WAIF

'Waif' literally means a homeless, forsaken or orphaned child, similar to a ragamuffin or urchin. In recent popular culture, the term has been used to described an almost unhealthily thin person, usually a woman. The 'waif look' was first used to describe the 1960s model Twiggy, who had large round eyes and a very thin body. The "gamine" look of the 1950s, associated with actresses like Audrey Hepburn, Leslie Caron and Jean Seberg, was, to some extent, a precursor.
The term "waif" was seemingly ubiquitous in the 1990s, with heroin chic fashion and models like Kate Moss and Jaime King on the runways and in advertisements. Actresses like ''Ally McBeal'' star Calista Flockhart, Winona Ryder and singer Celine Dion have all been pinned with the term.
Although the heroin chic look has gone out of fashion, it is still apparently popular in Hollywood. For example, Wonderbra model Eva Herzigova has dealt with negative criticism over her new waif-like figure. Sue Carroll wrote:

Contents

Today

Botany

In literature

External links

Today

In 2006, Madrid's fashion week turned away underweight models, based on their body mass index or BMI, after protests that eating disorders develop among young girls and women trying to copy their rail-thin looks.
Lily Cole is one such model, 5"10 and around 8 stone (~ 110lb, ~50 kg). She has been mauled by some critics, called 'freakishly skinny' by a diet expert on a Living TV documentary, Extreme:Skinny Celebrities 2.
The Waif is also a character found in Jonathan Lethem's story ''K for Fake'' from a collections of stories, ''Kafka Americana''

Botany

In botany, a waif is an unusual species found in the wild that is alien and either a) reproduces unsuccessfully without human intervention, or b) only persists a few generations and disappears. The plant officially never gets "naturalized" in the wild.

In literature

A waif in The Edge Chronicles is a thin and rather weak creature who resides in the deepwoods. It can hear many sounds that other beings can not.
A lyric in the Steely Dan song 'Janie Runaway' describes the title character as being the "wonderwaif of Gramercy Park."

External links

★ Back in the '90s

★ Tonight: Singer lashes out at the "waifs of Hollywood"