Word: zaftig
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Amber soon finds she has a zaftig rival: Tracy Turnblad (Ricki Lake), who is plump, perky and, pound for bouffanted pound, the snappiest Caucasian dancer in town. The girl has that je ne sais quoi called Star Quality. Soon Tracy is outshining Amber on TV, modeling dresses for a full-figure salon called the Hefty Hideaway and causing a rumpus by insisting that black teenagers be allowed to dance along with whites on Corny's show...
...usually more, meaning that attention has long focused on the American consumer who wears size 14 (roughly 5 ft. 4 in., 150 lbs.) and under. Now U.S. manufacturers and retailers are beginning to discover that more can be more too. They are taking increasingly solicitous aim at a zaftig audience that wants to look good in anything from size 16 (usually about 160 lbs.) to, well, a lot more than that. Along the way, these merchandisers are reaping impressive profits by catering more assiduously to a roughly $10 billion sector of the fashion market. Says Nancye Radmin, founder...
There are poetic conventions and cliches and codes in composing a personal ad. One specifies DWF (divorced white female), SBM (single black male), GWM (gay white male) and so on, to describe marital status, race, sex. Readers should understand the euphemisms. "Zaftig" or "Rubenesque," for example, usually means fat. "Unpretentious" is liable to mean boring. "Sensuous" means the party likes...
...Battlin' Billy Martin; the guest timekeeper, manipulating a tiny silver bell that might have come from King Farouk's dinner table, is Liberace. Pop Thrush Cyndi Lauper is "managing" Wendi Richter ("150 pounds of twisted steel and sex appeal") as she attempts to regain her W.W.F. championship belt from zaftig Leilani Kai, managed by former longtime (28 years) women's champ, the Fabulous Moolah. And in the main event, teaming with Hulk Hogan against the preening Paul ("Mr. Wonderful") Orndorff and the kilted, malefic Rowdy Roddy Piper, is the Hulk's Rocky III co-star...
...selling in the Sears catalog starts with the cover. In 1897 it showed a zaftig young woman with a cornucopia, out of which were flowing a piano, a stove, a sewing machine and other household objects. In 1927 Norman Rockwell did one of his Americana paintings for the cover. In 1966 an 18-year-old model named Cheryl Tiegs captured the spirit of American teenagers. This year she not only is on the cover, but she also has her own line of clothes inside. -By Alexander L. Taylor...