Fashion focuses eyes on women's chests.

Upper chests, that is. It's all about the clavicle, the clavicle that you've etched out through hardcore exercise and stringent dieting.



Because what could be sexier that a woman who is shockingly, graphically demonstrating how thoroughly she has excluded all pleasure from her life?

Toned shoppers who want to show off their self-discipline in the face of dessert are choosing dresses with a low, but not plunging neckline, a look that is transforming the area above the breasts into an unlikely new subject for women to obsess over....

Why the new emphasis on a body part most women — and more men — have paid little attention to in the past? Credit a swing of the fashion pendulum, and a malaise over “Girls Gone Wild” style.

Yes, we're bored with breasts now. Haven't you heard? We've had enough of "Girls Gone Wild." We want "Girls Gone Abstemious."

[The clavicle is] an area whose prominence is unlikely to be enhanced surgically (at least for now).

Come on, you slacker plastic surgeons. Get on this, now. Where are my clavicle implants? Figure out how to add bony-looking bumps all over the body. You've been limiting yourself to cheekbones and chins for too long.

This region has been emphasized by the skinny celebrity acolytes of the stylist Rachel Zoe, including Nicole Richie and Keira Knightley. Their ubiquitous deep V-neck tops show off sometimes skeletal frames, and other actresses have taken their cue and sized down as well, to the point that the Internet teems with fashion and celebrity bloggers and message board posters carping about protruding A-list clavicles.

Talk about me, blog about me, say what you like but talk about me. How frighteningly must I cause my bones to protrude to get you to talk about me? Blog about me, dammit!

Courtney E. Martin, the author of “Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters: The Frightening New Normalcy of Hating Your Body” (Free Press, 2007), said that many of the girls and women she interviewed for her book “talked about how far their collarbone stuck out” with pride, as an indicator of their skinniness.

Ms. Martin contends that a generation of young women raised after Title IX and the women’s movement pursue slender figures with the same rigor as they pursue admission to an Ivy League university.

Title IX?! See what happens when you make women competitive? They're just choosing their sport, the extreme sport of thinning.

When Jessica Braff, who works at an advertising agency in New York, lost 15 pounds in her freshmen year of college, the first thing she noticed was that her clavicles were more pronounced.

“I loved it,” she said. She continues to wear clothes that show off her collarbones, which she calls the “easiest and least controversial expression of a kind of sex appeal.”

Yes, it's a kind of sex appeal. The kind that says there is not the slightest thing luscious or sybaritic about me.

On the pro-clavicle side, the most interesting voice is Consuelo Castiglioni, a fashion designer:

[Her] label, Marni, incorporates chest-baring necklines into tops and dresses. The brand has long been a favorite of women seeking clothing that isn’t expressly made to attract men, including skirts with bustles and tops that flare out to obscure any semblance of a waist.

“I think it is clear from my designs that deep cleavages, tight silhouettes, visible tummies or behinds are not part of my aesthetic,” Ms. Castiglioni said in an e-mail message. “What I try to express is elegance and femininity and a more cerebral, hidden sensuality.”

Don't you see? It's intellectual.