Can you change your genetic size?

I was intrigued to read yesterday in the Observer of a machine called the Hybrid Body Reformer invented by personal trainer to the stars Tracy Anderson. The article mentions Anderson's '10-year quest for a method that would convert 'any person from any genetic structure into this teeny-tiny dancer body.''

What she came up with was a workout machine that crosses pilates with aerobics - you use pulleys to do aerobic dance movements that encourage the body to exercise muscles which are weak - for instance, a pear shaped woman may have weak quads, and the machine will focus on tightening them up. Instead of doing repetitions with weights, she apparantly gets clients like Madonna and Gwyneth Paltrow to rotate their weights to hit the muscles afresh from different angles.

She told the Daily Mail last year: 'Instead of over-using the major muscles, I focus on the muscles around them. When the accessory muscles are properly developed, they pull in the larger ones, creating a tinier body structure. In this way you can reshape your body.'

Interesting, her repeated use of the word 'tiny'. There is, it seems, no escape anymore from the need to be 'tiny'. It's a hot word, a word that makes women - including me - sit up and notice. Your genetic inheritance, your natural body size, is supposed to be modified in today's world, whether by cosmetic surgery, starvation diets or workouts. Presumably the change brought about by this machine is temporary and letting the exercise go would result in falling back into your old, natural size - so you need to do constant upkeep to stay this tiny.

I honestly don't see what is so attractive about being a very small size unless it is someone's natural size, in which case you can almost always tell. To me it is obvious when somebody is at a lower weight than is natural for them, as much as it is obvious when someone is plump. They usually look rather strained and hollow-cheeked. Why does Hollywood think this look is good? In Bollywood, the stars are truly gorgeous by comparison - lusciously and sexily curvy, neither skinny nor plump but just natural-looking. They have breasts and bottoms and hips, unlike, to name a few, Keira Knightly or Paris Hilton. What is it about the west that has made tininess so essential? Is it our wealth, the amount of food we have on offer, that makes thinness the ultimate moral discipline, just as in the 19th century, not wearing a corset was seen as morally and sexually 'loose'?