Modern research has established a link between abdominal obesity and decreased estrogen, reduced fecundity and increased risk of major diseases.
But "even without the benefit of modern medical knowledge, both British and Asian writers intuited the biological link between health and beauty," say authors, Devendra Singh, Peter Renn and Adrian Singh.
"In spite of variation in the description of beauty, the marker of health and fertility— a small waist — has always been an invariant symbol of feminine beauty."



