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Above: Mad Men actress Christina Hendricks

Author and columnist Shane Watson  has declared that curves are back. Now, I like Shane. Thinks she’s a terrific writer. But I’m SO OVER pronouncements about women’s bodies as fashion trends. Funnily enough, most of us don’t have the ability to adapt our bodies to suit a trend. We are what we are, muffins, ribs, boobs, flat chests, whatever. They’re our BODIES. Not to be confused with a pair of high-waisted jeans vs hipsters.

In The Times Online, Shane writes:

It’s taken roughly 15 years, but at long last, after a couple of false alarms, we are officially over skinny. And here is how you can tell: women have started to envy other women, not for their jutting hip bones and the amount of daylight visible between their thighs, but for their soft and shapely bodies. We’re not talking about recognising that hips, thighs and breasts are a normal part of the female package. (We’ve always known that, and it hasn’t stopped us from wanting to look like malnourished girls.)

Up to this point, there have been odd breakthrough moments when we’ve been reminded of the power of shape (Scarlett Johansson’s arrival on the scene, for example), but the novelty always wore off pretty quickly when we were faced with the prospect of fitting into this season’s fashion. For as long as anyone can remember, thin has been the aspirational body type — the one that went hand in hand with success and glamour and money and, above all, looking good in clothes.

In the first place, thin has got boring. Not just boring, but grindingly predictable. Along with long blonde hair, skinny-as- nothing has become the default position of anyone who wants to get noticed (or photographed), with the result that anyone good-looking who breaks the mould now appears twice as striking and original. Beth Ditto is naked on the cover of Love not because her size makes the image shockingly avant-garde (that was last year). She’s there because she represents the end of fashion’s blind allegiance to the Identikit clothes model, and the beginning of a new love affair with the parts that make women different from indie boys.

The timing of this shift towards a new aesthetic is no accident. Whippet-thin is the standard body type of the high-maintenance woman with a husband in corporate finance, and those sharp shoulders jutting through cashmere have started to look decidedly last year. A reality check is happening across the board (in fashion, Karl Lagerfeld has christened it “the new modesty”). Now a real figure looks a lot more appealing and sexier than a starved one in the same way that driving a Hummer seems hilariously out of touch with the mood of the times. In Hollywood, it’s already noticeable: the likes of Jennifer Aniston have got a bit more flesh on their bones, and the disciples of Rachel Zoe (the Zoebots) are no longer setting the agenda.

Still, it would be naive to pretend we can just erase all these years of brainwashing overnight. Shape is making a comeback, but our perspective has adjusted and now the curvier figure has to obey certain rules. You need a small waist and a flat stomach to contrast with those fuller hips. A pair of nice arms, good ankles and a well-defined clavicle make all the difference.

Every time Christina Hendricks (Joan in Mad Men) is interviewed and photographed in contemporary clothes, you are reminded that casual, undone and edgy do no favours for the hourglass figure. In that early 1960s look, with asset-packing sheath and immaculate up-do, any woman would die to look like her. But in a thigh-skimming asymmetric number with a frill down the front or, God forbid, jeans and T-shirt, she looks like the big girl who doesn’t quite have what it takes.

In the end, shape has been out of favour for too long because so many of the clothes in the forefront of fashion simply don’t work for women with curves. Now change is coming.

Is change really coming? Is it? From where? From Jennifer Anniston with ‘more flesh on her bones’???

Is she hiding that flesh under her hair because I can’t see it. To me, saying ‘curves are in’ is a tokenistic and insulting attempt to even the playing field that has for so long insisted on only one body type: skinny. The key to a more positive body image for women – in my humble opinion – is not saying this one or that one is ‘in’. It’s having a diverse mix of shapes and sizes in all forms of the media JUST LIKE IN LIFE.

Thereby not making one type of women feel accepted at the expense of another. How’s that for an idea…..