Well, well!  I've put my arms around four waists just like these. There was  Fifine, my first love; Cocotte, that bitch of a Cocotte; big Mimi; and my wife up there in the corner. 

Honoré Daumier was born into a family of artisans in the year 1808.  He grew up a city dweller, strolling the streets of Paris.  He obtained professional training in the field of lithography, and then worked for newspapers making satirical prints. 

This lithograph, from the set Emotions Parisiennes, was published in1840, and contains an image of what Daumier might have said was a typical man ,at least in his lifetime.  The man is roaming the streets of Paris, looking at everything that he sees. Suddenly, these four corsets catch his eye, and he begins to reminisce on his past.  He thinks about all of the women he has known, and their different sizes. He begins to realize how much older he has gotten, and how women, in his experiences, have gotten bigger as they have aged. In the Emotions Parisiennes Daumier treats common Parisian events as satire, and this image successfully makes fun of both the women and men of his time.