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Sure, the runways may still be filled with reed-thin models, but in the curvy corner of the culture, there are some persuasive new players. Take the lavishly illustrated pink coffee-table book Pretty Things: The Last Generation of American Burlesque Queens ($56.50, Harper Collins), by brainy Hollywood scion Liz Goldwyn.

It's a further feather in the headdress of what she calls "neo burlesque," a revival that celebrates a more robust version of womanhood. The same aesthetic can be seen in the 2007 Fenomenal Calendar, created by top plus-sized models Liis Windischmann and Diane Pellini. It features the pair and two other models in retro pin-up-style poses, and shows that big can be not only beautiful, but also damn sexy.

The politics of sexy have been an enduring subject of fascination for Goldwyn, whose grandfather was movie mogul Samuel. Her interest, which inspired a documentary of the same name in 2005, started with two vintage burlesque costumes she discovered in New York.

"The interior of the costumes was as intricate as the interior of couture," she says on the phone from New York during a book-tour stop. "What I started out wanting to know was about the costumes; what I ended up learning about was the really complex history behind what seems to be glamorous on the surface. A dress can tell you about the social, moral and political history of a culture."

And as part of her bachelor of arts in photography, she tried on the ensembles and took a number of self-portraits. "I just looked like a little girl playing dress-up," Goldwyn says.

Wearing the costumes just made her more curious about the women who wore them for up to four shows a day in the first half of the 20th century, such as Betty Rowland, Zorita, Anita Arden and June St. Clair -- the "Platinum Princess."

Many of the ensembles, she says, had up to 10 pieces to be removed during a striptease -- and this was pre-Velcro, don't forget. They had to be durable, beautifully lined and, above all, entrancing to both men and women in the audience.

And yet many of her subjects were unaware of their effects on such mainstream cultural phenomena as Bob Fosse's choreography or Jean Paul Gaultier's designs for Madonna. "Many wanted to forget it -- they were never celebrated by polite society or legitimized by history books or the legitimate entertainment industry," Goldwyn says.

Windischmann and Pellini's calendar project relies heavily on such burlesque iconography as peekaboo chinoiserie, corsetry and the occasional flash of a stay-up stocking. (It's $14.99 through http://www.fenomenalcalendar.com.)

"We're paying tribute to an era when voluptuous women were seen in a positive light," says Windischmann, who met Pellini on a modelling gig in Miami. "In the forties and fifties, women were revered for their curves. They were feminine -- that's been lost."

Pellini says that although 65 per cent of the North American female population is a size 12 or larger, "nobody wants us too out there, too sensual and sexy."

That's changing, Goldwyn says. "There is a definite cultural movement worldwide among men and women of all generations wanting to examine that side of themselves, wanting to get in touch with their sexuality.

"I was schooled and raised in the wake of women's lib -- my mother is a big women's libber -- to downplay my sexuality in order to be taken seriously. There's something to be gained by being in touch with your sexuality."