The shape of things

THE WORLD HAS CURVES

The Global Quest for the Perfect Body

By Julia Savacool

Rodale. 206 pp. $24.99

When journalist Julia Savacool asked women from around the world to describe their ideal body, diverging portraits emerged -- from a curvy, Coca-Cola bottle silhouette in Jamaica to a linear, kimono shape in Japan. But universally, she found , women's bodies are economic and social indicators.

Physiques have different meanings depending on the cultural backdrop: While thinness typically signals wealth in overweight America, it's synonymous with sickness and poverty in AIDS-ravaged South Africa. And Western physical "ideals" are constantly being exported by way of beauty products and the images of slim American TV stars. For example, as China's trade policies have loosened in the past few decades, strict communist dress codes have given way to a culture in which cosmetic surgery is one of the fastest-growing industries.

Some of the sharpest cultural snapshots come to life when Savacool steps aside and lets her sources speak in short monologues. We meet a naturally thin Jamaican woman who chugs large amounts of milk daily in pursuit of a rounder bottom and an Afghani woman who describes the burqa as "culturally comfortable, a feeling of safety in an unsafe country."

The American "paradox" -- we keep getting fatter despite our desire to be thin -- is not a new plot line. Savacool pushes the domestic conversation forward by asking how the U.S. recession might affect our waistlines. But her conclusion that tomorrow's ideal will ultimately prize fitness over thinness seems stale. Surely, that obsession with fitness has already arrived.

-- Lisa Bonos bonosl@washpost.com