Waist

Item: Lean Cuisine Zesty Selection! What you get: 1 entree Cost: About $3.75 Nutritional content: Roasted Garlic Chicken - 220 calories, 6 grams fat, 2 grams saturated fat, 690 milligrams sodium, 26 grams carbohydrate, 4 grams sugars; Teriyaki Chicken - 320 calories, 3.5 grams fat, 1.5 grams saturated fat, 690 milligrams sodium, 51 grams carbohydrate, 11 grams sugars Preparation time: 5 to 8 minutes in microwave, 20 to 23 minutes in oven Review: I...

It all started when John McCalla was invited to a swing dance. Next thing you know, he's a zoot-suit riot of color and action and outrageous aerials. It's taken only four years for McCalla to become one of the most accomplished and lauded Lindy Hoppers in the region. He's such a fast learner that he's shut down much of his home construction business to teach the vintage dance in halls around the Washington and Baltimore region -- and in his New Windsor living room -- through Swing Dance University.

WHENEVER I come across a photo of myself from the 1970s, I get the urge to incinerate it.It was the worst decade for fashion in the history of mankind, but I did my utmost to wear clothes in style then. I owned a leisure suit, multicolored "fly" shirts and a pair or two of bell-bottom pants -- outfits crowned by an Afro hairstyle.Perhaps I shouldn't disparage the Afro. For one thing, it was a powerful statement of heritage. Second, it had a fringe benefit for an African-American teen-age boy: It attracted attention from pretty African-American teen-age girls who welcomed the chance to twist the locks into cornrows, before Allen Iverson was even born.

In Austria, there are three basic food groups -- pastry, beer and sausage. And with the exception of one innkeeper, we found no locals we could categorize as "obese." So my personal goal for this year's ski trip was full cultural participation.I wanted to enjoy a different pastry and a local beer every day without gaining any weight. (Sausage is not my thing.)Hundreds of years of brewing and baking experience have produced rich, full-bodied beer, and full-flavored, high-fat pastry. There is no "light."

The other day I had an out-of-time experience. All I did was try on a pair of jeans at the Gap in Towson Town Center -- but when I looked in the mirror, it was my '70s self staring back out at me.The cause was the cut. I had been there, done that cut of pants: the waist below the natural waist, the butt and thighs tight, and the legs flaring slightly a little below the knees. It was the cut for pants about 25 years ago, and it's the cut for pants now.It looked good on me, but I wasn't sure it looked right -- they're not always the same thing.

I am 32 and have a job as a salesman with a software company. My problem is my girlfriend. She nags me constantly about the way I dress.She is ambitious for me and says I'll never be promoted because I dress too conservatively. She says there's a revolution going on in menswear and I should get with it.I can't imagine facing clients without a tie. Don't I need a suit for my clients to take me seriously?Your girlfriend is right, at least about the revolution going on in menswear.For advice I turned to David Chu, the designer at the New York menswear company Nautica.

Q: I've been making an effort to improve the way I look. All the books I've read tell me to highlight my positive features and downplay my negatives.The problem I'm having is that my best and worst features are right next to each other. I'm short-waisted but have a totally flat stomach. I want to play up my flat tummy and at the same time draw attention away from my short waist.A: The answer is to wear one of the season's new suits. They come with a short jacket and leanly cut pants and skirts.

The latest fashion innovation is one of the oldest -- and most despised. Corsets, girdles and other garments designed to nip waists, tuck tummies and tighten thighs are shaping up as one of the biggest influences on current fashion.Body shapers have been around for not just centuries, but eons. Historians say women in ancient Crete had iron bands soldered around their midsections to achieve the "ideal" 12-inch waist.Now garments designed to squeeze, push and plump women's malleable parts to new dimensions of "perfection" are top news again in magazines, in lingerie departments and on feminists' hit lists.

Q: I am a baby boomer, born with the bumpiest, knobbiest knees on the block. For years I've hidden them under pants, waiting for longer skirts to come back. I don't mean ankle-length florals. I mean the simple below-the-knee suit skirts that most women of my generation consider dowdy.Have longer skirts come back? Are we at last going to see women dressing as conservatively as men?A: At some designer shows, skirt lengths took a definite plunge toward the knee. But it's not a "conservative" look.

Talk about impulse buying: The weather this past week may have had you wishing you could trade in your car for a cross between a jeep and a tank.And if a salesman for AM General Corp. had been chugging up your icy street in a brand new Hummer, there's no doubt about it: You would have been tempted to sign the dotted line on the spot.Hummer is the rugged -- its big knobby tires come up to your waist -- civilian version of the all-terrain Humvee that AM General produces for the military.It's not a thing of beauty.