Um, did you read the rest of the thread? We’ve already talked about this very snopes page. My comment had nothing to do with her dress size (I had never heard such a reference until this thread), but about conversations I’ve had in the real world about Monroe. On the Snopes page, you can see a comment by Elizabeth Hurley that reveals what I’m talking about. She calls Monroe “fat.”
Matters of perception can hardly be “urban legends.”
Julie
That cite is nice and all, but nowhere in it does it say that “fat people have smaller brains”. Try reading it again and understanding what it says.
Well, if getting back to the OP is hijacking this thread, then here goes…
As the other posts in this thread have already pointed out, what “society” embraces as the ideal image, as illustrated by popular media, constantly changes. But the constantly fluctuating images in the media are not the source of our problems, they are the manifestation of them. We are constantly grapling with self-doubt in the face of our successes, mentally re-working our own self-image, trying to find what ‘works’. And the media facilitates this.
I don’t think I am out of line saying that the “ideal” women of today are a far sight healthier looking than Twiggy. Indeed, I don’t think there is any shortage of fuller figured women in contemporary media than in the past. Christina Ricci, Jewel, hell even Anna Nicole Smith are not suffering, nor is Monica Lewinski. Geri Halliwell gets panned for LOSING too much weight. Female athletes are enjoying increased celebrity as girls are flocking away from exercise in record numbers. In addition to being intolerant, we seem to also have developed a very sharp sense of irony.
I think that Western societies are less tolerant of obesity now than in the past. And for good reason. Obesity (and I am not just talking the proverbial ‘few extra pounds’) is akin to lung cancer from smoking - a (very frequently) self-inflicted condition that can be mitigated by the afflicted individual, but most frequently is not. Being overweight is unhealthy. As medical science learns more about the effects of obesity on health and longevity, it becomes clearer that mass is inversely proportional to life span.
Add to this increased knowledge the tragic fact that chronic obesity in North America is actually increasing. No matter what TV tries to tell us, as soon as we drop back into the real world, we are confronted with it. And if that isn’t enough, North America has given us the greatest contradiction of all - obesity combined with malnourishment. A stead diet of ho-ho’s and Tab hasn’t been kind to us. And people can’t help but notice.
So what does society do about it? Put our knowledge to use? Teen pregnancy is reviled today, where as a few short generations ago it was expected. Smoking causes cancer, and has garnered quite the stigma. And now our knowledge of the effects of obesity has created a yet another stigma. Yet unlike teen pregnancy and smoking, which have decreased since the 1950’s, obesity is on the rise.
Sadly, in the case of obesity, not all cases are preventable. Some conditions exist which simply pre-dispose an individual to weight gain. But these people make up a very small portion of the population. The simple fact is that with all our successes in the west have come a myriad of excesses. In light of all the knowledge that we flaunt, the wealth we possess and the moral high-ground we take at every opportunity we seem convinced to put our knowledge behind us in favor of apathy. Unlike smoking and pregnancy, preventing obesity requires an action rather than inaction. And we have gotten very good at being inactive. While it’s intolerance we are projecting, I have little doubt that it is frustration with ourselves that we feel. We know it’s preventable, and we have the ability to do so. Yet we don’t. And that’s what really burns.
well, I like women with full hips. In my early 20s I preferred a slender woman, but now that I’m middle-aged I like a fuller figure.
There are a lot of actresses/models/whatever that I think would be gorgeous if they gained another 20 pounds.
jack@ss - that’s interesting (and encouraging, for fuller-figured ladies!) that your tastes change as you grow older. I have also noted that men of more mature age prefer more curvy figures.
Perhaps then what society is suffering from is an over focus on youth - ie ultra youthful women, and the tastes of only youthful men?
Demise I don’t have a cite for this so you can take it for what its worth. Albert Einstien had a smaller brain than most people. 
" as Americans get fatter, “beauty” gets thinner"
I like the old quote, ‘beauty is in the eye of the beholder’.
I don’t think “thin” is popular just because it’s associated with extreme youth. At least, not when “thin” corresponds to how thin her waist is.
