Seems to have worked to a great extent. I remember the forgettable Jennifer Anniston a few years ago was curvy... just recently, at some premiere, she looked like she'd been through a course of chemotherapy. All to get the "parts" in the movies.
Actually, blame Ballanchine for starting this. He was a choreographer for ballet dancers in NYC in the sixties and seventies, and decreed the tall dancer. Before, ballet dancers were short with the regular feminine shape, though never voluptuous. Ballanchine wanted them tall. BUT--the male dancers had to lift all that heavy bone, and they didn't get any taller or stronger! The answer was to force the giraffes to stay as skeletal as possible so the poor boys could still lift them. This started an entire fashion in the dancers' world, which then carried over into fashion and theatre. And it is the movies that defines what is beautiful.
Can you, or anyone here, remember Belinda Carlisle when she was with the Go-Gos? A much different look than when she launched her solo career... and a better one, to my mind.