With obesity being a major problem in American society I was wondering about how fat peope have been viewed historically. I realize that until recently this was largely a moot question in that fat people were exceedingly rare due to the lack of access to large quantities of relatively inexpensive food.
However, I am trusting the historians on this board to have some knowledge of how fat people (to the extent they existed) were thought of in history. The earliest concrete example that springs to mind for me, is the relatively recent circumstance of Lincoln writing about a prospective wife and politely complaining that she was incredibly fat. IIRC fatness was not a serious negative prior to modernity and possibly even desired in some cases, or is my recollection incorrect? Any examples of the Greeks, Romans etc. fighting and despising flab?
I don’t know enough about Greek or Roman history . . . But as far back as ther middle ages and through much of the 19th century, being “plump” or “chubby” was considered a sign that you were of the pampered upper classes. You see paintings of both wealthy sitters and unknown models, lingering over their “so fully packed” figures. However, it has never been considered fashionable or attractive to be morbidly obese, and in literature back to the 1700s, you see people either too thin or too fat being made sport of.
The current thin-as-a-rail figure became popular shortly before WWI, with Irene Castle’s “tango girl” look, Poiret’s 1908 “straight-line” collection and eventually that Nazi whore Coco Chanel’s skinny-dress look of the 1920s.
Not only do you have to look historically but look at different societies. There is an area in Africa where heavy women are prized. While women here put on girdles to look skinnier women there pad their asses to make them look huge.
I saw a show with Desmond Morris where he mentioned that there are only two measures of beauty agreed upon in all societies. Youth (presumably past puberty) and health.
Peter Paul Ruebens (1577-1640) is famous for painting women who are plump and overflowing. Their corpulence showed that they were well-fed, didn’t have to do manual labor, and had leisure time. Being fat was equated with being rich. The term “ruebenesque” comes from his name.
In Polynesian society, large women are considered very desirable.
A bit off topic but it is interesting to note that you see other examples like this of what is beautiful and how it changes over the years. Being pale (ghostly pale) in Europe was considered beautiful. The wealthy need not work in the sun thus being pale was a sign of affluence. Today a good tan is considered beautiful since you have leisure time to get outside. Odd how these things work sometimes.
That tan vs. pale thing came about in the 1920s, too, when the wealthy began summering (and baring themselves) on the Riviera and other posh vacation resorts. Then, a tan meant that you could afford to take the summer off. Now, it just means you have never heard of “sun damage” and “skin cancer.”
If the number of tanning salons in my neighborhood is any indication (3 within 5 minutes walking distance) I’d say tanning is alive and well.
Certainly more people are now more likely to stay away from tans these days as its adverse health effects are better understood but vanity seems to win out more often than common sense. I’ve heard that most dermatologists won’t step foot into the sun for even a minute without SPF15 or better on.
As to the rest we are talking in broad generalizations. When looked at on the micro level you will see al sorts of variations in people’s preferences. When looked at from the macro level you can see that broadly these preferences for skinny/fat, tan/pale, etc. hold true.
It certainly goes back farther than that – the most famous early modern collection of fat jokes appears in Shakespeare’s Henry IV plays (probably written in 1598 or 1599), which featured the exceedingly rotund Sir John Falstaff. (A lot of the jokes come from Falstaff himself, actually. Though he’s also got the wonderful line “I have more flesh than another man, and therefore more frailty.” :D)
In Renaissance Europe, a bit o’ pudge was considered a sign of wealth, and thus attractive. Skinny men would sew pillows or padding into the front of their clothing, to give the appearance of a potbelly.
I think that fashion developed out of the way armour curves over the stomach. Bother- when was that? I have images of doublets floating through my head… peascod belly. 16th century, I think.
This is the first time that being almost skeletally thin has been fashionable. Even the Twenties’ beauty queens averaged around 5"6 and 120lbs (guessing from photos). That’s short and fat compared with modern fashion models.
