The least flattering cut tends to be drawstring look with straight or flared hem. While many women choose this style for comfort, it creates a rectangular block of fabric from waist to hem, visually adding pounds and subtracting height. If you are petite, heavy, or have thick ankles, this style will magnify all of these things.

STYLE OF HEM

The most flattering hem for most women is plain and tapered. The least flattering is flared with a cuff. The former will elongate, latter will shorten and widen.

If you're a bit heavy and feel that a tapered hem makes your hips or upper thighs look bigger, try a straight leg style instead. Do NOT opt for a flared hem to try to offset your hips - unless you want to look same size from hips to hem.

SHOES

For years, ballerina flat was shoe of choice to wear with cropped pants. In recent years, high heels, sandals, slides, and flip-flops have found their way on to team as well.

Your best shoe choices create an unbroken line from hem to toe with minimal material that compliments -- rather than competes with - your pants. Shoes that are same color as pants, white, or flesh-colored are all good choices.

Avoid chunky, heavy shoes, or shoes that compete with your hem. All of these will call attention to your feet, chop you up visually, and make you look shorter.

Cropped pants are a great warm weather alternative to shorts for those chilly nights, dressy casual occasions, or for women who just hate to bare their legs in shorts. They look great on women of many heights, sizes, and ages, provided they're chosen with care.

If you look for styles that flatter your figure and elongate your body, you'll look great AND stylish. So don't necessarily cross these off your list. Just take a little time to find looks that work best for you.

Another important factor in growing emphasis on male primogeniture was forming of political alliances through marriages. When arranged marriages became increasingly important as a tool in political formation of Europe, high social status by birth (and benefits it brought along) was considered a powerful assset. But many noblewomen were not passive spectators, though emphasis on male line of descent meant that their financial and political activities of more and more depended on their male relatives: husband, father, sons, brothers. In many cases, however, noblewoman was not completely subsumed in families of her male relatives. There is evidence that noblewomen continued to use seals, surnames and titles that was theirs by right of birth even after getting married.

In my own family tree I have found several examples of importance of role of noblewomen. In some cases on eof my ancestors married a lady from another important noble family, and this was recorded as a significant financial and political alliance. In other cases a lady from our family had a successful career of her own (e.g. as Abbess of a convent). In many cases coat-of-arms of a noblewoman who married into our family was recorded and quartered in arms of that branch of family.