The song Chantilly Lace (1958) by the Big Bopper (Jiles Perry Richardson Jr. (1930-1959)) contains the phrase:
Every time I hear this song, I remember an anecdote told by an old professor. He claimed that the ‘wiggle’ in women’s walks was due to a difference in timing of pelvic and hip muscle contraction by comparison with that in males. It was a genuine physiological phenomenon.
There was at that time a girl on campus who was studying biochemistry. A particular skirt she sometimes wore had a very distinctive way of flicking as she walked. (I couldn’t help noticing this and thinking of every time of what our old prof. had said.) Indeed, the ‘wiggle’ seems to be a signal denoting (or ‘advertising’, as some put it) one’s sex and so is an example of sexual dimorphism.
An extension of this comes in another anecdote. One that I hear regarding Marilyn Monroe (1926-1962). A female student once told me that Marilyn Monroe deliberately had the heels of one shoe made shorter than the other. Here we are specifically talking about stiletto heels. The difference in heel length results in different leg lengths. (Whether she consistently had the left or the right heel shortened probably doesn’t really matter.) This inevitably leads to exaggerated hip movements when walking by way of compensation.
NB
The song Chantilly Lace was covered by Jerry Lee Lewis (1935-2022) in 1972 and has now come to be more often associated with him than with the Big Bopper.
You can watch the Big Bopper sing the song here.
