Americans keep gaining weight but are less and less (it seems) tolerant of overweight, especially when it comes to what’s considered beautiful.
I think Marilyn Monroe would be considered a fat cow, now.
Is this a function of a health-conscious society? A media driven society? An impossibly shallow society? All three?
Or maybe you disagree that we are getting both fatter AND meaner about it.
Julie
Well, I can’t speak for “we”, as in, all of America. Only for myself. I, myself, have always been fat. I’m in the process of slimming down now, but I will certainly never be what the media considers “suitably thin”. I don’t think I’m mean about realistically built actresses in movies and on TV. In fact, it often bothers me that if there happens to be an overweight person on the show, it’s because something about the plot requires one. In other words, large people in the media can almost never be just people who happen to be large. An issue has to be made about their size. And, irritatingly enough, the rule often applies only to women, not to men. On the TV show King of Queens, you have a large man, married to a slim and beautiful wife. On the show NYPD Blue you have a large man (Andy), about to marry a slim and beautiful woman. I’m certainly not saying this is wrong. What is wrong is that the producers of these shows would never consider portraying a large woman marrying a hunky-looking guy!
Julie, it’s always been my perception that the people who control the media tell us what’s acceptable, not the other way around. I don’t think the stars are getting skinnier because the American population wants it that way, just that the people pulling the strings in Hollywood think we want it that way, or something. But a backlash is starting: Kate Winslett, Drew Barrymore, and other actresses are telling their agents where to stick it, when said agents tell them they need to lose weight!
Wow! I didn’t mean to go on for so long. Thanks for letting me get that off my chest!
Contrasts sell? As it becomes harder for most Americans to stay slim, slimness acquires an exaggerated value?
Technology sells? The technology of fitness has dramatically increased (for those with the money, time, incentive to pursue it unswervingly). Weight training, supplements, treadmills, etc., have all made it more readily possible to get super-slim and muscular – if you have three hours a day to train, and the incentive to do so. The technology of marketing (i.e., presenting slicker and slicker images of more and more glamorous (i.e. “unlike us”) stars provides the incentive by placing a value on the super-fit star and giving her/him a market for their otherwise not-particularly-helpful-or-remunerative skinny/svelte form.
Health sells? I know, I know, excessive dieting, exercise, etc. doesn’t necessarily provide continuing incremental health benefits, and may well cause harm. But even overweight Americans have been bombarded with the message that obesity is unhealthy, fat is unhealthy, svelte is healthy. Surely some part of the fascination with celebs. is their ability to defy (seem to defy) the normal laws of aging, mortality, etc. (for awhile). Being a super skinny/sculpted star is like having a staff of makeup artists or plastic surgeons – it caters to the dream that the housewife in the audience could have that glamour, and could slip the surly bonds of age, middle age spread, etc. – f she had the money and access to the right helpers.
I’d say all 3, but media driven would probably be the biggest. its like in the move network, the lead character goes into a tirade about how people have convinced themselves that they are not real or living normally, but what happens on tv is real and normal.
The shallowness probably plays a part too. This is just a guess on my part, but since those of us in the western world (i have no idea developed, western areas outside the US are as intolerant of obesity) have conquered many major problems, the minor problems get more airspace. Instead of worrying about the plague or starvation anymore, its minor acts of racism or not being pretty enough that occupy us.
It’s also possible that part of people’s distaste for obesity stems from the fact that poor people tend to be more overweight than wealthy people, so being overweight literally makes you look ‘low-class’.
In cultures where there isn’t a lot of food, obesity can be a sign of wealth and status, so those people aren’t as grossed out by it.
Eh, it might be nothing more than the current trend. Voluptuous bodies might come back into vogue someday, the same way bell bottoms did.
“It’s also possible that part of people’s distaste for obesity stems from the fact that poor people tend to be more overweight than wealthy people, so being overweight literally makes you look ‘low-class’.”
poor ? i thought it were the stupid ones. in fact there has been a reasearch that showed fat people have smaller brains ( i am not shitting you ).
