Show Notes PRU#026
February 11th, 2007
XENA’S SHOWNOTES
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Hello it’s Sunday 11th Feb 2007 and this is Prurient Lifestyle episode number #026
Please note that the Prurient Lifestyle show and our website may contain references to adult material and explicit language. Therefore this pod-show is not suitable for the younger listener.
If you were not aware that the ‘Prurient Lifestyle’ podcast is part of a prurient community checkout www.prurient.co.uk after the show.
Or just goggle ‘prurient’ (spell) and look for ‘The Prurient Club’
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==== Recording -3 ==== @THIS WEEK In this weeks show we bring you 01: Club News 02: Miranda Diary episodes (41-42) 03: Track1- Hands Wrapped Tight by Derek Clegg 04: Xena – Whatever happened to 36-24-36? 05: Track2- Grow by April Start 06: Round up
A link to my show notes can be found on http://prurient.podbean.com
The Podsafe Network provides all Music for the show
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The next Club members social meeting will be in Bristol on March 11th further details will be on the site shortly.
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Last week in Miranda’s Diary, after an amazing evening with Peter and Jane, Miranda and Rob realised that their original boundaries had moved on. They discussed how they had felt about it and also the possibility of having a threesome with another women. .
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After the pod cast on the Size 00 debate, I received a comment from one of our listeners agreeing with me about how unattractive the 00 size is and asking “whatever happened to the 36-24-36” figure and yes he is right, that this used to be considered the aspirational shape and size. Which got me thinking, wasn’t the most iconic screen goddess of the 20th century, Marilyn Monroe a size 16? Or is this an urban myth? So I typed into Google What size was Marilyn Monroe?
Wikepedia has the following information: - that in 1953 when she appeared in the centre fold in Playboy magazine, she was 37-23-36 weighing 118 pounds
According to snopes.com the claim that Marilyn Monroe was a size 16 is not exactly true. When Actress Elizabeth Hurley was named “Babe of the Century'’ in some poll. This apparently caused her to lose her senses, because she went on to gratuitously dump on Marilyn Monroe — who’s hardly in a position to defend herself. Hurley says that the screen legend was overweight, peaking at a dress size of 16. “I’ve always thought Marilyn Monroe looked fabulous, but I’d kill myself if I was that fat,'’ Hurley told Allure magazine in an amazingly tactless moment . . Elizabeth Hurley said . “I went to see her clothes in the exhibition, and I wanted to take a tape measure and measure what her hips were. (laughter) She was very big.”
The fascination with this “fact” about Marilyn Monroe’s dress size is not its literal truthfulness per se, but the implication it carries: that our standards of feminine beauty have become so extreme that the woman who has been idolized as the world’s premier sex symbol for half a century would be considered “chunky” or even “fat” by modern standards. (Conversely, some of today’s celebrities seem to be fond of invoking the “fact” that Marilyn wore a size 16 dress as a means of asserting that they themselves are, if not thin, in better shape than the renowned Marilyn Monroe was.) Marilyn may (at times) have been a little heavier than today’s ultra-svelte models, but the notion that she was “fat” (even by today’s standards) is based on misinformation or misunderstanding. The claim about Marilyn’s dress size is difficult to prove or disprove, both because of a lack of information and because of the number of ambiguities it engenders: · Like most women, Marilyn Monroe experienced weight fluctuations as she aged, became pregnant, and went through cycles of weight gain and dieting, and so she would not have worn any one dress size, but a range of different dress sizes. · The standards for women’s dress sizes have not remained constant over the years; they have changed as the size and shape of the average woman has changed. (Clothing manufacturers assume most women don’t want to wear clothing of a size identified as “Large,” for example, so they adjust their sizing so that the average-sized woman takes a “Medium.” If the size of the average woman has increased a bit over the years, then the very same size that person’s overall physical contours can’t necessarily be determined from a piece of his clothing. A very tall and skinny man might have to buy pants with a waist size larger than he needed in order to get the correct length of inseam, for example, and therefore inferences about his weight based solely on the waist size of his pants would probably be inaccurate. Likewise, a woman whose bust, waist, or hip measurements were unusually large or small (such as a woman with an acclaimed “hourglass” figure) might have to buy a size of dress that was not reflective of her “overall” size. (Even examining the clothing Marilyn wore in her heyday wouldn’t necessarily answer the question about her dress size, since her outfits were custom-made by studio dressmakers and therefore didn’t bear size tags or hew to standard industry dimensions.) · Reliable documentary evidence is tough to come by for this sort of thing. Doctors might record a patient’s height and weight, but not her dress size or measurements; other citings of Ms. Monroe’s size are difficult to take at face value, as their sources (e.g., studio publicity shops) are known more for exaggeration and puffery than accuracy. Additionally, weight and other size measurements are mere snapshots: a mature person’s height is unlikely to change significantly, but the other numbers can vary quite a bit over time. So, what can we say with any certainty? We can at least establish a range of measurements for Marilyn Monroe based on the available sources: Height: 5 feet, 5½ inches Weight: 118-140 pounds Bust: 35-37 inches Waist: 22-23 inches Hips: 35-36 inches Bra size: 36D A woman of Marilyn’s height, at the extreme of Marilyn’s weight range (140 lbs), would probably wear a size 12 dress today (which is the same dress size listed for Marilyn in the book The Unabridged Marilyn). Perhaps at one time she did wear dresses that might have been considered size 16 (or even 18) back in the 1950s, but she almost certainly did not wear dresses equivalent to today’s size 16. This is borne out by citings such as the following (which might also be a source of some confusion, as a British size 16 would be the equivalent of an American size 12):
Perhaps we should end by pointing out that although Elizabeth Hurley is a bit taller (about 3½ inches) than Marilyn Monroe, her measurements and weight are similar to the figures reported for Ms. Monroe. And while Marilyn was not considered “fat” in her time (nor would she be today), · was a “Large” fifty years ago might be a “Medium” today. This is sort of what has happened to women’s dress sizes since the 1940s: a woman who weighs more now than she did twenty years ago might actually be wearing a smaller dress size today.) So the consensus is that she was more likely to have been a British size 12, and the point is really that lots of young girls today who are a size 12 think they are fat because of this obsession with the size 00. http://www.snopes.com/movies/actors/mmdress.htm
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Outro:- That’s about it again for this week again You can also Download this podcast at prurient.podbean.com and listen to it on your mp3 player. Downloads are available on iTunes, Pod bean, Podcast Pickle & Podcast Alley just search for ‘Prurient’
All references on the show are in my show notes Blog and you can email me from The Prurient Clubs home page at WWW.prurient.co.uk
Will be moving house this week and are not sure when broadband will be connected, we may not be able to broadcast any podcasts for a couple of weeks. So apologies, in advance and we will be back as soon as we can.
BYE… thanks for listening …
