The half smile, the president of the Show of loan-with-carrying climbs on scene: "Mesdames, you grew bigger!" launch it in inaugural cry of the press conference on new measurements of the French organized yesterday to the Door from Versailles, Paris. As for the men, it in concerning preoccupation with a parity continues, "they are not so large only that" .

With these words makes continuation a series of projections of images of human bodies "reconstituted thanks to the imagery 3d" to put to you at once at the diet. Patrick Tap, person in charge for the national campaign of measurement carried out by the French Institute of the textile and clothing (IFTH) inserts the nail: "the French grew and grew bigger. But they grew bigger than grown more."

Changes. During two years, from April 2003 at April 2005, 11 562 old people from 5 to 70 years "were scannées" in special cabins allowing the taking into account of the total silhouette (85 points of measurement). First report compared to the preceding campaign, conducted in 1970: the adult Frenchwoman "average" grew of 2,1 cm and grew bigger of 1,8 kg (it measures 162,5 centimetres today and weighs 62,4 kg). The average man, it, grew of 5,5 cm and grew bigger of 5,4 kg in trente-six years. It measures 175,6 cm for 77,4 kg.

The difficulty, it is that these new kilos are not distributed inevitably in the desired way. If the chest of the Frenchwomen increased finally little ( "one remains on 90 B average", regrets Patrick Robinet), their belly, it, opened out. The women took 6,5 cm of waist measurement in trente-six years. "And compared to the woman of the beginning of the Sixties, it is straightforwardly 14 cm of waist measurement in today" , insists treacherously the person in charge for the countryside. At the men, one observes the same "point of anchoring" : "Of course, the hands and the feet are broader, the thicker arms and legs, but it is especially the belly which grows bigger." According to the results, 26 % of the adult population are in overweight and 8,3 % in situation of obesity.

One evokes the food increasingly richer, the reduction in the heavy physical tasks, in particular in the agricultural work, which tended "to pack" the body. The study reveals various "types" of morphology which evolve/move differently. There still striking the injustice. "the small ones remain small and the large ones are increasingly large" , summarizes Patrick Robinet.

There is fortunately a source of consolation: observation of the international statistics. The French are, without surprise, plus strapping men that the Japanese or Chinese (10 kg more than the Japanese woman and 15 kg more than the Japanese man), but on the other hand lighter than the English (3 kg less for the woman and 2 for the man), the Belgians and the Swedes. The Belgian woman weighs 8 kg more than the French woman (and 2 cm more measure). The Dutchmen are the champions of the fine and slim breadth: 170 cm for 65 kg among women, 182 cm and 76 kg at the men.

Even in France, one notes differences according to areas'. The women are taller in the North-East and stronger in South-east. The men are larger and more corpulent in the North-East.

For the industrialists, the consequences are significant, and the sectors concerned many (to read opposite). The textile, logically, is the first interested one. Today, a woman on five fact of the 40, the most widespread size. More than one third gets dressed into 40 or 42, and less than 20 % into 38 or 36. "One must expect, in the months to come, with a redefinition of the scale to the rise and with a homogenisation of the sizes" , Patrick Robinet promises.

To cut large. Concretely, the people who are located "between two sizes" should be able soon to slip into that of the lower part. And one should also, theoretically, cease passing from the 38 to the 42 by changing shop simply. Provided that the marks give up temptation to flatter our large ego in "cutting". Not gained, when it is known that the meetings of measure to the new cabin 3d also showed "the shift between the real image of the body and that which one is done in his head" . A larger head besides at the woman than at the man, reveals the study.