Mae West

Curvy Mae West Honored for All Time

Notoriously famous but well-loved, plus size Mae West has certainly established her place in history not just by her memorable quips and double entendres, but also for revolutionizing sexuality and lending her name to some of the most significant items in modern life.

During World War II, Allied soldiers called their inflatable life jackets "Mae Wests," most probably a rhyming slang for life-vests, but definitely due to its resemblance to her curvaceous torso. Similarly, “Mae West” is a term used to describe a parachute malfunction, where the shape of the canopy becomes distorted and looks like a large brassiere, again in reference to the full-figured celebrity’s upper body proportions. And there is such a thing as the Mae West Lips Sofa, a creation by artist Salvador Dali for British poet Edward James, during the surrealist movement in 1938.