non-bookish terms for "well-endowed," etc.

[Alina Israeli]

Slivkin's comment not withstanding,

>I do not know about the other Slavic cultures, but in Russian culture which
>is still based on literature the most attractive part of femail body is
>"piatka".

culturally, not individually (I mean male-heterosexually, for which it is
probably the same three body parts I alluded to with varying individual
preference), I think it is "tonkaja talija" that is the main element of
feminine body for the Russian culture (143 000 on lib.ru). "Uzkaja talija"
and "osinaja talija" also qualify. Otherwise the woman must be "v tele". If
one doesn't jive with the other, well, that's the Eurasian push and pull
(and I am not attempting to open another can of worms).

And here I must relate an anectode. When I was studying Polish in my youth,
in one of the textbooks made in Poland with a record to go with it with all
sorts of nice dialogues, there was one dialogue between a husband and wife
(I think Janek and Agata), and he was late or something and as an apology
he said that he was watching umbrellas (oglandam parasolki, if I remember
it correctly), and she replied, no you are watching girls because they have
"bardzo zgrabne nogi" (or maybe simply zgrabne nogi). I cannot recall any
language textbook (and I studied a few) where women's legs would be part of
elementary language course. In Italian only at the third year level did we
encounter the pappagallismo italiano. Food for thought.

As for "pjatka", I think men were more or less fed up with women's
shoulders in Pushkin's time and were fantasizing about all the hidden body
parts (just remember "Car' Nikita"). Somewhere else he wrote something
about "edva najdetsja para strojnyx nog" or something like that, not that
legs were on display like the shoulders, mini-skirts appeared 130 years
later. As far as I remember Anatole Kuragin used to kiss the shoulders of
his sister. Of course it could mean incest, but also that shoulders were
like cheeks, always uncovered.


__________________________
 Alina Israeli
 LFS, American University
 4400 Mass. Ave., NW
 Washington, DC 20016

 phone:    (202) 885-2387
 fax:      (202) 885-1076 

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