I think one can draw a distinction between beauty and fashion. Fashion usually has to to with knowledge (knowing what is fashionable) and power/wealth ( being able to afford it, using it a a status symbol etc.) Fashion usually seems arbitrary and unrelated to beauty, e.g. the really big 18th century wigs, Japanese tooth-blackening, and orange polyester pantsuits.
Aren’t there certain things that all humans find attractive? I remember I read a book on the perception of human beauty (the title escapes me, but I’ll post it if I remember). They did a bunch of tests, and found that cross-culturally, both sexes preferred body symmetry, and men preferred women with a round about 70% waist to hip ratio- which is what women women 18 to 25 usually have. The woman’s weight didn’t seem to matter- just the ratio. I’ll see if I can find cites.
hrm… men need to be big and strong.
stout looking.
but men fashion is less important as most societies in the past have men choosing women and not women choosing men based on looks, so…
fashion seems to be dictated by society and how people want to join the elite powerful society. In modern times, power and money are equivalent, so you can say elite rich society dictates what is fashionable. In contempory society, it seems to be the teenagers hanging out on sidewalks to be dictating fashion to a certain extent.
okay enough about the fashion, if you are too fat, you will be made fun of. there is no diet pill or other things design to make people less fat. i guess it was not really that big of a problem. most people just don’t have enough food to be very fat. the few that do, often just don’t care. being very fat is often equate with being stupid for some reason. i have come across readings where author equates fat people to stupid people, but these are the huge overly fat people and not just plump or stout.
Fat as a status symbol took on new meaning in the concentration camps. For an inmate to be healthy or overweight was a sign that he knew how to survive in the camp, & had a network of friends that extended even to the guards.
All of the female SS guard pictures that I have seen show that they were also fat.
In Shakespeare’s play Julius Caesar, Caesar has the line, “Let me have men about me that are fat; yon Cassius has a lean and hungry look.” From this it appears that in Shakespeare’s time (though possibly not in Caesar’s) there was an assumption that one’s girth was a reflection of personality. The lean were serious and tough; the fat, jolly. Not unlike similar thinking today.
AFAIK, the classical cultures of Greece and Rome very much looked down on being fat, though the Romans in particular mention plenty of fat people in writing. The Romans inhereted the Greek idea that physical beauty mirrored inner beauty, and that there were definite ideals of this beauty. Check the art of the Greek classical period (pre-Alexander) to see precisely what the ideal physical form was supposed to be.
Though it isn’t a part of the question, having a large penis was in classical times not seen as a gift at all; it was viewed as a gross deformity and a sign that the person so equipped was more animal than human. Hesphaetus/Vulcan is mentioned with this (as well as the additional deformity of a club foot), and the satyrs in Greek art are normally so depitcted along with ugly mashed-in faces and goat horns and legs.
In reference to more modern times, I have heard it said that a little extra weight was percieved as good in that it helped the person tolerate physical stresses like the numerous common diseases and childbirth. Thinness was conncected with frailty and the inability to endure hardships or work.
“This is the first time that being almost skeletally thin has been fashionable. Even the Twenties’ beauty queens averaged around 5"6 and 120lbs (guessing from photos). That’s short and fat compared with modern fashion models.”
—Not quite true. Turn-of-the-century actresses Maude Adams and Marie Doro were pencil-thin and cosidered lovely. And dress designer Poiret and dancer Irene Castle popularized the rail-thin “tango girl” figure several years before WWI. Some 1920s actresses (Clara Bow, Pola Negri) did have normal,curvy shapes. But there were also the flat, boyish Colleen Moore, Gloria Swanson and others.
With Jane Austen novels as my only source, I will state that I believe that plump women were generally thought to be more desireable than slim ones during the Regency Era. A slim woman might still be considered quite attractive, but I get the impression that they weren’t thought of as being as sexy as a woman with a little more flesh. This is in both appearance and in personality characteristics stereotypically associated with that appearance. Slim characters tend to be portrayed as rather cold and distant, while plump ones are more passionate and emotional.
