The apparel industry has recently been recognizing the important target market of middle-aged women. The aim of this study was to examine the anthropometric characteristics of US women of 46 to 65 years of age and identify distinctive body shape characteristics of US middle-aged women. A total of 1915 middle-aged women whose ages ranged from 46 to 65 were selected from the SizeUSA database. The age range was divided into two groups: 46-55 and 56-65. Twenty-four body measurements important for apparel development were chosen. Four factors—Girth Factor, Height Factor, Hip Drop Factor, and Bust Drop Factor—accounted for the US middle-aged women’s body measurements. The body shapes were classified into four body shapes, which were Y-Shape in the overweight range, S-Shape in the overweight range, H-Shape in the overweight range, and the A-Shape in obese range. H-Shape, which was the least-defined waist in relation to the bust and hips with a short height, existed more in older middle-aged women than in younger middle-aged women. Y-Shape, S-Shape, and A-Shape existed more in the group of younger middle-aged women than in the group of older middle-aged women. In addition, compared with the younger middle-aged women, older middle-aged women had narrower shoulders, a larger waist, thinner legs, and a longer distance between side neck to bust point. The findings from the current study may be applied in the apparel industry for developing clothing sizing systems for US middle-aged women.

In general, it is fact that most educational institutions have lots of problems about shift of education facility and equipment because of insufficient budget. However, most high school girls live a lot of period in the school and most of them wear student uniform. Thus, it is necessary that educational environment has to be improved by actual body size of high school girls. The main objective of this study is to provide numerical guideline for the improvement of educational environment about high school girls (17~19 years) through comparison and analysis on physical standard of nation (report published in 1997). The sample for this work chosen from data which were collected and measured by Size Korea during two years (2003~2004). In order to analyze feature of the somatotype of high school girls, analysis was performed about 734 subjects on 25 body parts such as height (7 parts), width (4 parts), thickness (4 parts), circumference (5 parts), length (4 parts) and body weight. For the specific comparison on somatotype, Rohrer index and Mollison's comparison graph were used. The result of this study can be utilized in various fields such as design of classroom, student uniforms, facilities and equipments for education, etc.

The purpose of this paper it to investigate the differences in prevalence of obesity and body fat distribution on the variances of age. Height, weight, skinfold thickness and girth circumference on about 422 women residing in Cheju, Korea were surveyed. The results of analysis of the survey are as follows : 1) All the antropometric measurements except height were shown to increase with age. Weight is at its highest level between the age of 50-59. The measurement of skinfold thickness and girth circumference between the ages of 20-39 of the female subjects are significantly higher than the above 40's. However, there is no significant difference among the middle aged women. 2) Physical indices tend to increase according to age. Both BMI and RBW of women in their 50's are at their highest values, however, the index values of the women in their 60's decreased slightly (p<0.05). On the contrary, there is no significant difference in the percentage of body fat and total body fat content among the middle aged women surveyed. 3) According to this survey, 15.6% of the 422 subjects are assessed as being obese ; more specifically 4.4% of women in their 20's, 12.6% in 30's, 25.6% in 40's, 22.5% in 50's and 17.3% in 60's. 4) 39.4% among obese women proved to be upper body type women. Because the frequency of upper body type women became higher as the obese women aged, there is possibility that the pattern of fat distribution can change. 5) Weight is the most highly correlated with BMI(r=0.91), whereas weight as correlated with RBW, percentage of BF and WHR are 0.8, 0.66 and 0.44 respectfully. The conclusion of this survey is that it is better to estimate the value of total body fat and percentage of body fat than the value of BMI in the analysis of prevalence of obesity and its related factors of middle aged women.