DROP the personal trainer. Lose the rice cakes. No amount of pain is going to maintain that perfect size eight figure the way a clothing maker can just by fiddling with labels.
As the sylphs of the 1960s have aged, clothing sizes have slyly filled out, too. A baby-boomer with three kids can safely brag that she still wears the same size she did in college. But if she tried to slip into a 20-year-old dress, chances are she couldn't get it over her hips.
''I hate to say it, but it's a con job on the women,'' said Bruno Ferri, president of Wolf Form in New York, which has been making dress forms since 1931.
Sixty years ago, he said, a size 10 dress form had a 34.5 inch bust, a 24.5 inch waist and a 34.5 inch hip-line. Today, there is no standard size 10, and the smallest size 10 form Wolf makes has a 35.5 inch bust, a 26 inch waist and a 37 inch hip-line. ''And in many cases, it's almost an inch larger than that,'' Mr Ferri said.
Manufacturers say they aren't pulling one over on women, but adjusting to the market's reality, which is that as the population has aged over the last decade, the average woman - like the average man - has more, on average, to love.
''Older women are bigger and fatter, but they still want to be a size four or six even though they're really an eight or 10,'' said Bud Konheim, president of Nicole Miller Ltd. ''We will cut a big size for the older woman and call it a four or a six andeveryone will be happy.'' Hongkong designer Florence Tse understands.
