It has taken roughly a decade, but finally it seems we have woken up, taken a long, hard look around and decided that, yes, you can be too rich and too thin. Mainly too thin. New research published in the Archives of Internal Medicine in America shows that a quarter of slim people have at least two cardiovascular risk factors typically associated with obesity. To be overweight and fit is metabolically healthier than to be skinny and not so fit. Meanwhile, those selfless boffins at Brunel University have been working round the clock to establish the body type most attractive to men, and have hit on the formula: petite, big breasts, long legs — so, more Scarlett Johansson than Keira Knightley. Thin, it would seem, has lost its appeal, and now a new body type — think happy Jennifer, not macrobiotic Jennifer — is coming through.

The truth is, we know full well that superskinny is often not healthy (unless you are a naturally slim teenager) and rarely enticing to the opposite sex. Skinny is getting the boot, not because we have decided Bar Refaeli looks better than Victoria Beckham, but because we are at a watershed moment and find ourselves tired and bored with everything that has kept us amused throughout the Noughties. Body type is up there on the list with gorging on fast fashion, huge handbags, ultra-grooming and competitive yummy mummies because it no longer suits the way we feel. The Wag moment has passed. The Kate Moss posse thing has palled. We are no longer fascinated by the drugs’n’rehab crowd, the BB exhibitionists or the senselessly rich. And the x-ray body is the look that links all of the above.

The return of the better-fed form has been predicted before, of course — most notably when Scarlett first arrived on the scene, in all her softly padded glory — but back then, we weren’t ready to relinquish all the shallowness that goes hand in hand with worship of the shrunken body. Now, the climate is different and a woman who looks healthy and fit inspires a lot more confidence. When your thoughts turn to coping without petrol, the pouting, undernourished classes start to look pitiful, while girls with wide smiles and strong limbs become increasingly attractive. Team GB, weren’t they gorgeous? Even the sort-of-plain ones? Kate Middleton, doesn’t she look increasingly limp and ineffectual? It’s all over for the zeros, because zero world is utterly detached from reality — and we, at long last, are ready to get real again.

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