"Self" magazine meets Jung: America's collective jeans get a bit tighter in the hips

Bush was reelected, Arafat was laid to rest...and somehow we were all missing the real news story, which is that mannequins have bigger asses than they used to.

I suppose the only real news-like tidbit in the piece in the Style section is that women (presumably in the US) now weigh on average 155 pounds, which is apparently more than they (we?) used to, and that this collective weight has been gained mostly in their (our?) collective hips. I've heard of collective unconscious, but collective weight gain, not to mention collective problem areas? "Self" magazine meets Jung, or something...But this is really where statistics start to be problematic. Sure, we all want to know if being against gay marriage was really what won Bush the election...but do we absolutely need to know that not only are the nation's women fatter, but where on women's bodies this excess weight was most likely to be distributed?