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Captain America Continued...
This illusion is attributed to the
19th Century German physicist and
physician, Herman von Helmholtz
(1821 – 1894). Helmholtz gave out
fashion tips to 19th Century women
affirming that horizontal stripes
made women look taller. How this
fashion tip became reversed in the 20th Century is a
mystery.
In 2008, Dr. Peter Thompson, a psychologist and
expert in visual perception at the University of York,
tested the optical illusion. He concluded, “Horizontal
stripes don’t make you look fatter.”
Although he only tested a sample of 20 people, he
discovered that his subjects, when looking at photographs
of two women of equal size, tended to say the
one wearing horizontal stripes, rather than vertical,
were slimmer.
Pause for a moment before you rush out to buy
horizontal striped t-shirts or begin knitting those horizontal
striped mini-skein stash-busting patterns. In
2012, to confuse matters more, information contradicting
the earlier findings was published.
Val Waltham, an amateur scientist, conducted her
own research and concluded that horizontal stripes
do make a person appear fatter.
Her research won her the BBC’s Amateur Scientist
of the Year Award. The judges commented, “A lovely
idea which was well executed, had clear results, and
leads on to further research. You can’t ask more from a
science experiment.”
The crux of Waltham’s theory is that Helmholtz and
Thompson used 2D images in their research rather
than 3D images. When 3D images (or real-life models)
were used, the viewers in Waltham’s research tended
to think horizontal stripes made the model look fatter.
Sadly, we’re no nearer to a definitive answer as to
which stripes make a person look fatter or slimmer.
There are too many variables which seemingly
have not been considered, amongst them:
• The placement of the black vs white stripes.
• Could the width of the stripes skew the results?
Pinstripes vs thick stripes?
• What happens if the stripes aren’t all uniform in
width?
• Does having the white vertical stripes on the outside
of the silhouette look different to having the
black stripes on the outside?
• What if the colors are changed?
• What if the garment has positive
ease and drapes rather than negative
ease and fitted?
To my eye, horizontal stripes seem to
appear straighter as they go around a
body than vertical stripes which seem to
accentuate the body’s shape and curve in and around
it. If you look at the image of Obelix, although a drawing,
you can see those stripes are not straight lines.
But is research into this even needed? And which
research should you believe? The small sample of 20,
or the slightly condescending “lovely idea?” Well,
frankly, none of them. Wear the designs you want to
wear. If you follow Waltham’s research, you will look
slimmer in real life but fatter in photos, and Thompson’s
research suggests the opposite. I’m afraid, one
way or another, your fat is going to make you look fat.
If in doubt, wear black.
As for my Captain America sweater. I have decided
to split the red and white vertical striped midriff section
from the original top. I’m going to turn the two
elements into two different sweaters. I’ll continue to
crochet the bottom of the blue and white sweater in
the same blue and white pattern throughout.
Meanwhile, I’ll wear the red and white striped midriff
as a cowl, for now. Eventually, I’ll attach a new Captain
America bottom-up upper chest to it, using just
blue and incorporating the 5-pointed white star.
Captain America might not be a fat character, but
he isn’t a British character either, so I shall wear it anyway,
because who is going to stop me? The Red Skull?
Hydra? The “Knutters?” Do your worst vile villains!
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2008/sep/12/slimming.stripes#:~:text=Scientists%20have%20discovered%20that%20the,a%20less%20than%20perfect%20physique.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science-news/9336938/Horizontal-stripes-really-do-make-you-look-fat.html
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