Marilyn Monroe ? dont know about “cow”, but overweight yes.
to be honest i can’t logically justify why we should hate fat the way we do ( and i do more than most ). but i know it is irrelevant anyway.
Do you have a cite for that piece of comedic genius?
I’m not sure that’s true - and I’m not sure she was overweight, either. I’ll cite this Snopes page. It’s specifically about a rumor about Marilyn’s dress size, but they give her actual measurements and conclude, rightly I think, that she was NOT fat. She wasn’t Kate Moss, but there’s a long gap between being that skinny and being considered fat.
What passes for a hot bod today looks like a skinny teenaged boy with boobs; they have no figure to speak of. Give me a narrow waist over wide hips any day.
If you look at porn stars then you should see the average woman is actually neither excessively overweight or underweight. I’m not suggesting that porn stars portray women any more accurately than movie stars, but it should be fairly representative of what men really want. It seems to me that this ‘porn star weight’ has stayed fairly constant through history, unlike the popular ‘Hollywood’ image of women.
Weren’t there studies recently to show the figures of Playboy women have also dramatically changed? Far more lean and slim-hipped and less “curvy” than in previous decades?
I think it has something to do with western fear of women and womanhood, and perhaps women’s sexuality and fertility. And perhaps women having to de-woman themselves for the traditionally male-led workplace.
Here, where women do tend to lead more traditional lives - even if they work, there is more of a matriarch-in-the-kitchen thing going - there is more acceptance, and even preference for larger, curvy Indian or Arab women.
Then it’s also to do with youth/pre-pubescence. And my WAG on this is that now we live in a culture where there is little virginity maintained - compared to eastern cultures where an unmarried women of 30 would often still likely be a virgin - a way of getting that innocent-female power balance back for the male and for society in general is to aim for a very very young woman, hence the whole Lolita thing.
Coincidently, Baywatch happens to be on right now and it’s in the middle of the slow-mo running in swimsuits montage so bear with me.
Basically the OP is so broad as to defy debate. What does “less tolerant of overweight” mean? Is there some way to objectively measure intolerance towards overweight people now vs 50 years ago?
Has the standard of beauty really changed that much or, as Huerta88 mentioned, has the technology developed so that we can create flawless images of people who we find attractive to begin with? I mean it’s not like a big gut, cellulite or chicken-wing arm was ever considered “attractive” on anyone.
This is a fascinating idea. I would love to see this studied further.
In one of my classes in college, I watched a film on 20th century standards of beauty that put forth the theory that beauty ideals (particuarly curvy vs. boy-like) are inversely related to the amount of political power women have during the given period. According to my memory of the film, it seems that in the '20s and '30s, as women got the right to vote, the boyish look was in. In the '50s, when good women were supposed to be good homemakers and stay at home (again, this is according the film), curvy women like Misses Monroe and Mansfield were considered babes. In the '60s and '70s, you’ve got the rise of feminism and…Twiggy. In the '90s, you had the waif look.
I don’t remember if the film gave an explanation for the inverse relationship between political power and feminine beauty standards, but it’s interesting to think about.
50 years ago, there were people like Monroe, Mansfield, etc. who were considered attractive, sexy women by society at large. At least, they were promoted as sexy and attractive.
I don’t see that now. Maybe I’m not looking in the right places, but movies, TV, and magazines do not seem to show women with extra weight as anything but a fate to be avoided. That isn’t to say individuals may not find modern-day Monroes attractive, just that I am not seeing any evidence of it.
The “intolerance” isn’t about how you treat people you know, but about standards of beauty–who we’ll accept as a heroine or hero in a movie versus who we’ll reject as being ugly. (“We” as shorthand for either the majority or a very vocal minority.)