A flat stomach and a narrow waistline are quick visual indications that the woman probably isn’t pregnant. From an evolutionary psychology viewpoint, it’s sensible that men would want to have sex with nonpregnant women more than they’d want to have sex with pregnant women, because if she’s already pregnant then there’s almost no chance you’re going to impregnate her and thus spread your genes around.
(Now, of course, a desire for narrow hips is a different matter. That just sounds strange to me.)
Am I missing something here? There are so many theories being discussed about:
a) whether there is a preference for thinner body types; and
b) why
when I would argue it comes down to one thing (okay, a complex set of things): money/class/status. The rule, as I see it, is:
Beauty ideals vary based on what the rich/priveleged class can afford and the lower classes can’t
Late 1800’s? Food was scarcer so fat(ter) was in. European monarchies? Excess was costly so excess was in. Now? Food is plentiful, time is scarce and plastic surgery is pricey, so any woman who can find the time to work out, spend money on special healthy foods, have a flat stomach and/or spend the money on boobs, lipo and botox can try to send the message “I have money and am priveleged”.
There may be other factors, but that seems like the overriding one…
Yes, and we’re actually working against “survival of the fittest” here. The ability to store extra calories as fat in times of plenty would obviously aid survival in future times of dearth. Of course people in the current “developed” world are always in times of plenty, so even the poor can be fat. (Nice to know that those of us who are overweight would live longer when the famine comes.)
Similarly, there was a time when, in Europe and European-colonized places, a pale skin was a sign that you did no work and stayed inside, and of course were a member of the “white race” to begin with. A “lady” shielded her hands and face from the sun at all times. In contrast now, if you are a working person other than a construction worker, you are probably indoors most of the time and count it a lucky day when you are out in the sun. The privileged class has the time and money to at least go to a tanning salon, if not to take lengthly vacations to sunny places and spend time getting tan.
In opposition to the weight issue, showing status by having darker skin is actually a bad idea, since we know it increases a naturally pale person’s chances of getting cancer and wrinkles.
I’m not sure it’s an age thing as much as a cultural thing - that is, they don’t prefer curvier women because they’re older, it’s just that they were raised with different ideas of what is attractive.
For the record, what you were responding to wasn’t my theory - it was my confused reply to someone else’s idea.
The more I read this, the more it annoys me. Another thing to keep in mind - I don’t think it’s been brought up at all - is that not everybody’s taste is the same. The Hollywood/TV idea of beautiful is not everyone’s. People may be intolerant of the obese, but while ideals for women may be pretty crazy, not everybody REALLY and honestly expects them to live up to them. I think that’s an assumption in the beginning of this thread that nobody’s really responded to. Most people these days ARE overweight, after all.
Annoys you that I said it? Well, I wasn’t trying to annoy anyone. But when I was at university, we had a course where Monroe came up. The guys in the course were universal in their disparagement of Monroe, one saying: “She wouldn’t have been so bad, but damn, she needed to cut out the cookies.”
I went to see “Pleasantville” a few years ago. The people behind me wouldn’t stop talking about how fat Reese Witherspoon was.
A coworker said that Jennifer Lopez would be attractive “if she’d just lose 10 or 20 pounds.”
Now, I realize that not everyone aspires to beauty, and not everyone can be beautiful. But if Jennifer Lopez is too fat to be attractive, what does it say about Jennifer Smith, who has another ten or twenty pounds on Ms. Lopez?
Julie
Julie,
No, I suppose it’s not you. I think it’s exaggerated, maybe, but I know where you’re coming from. Then again, a jerk here and there does not the general public make. I guess I dislike the implication that I’m part of the problem, which I’m not. I’m not saying you implied that; you didn’t.
Here’s the thing, though: most people really could stand to lose some weight. It’s not a judgment thing, it’s a health thing. We weigh too damn much in this country, myself included. It’s hard to differentiate between the beauty standards that make J Lo the least Latin Latina ever and the ones that say “um, being overweight really ISN’T good for you.”