers. It is the medical world's best bet to keep you in shape, though it doesn't mean that everyone taking Phentermine could sashay down the ramp.

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