THIGH GAP – dentrocasa magazine, December 2013

The thigh gap trend that spread among the young in North American infected France in a short space of time (espace entre les cuisses) and is bound to arrive in Italy, where we could name it as the “spazio tra le cosce” (space between the thighs).
This alleged beauty standard provides that, when stood in an upright position and with feet together, the thighs should not touch each other. Indeed, someone could immediately object as this is not a virtue but a physical defect, but obviously fashion does not always come from common sense.
A far more severe consideration comes from the medical world because the “space between the thighs” is essentially an anatomical characteristic that is only partly influenced by body weight. Regardless of these considerations, many teenagers resort to exhausting diets to achieve extreme levels of thinness in an attempt to reach the thigh gap.
As if all this were not enough, the internet is full of rules and suggestions to achieve the goal: young women are advised to take oestrogen because they are predisposed to an enlargement of the pelvis, physical exercises are shown to tone part of the thigh muscles and above all it is suggested to lose weight dangerously.
Hand in hand with this trend, cosmetic surgery has also tried to find less dangerous solutions. The most targeted path involves liposculpture of the inner thighs to remove that layer of adipose tissue that is naturally represented in the upper part of the inner thighs near the groin. This is a simple operation that can be performed under local anaesthesia with hospitalisation of a few hours followed by a course with a compression garment for about ten days. The only attention should be given to patients with particularly fine skin that is poor in collagen and elastic fibres because the retraction of the skin following surgery is a necessary condition for a satisfactory result. Lipolysis mesotherapy and radiofrequency are therapies that involve less effort with a lower level of satisfaction. These combined outpatient techniques produce a visible reduction in adipose mass accompanied by an improvement in skin tone.