Americans are getting fatter. I think that’s accepted (though if it’s not, please let me know, since that really annihilates part of my question). As the body of America changes, I would have thought the advertised body would as well. As we become more ethnically diverse, that diversity creeps into entertainment, so why doesn’t that seem to be happening with weight? Instead, we seem to be going the other way.
(On a related note, I wonder a bit if some of the success of “My Big Fat Greek Wedding” was the ordinariness of the Voula’s looks. Perhaps a romance between two beautiful people isn’t as powerful as one between a normal looking woman and a nice looking man.)
Julie
Do people go to movies to see people they could never emulate or go to see people they could?
Isn’t it depressing, rather than entertaining, to see an entire universe of skinny people (aside from maybe a “funny” character now and then) especially if the “real world” is made up of overweight people?
Julie
So, you ever watch STNG? They got a certain amount of kudos for providing jobs for actors & actresses who were overweight, or undertall, or funny looking… until somebody pointed out that that was only if they were willing to play aliens…
I cannot forget how Camryn Mannheim’s character in The Practice initially was supposed to have donut bags on her desk all the time, the first time Camryn arrived on set.
Camryn objected to the stereotype, and got them removed. She talked about this in an interview about being a “larger” actress. Unfortunately I can’t find a cite.
Then you have the media backlash when Calista and Lara became really emaciated, and when the two series overlapped, they even made some in-script joke about it. I found that tacky. Since then, I have avoided watching any David E Kelley programmes.
Excessively starved-looking leading ladies aren’t funny, they’re sad. For themselves, and for the millions of impressionable people that watch them, and think their appearance is (a) ideal and (b) achievable.
I hope that I see a seachange beginning. I see Geri Halliwell admitting she went too thin, and getting some curves back because she was worried about her fertility (her periods had stoppped). I see Victoria Beckham now admitting that she did look terrible after starving right down after pregnancy. I see more men being vocal against “anorexic chic” and expressing a desire for curves. And I have heard of photoshopped pictures of supermodels - made to look skeletally angular and bony - posted on special fetish websites.
So hopefully this obsession with thinness will at least bottom out, and become relegated to the problem-fetish category which it deserves, (like morbidly obese “feeder” porn).
Hmm. But when casting for a porn movie, aren’t the producers limited by who is available? I mean, would they choose someone of average weight if someone super skinny were available? It seems that the work involved in being a porn star could limit the number of applicants, though I really don’t know that that’s true.
If men, though, would consider porn star weight to be ideal, who is fueling the push for skinnier models in Playboy as istara notes? Women might have an impact on casting for mainstream movies, but for much of the available pornographic movies and definitely for Playboy and similar magazines men are the target audience. Would Playboy feature extremely skinny models if men didn’t want them? (Not a rhetorical question; a genuine one. Who decides who Playboy photographs? Do they do market research?)
Julie
Wasn’t there a recent change in what the Health Department (or some similar organization) considers “overweight”? I seem to remember reading that there were new guidelines, under which Tom Cruise (for example) was “overweight.”
That’s off-topic, I know, but it popped into my mind.
Monroe’s dress size isn’t as important as what people think of her size, in my opinion. In your cite, for example, they quote Elizabeth Hurley commenting on how fat Monroe was. (I guess we should all comment on how ugly Hurley’s nose is, just to be fair.)
I guess I don’t care as much about what Monroe’s weight was as how she is perceived now. And I think she is perceived by many as now “fat” or “overweight.”
Buuuut, that’s not something I have any sort of cite on or study on. I did a search on alltheweb.com and tried “marilyn monroe” fat just to see what came up. Many thousands of sites. That doesn’t mean all of them are claiming she was fat, but a number of them do. Perception is that she’s fat.
Ran across an interesting, weird statistic on http://www.fatso.com/bmi.html. I can’t vouch for its accuracy, but if true, it’s really odd:
From the site, I can’t tell where this stat comes from. I just thought it interesting (if true).
Julie