Jul 23, 2015 3 min read

By now we’ve heard the song “It’s All About that Bass” about 1.2 million times. It’s been playing on a continuous loop in my head for most of the summer.

For those of you who have either been living in a hermit colony for the past 12 months – or driving a car with a broken radio – I’ll bring you up to date. The song is Meghan Trainor’s catchy pop homage to the larger rear end, a reflection of the current cultural popularity of (and apparent preference for) below-the-waist ampleness in women.

Where was that song when I was 20? I could have used the positive reinforcement.

In the 30 years since I was a very young woman, the definitions of beauty and desirability have undergone a seismic shift. When I was in college, the “prettiest” girls had curly perms, pastel polyester knit dresses, and decidedly un-curvy bottoms. To fit in, I permed my hair, wore my peach Quiana knit frock to every dressy event, and rejected almost every dessert so that I could maintain a silhouette identical to an asparagus spear – fluffy at the head and skinny everywhere else.

Each time I got dressed back then, I stood in the mirror, sucked in my stomach (of which there was almost none), and then turned to the side to examine my bottom half profile. If I could have, I would have sucked in my backside, too, because the prevailing standard of beauty in 1979 was to be skinny enough to have no rear end at all.

I never quite achieved that look, which was disappointing but not exactly tragic. We could go weeks and months without having our photos taken (and selfies were still decades away), so we didn’t have to worry about what every person we ever knew, plus all their friends, thought about our appearance. I’m grateful to have gone through my teenage and college years fairly anonymously.

Young women don’t have that luxury now.

Maybe we can blame social media for the shift in the shallow definitions of feminine beauty. Or, we could blame the Kardashians.

Whatever, curvier bodies are considered the ideal now. Aspirational teenage girls are all over Facebook doing the pose: hand on hip, body turned to the side, back arched. It’s all about that curve. And also, it’s about the long, straight hair. But the whole point of that pose is the curve.

It makes you wonder what the next few decades will bring. As I approach a time when I can comfortably wear my jeans backward, I will hope that someday soon the beauty standard will embrace a profile that is exactly opposite of the current one – one with a softer belly and flatter in the back.

Turns out that’s pretty much what the “dad bod” is, and it’s popular now. The Vox website defines “dad bod” as a male physique that is softly round.

The cynical among us, including me right about now, would argue that “dad bod” is a patriarchal construct – something invented by men to set a standard of male attractiveness best served by a health regimen that includes lots of beer and not much exercise.

I’m waiting for the “mom bod” to catch on. It could make the cover of Vogue and be all over Facebook. Pick me! I’m ready for my selfie.

Beth Dolinar can be reached at cootiej@aol.com.