I hear folks using the Venus of Willendorf to show that in the past, women that were fat were considered the physical ideal.
What about ancient Greek statues? The women depicted in Greek sculpture were slender, and not all different from our present idealized depiction of women.
Are you assuming that ALL ancient people idealized fat women? That’s never been the case. Nor are there societies in which ALL people idealized thin women.
Nor is there any cultural context for the Venus of Willendorf to know whether it represents an idealized woman. It could be a toy or a religious artefact; it could be idealized or a representation of a specific person who wasn’t much liked. It’s neat, but there’s no way of knowing if it’s even representative of the culture it came from.
While it’s true that we don’t know if they’re supposed to represent idealized women, there are enough Venus figurines besides the one from Willendorf from that general area and time period to think that they have some significance in that culture, and don’t represent a specific individual.
That’s true; it could be anything. My favorite theory is that it was used to make fun of some unpopular chieftain’s mate.
But I keep seeing it propped up as an example of how fatness was perceived differently in the past; if that were true wouldn’t there be more statues and paintings like this?
There are many theories of what the Venus of Willendorf meant, but one of the most interesting is that it was carved by a pregnant woman using herself as a model. That would explain the lack of feet and face and the large belly and breasts, which are exaggerated due to foreshortening. The article I saw compared photos of a pregnant woman looking down at her body with the same angle in the Venus, and they were pretty damn similar.
In any case, even if it was created by a man, it would tell you nothing about the society, just the interests of the man involved, and means little outside of that.
“The past” is kind of a big place. I suspect different ideals reigned in different times in places.
I think the general theory is that socities that relied on subsistence farming or hunter/gathering/pastoralism idealized obesity because it was rare for someone to manage to consume enough calories to get fat.
The ancient Greeks, at least the upper classes that bought statues, were probably pretty well off. Indeed they were kind of fitness nuts, which suggests they were more worried about keeping off the pounds then putting them on to survive the next famine.
Hm, “are depict”?
Anyway, Venus of Willendorf: At least some 25000 years old, literally the stone age.
Classical Greece: Around 2500 years ago.
No reason why there should be any conformity between the two.
Really ancient greeks idolized squarish, poorly-proportioned men and women; similar to stylized Egyptian statues. I think theirs were derived from Egyptian art. Only in the classical period did ripped discus and javelin throwers, along with armless buxom women appear.
That’s based purely on their statues.
It’s not like you have to go far to find examples of societies that idolize full figures. Until a generation ago, Bollywood actresses would have to stuff themselves to stay attractive. It became annoying for the actresses, because the cities had already shifted to preferring slim women, but they had to play to the chubby-chasing countryside.
In Cameroon, skinniness is a sign on illness and poverty. Fatness is seen as a symbol of power and living the good life. When you return from vacation, everyone greets you with “You have put on pounds!” Young women are best seen as pleasingly plump, and it’s considered admirable for older women to gain outright obesity.
And then there are the girls in Mauritania who are force fed to morbid obesity to increase their marriage prospects…
Marble was expensive.
Wouldn’t it be less work to carve a fat woman statue though? Less stone to carve away.
^
Ancients weren’t yet adept at quarrying so they made do with loose rock, you know --rounded ones. So it’s hard to carve heads, legs, and other protrusions from the torso.
I am glad we finally have it right: nice curves; nice breasts; nice face. Not too fat.
Thank you Greeks! They had it right too, from the statues I’ve seen.
Sorry Rubens (although maybe it’s more about cellulite than fat).
Gahan Wilson wasn’t so great about depiction but his art was terrific.
Ancient Greek culture stressed athletic physiques as an artistic ideal. It should be noted that the female nude was only a very late development and then only to depict gods or semi deities. A woman seeking equality among the sexes would do better in a Wahabist household in modern Saudi Arabia than in ancient Greece.
I think it has something to do with cultural ideals and desirability of certain body types. Not sure if this has anything to do with the thread but when I was 13 (seven years ago) all the girls in my school had to do a trial session of each foreign language, and when we did Japanese I asked the Japanese teacher something about why anime characters frequently have exaggeratedly big eyes.
She said it’s because of how common eyes with the epicanthic fold are as opposed to without it (for the record this is also the case with Chinese people. I’ve the epicanthic fold. So does my brother) so the characters are drawn without the folds. As said in the above post, ancient Greek statues weren’t aimed at representing real people or people as they really were, but mostly as religious or heroic images.
Another explanation I’ve heard attributes it to the “puppy dog effect”; bigger looking eyes = younger & cuter. Whereas characters who are meant to be older or wiser are often drawn with smaller, more slitted eyes. Google images for anime old man to see what I mean.
I think it’s quite possible that the rounded (pregnant?) figures could be generally symbolic of fertility, while more slender figures (created thousands of years/miles away) may have had a completely different effect in mind - a symbol of physical prowess or carnal desirability.
Surely if the only statue found from ancient civilisations was of Medusa, you wouldn’t assume that the ancients’ ideal woman was a snake-haired ball-breaker?