The 'in' thing

Tis summer now and most days I get to see more flesh than I can shake a dynaband at.
I am amazed, at what I see around me. Women all ages, shapes and sizes in low rise pants and clingy shortie tubes, halters and sphagetti straps.
There was a time when only the most stick figure of figures would dare to wear the bum-huggers-midriff-baring-stitched-with-you-inside outfits, while the rest of mere mortals would look upon them and sigh.
It can only be a rise in the feministic element, the cry "real women have curves"... which leads to the rise in the number of women I see baring their curves. The feminist in me rejoices at increase in the body image of the average girl that makes her get out of the house in such an outfit...
Or is it just the blind following of the "in" God? The cynic in me asks. Has the body image factor really gone up? Is the number of girls that are secretly bulimic and anorexic become any lower? Statistics do not support my theory. Obesity is at an all time high ... the teen models are unhealthily skinnier than ever... Why this masochistic fashion trend then?
On an average the low-slung hip huggers and the clingy tops are far more flattering than the tied at your rib-cage Katherine Hepburn pants which had no shape to speak off... or the careless-stressed sweatshirts which sat on you like a gunny sack and made you look like an out of shape football player.
The aesthetic in me cringes when I see girls in the too tight-translucent-skinny fit shirts exposing a pudgy midriff. Low sluggers are more flattering but how low should we go? A less than 7 inch rise leads to exposure that is only flattering to you if your BMI is less than 15 (or if you are Jessica Simpson).

So do you stay at home if the ‘in’ thing is something that you cannot possibly look good in? Or do you starve yourself to bits to look what the models on the runways and the girls on billboard look like... Oh wait half the population is already attempting this.
What do you fight then to create a sense of style that works for you without making you feel bad about yourself? Can we change what the fashion trendsetter decide is the 'in' thing? Probably not, but we can change how blindly we follow it…
I guess the pendulum has to swing all the way to the other end before it centers again.
Till then, I reserve the right to cringe every time a I see a peep thru g-string cutting fat into unflattering islands and every time a woman bends down to pick something she dropped on the floor.