ABSTRACT
The architecture of both men's and women's bodies is largely hammered into place by genetics. In several important ways, changes in the body's shape over the years have affected the lives of women: women have become taller and heavier; they have overcome their traditional inequality in access to food. The architecture of the body turns out to have something of a history—not quite the same one as previous historian have thought, who overlooked rickets and concentrated instead upon the relatively unimportant corset. The later women begin menstruating, the smaller they will probably be; the earlier the onset of puberty, the larger their ultimate body size. The "lacing in" of women's garments began around the eleventh or the twelfth century, with the discovery of body "form" among aristocratic women. In Classical Greece and Rome, and during the middle Ages, women seem to have started menstruating at about thirteen or fourteen.
