Abstract
The middle-aged body differs from the youthful body and has its own body type due to the considerable difference in body structure by age. However, most ready-made clothes for middle-aged women are designed according to the youthful body types. They are looking for the better fitness of the ready-made clothes. Thus clothing fitness is strongly required for a middle-aged women. The purpose of this study is to analyze the basic characteristics of middle-aged women's body types and to compare the real somatotype and cognitive somatotype. The subjects are 238 middle-aged women between 35 and 49 years old living in Daegu. Data are collected through anthropometric measurement and questionnaire on somatotype from September to October 2004. The results are as follows: 1. Using factor analysis, cluster analysis is carried out and the subjects of this research are classified into 4 groups. 2. Middle-aged women usually are not satisfied with their body. Particularly, they show the lowest satisfaction measurement about their abdominal girth, weight, and overall body-shape in total 16 categories. 3. As a result of body cathexis for each part, women are usually not satisfied with their body parts for themselves, regardless of real somatotype. 4. As I divide middle-aged women's somatotype by Rohrer index into the groups of three body-types, then examine real somatotype and cognitive somatotype, I get the following result : The slimmer their bodies are, the more satisfied middle-aged women we. Besides, 40.3% of middle-aged women have an incorrect and distorted understanding of their somatotype. 5. As a result of this research for ideal state of body-size, the women shows their Ideal sizes as follow: 160.55cm for ideal height, 88.73cm for ideal bust girth, 71.14cm for ideal waist girth, 90.03cm for ideal hip girth, and 53kg for ideal weight.
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