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- Flipping channels today, I found some show on TLC about people getting their stomachs stapled to lose weight. The show seemed to be trying to emphasize the “willpower” of all the subjects portrayed, and yet all had (expensive) medical procedures done, , -which, I don’t quite understand how having one’s stomache stapled involves willpower, but anyway. At one point one of the expert researchers commenting (all seemed to be thin, by the by) noted that “the Western notion that thinness equals beauty is outdated, (and so on), and how society should embrace diversity,”, and whatever. At that point it occurred to me that in my recreational interest in archaeology, I haven’t ever run across any civilization, Western or otherwise, where fat = beautiful; as far as I’ve seen, being slim was almost always the ideal, except for possible a small stint during the middle ages by a small number of painters. Is or was there any society where fat was recognized as more desirable than being thin? - MC
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I suspect that the researcher quoted was talking about the extreme thinness popularized by the fashion industry and Hollywood, as opposed to a more “normal” weight range. Marilyn Monroe would be fat by today’s Hollywood standards.
As for fat = beauty, what about the fertility goddesses of ancient civilizations, or cultures (Asian?) where being fat means that you must be rich enough to have gotten that way, and so it is a status symbol of sorts. I’m sure the real anthropologists will be along shortly to provide more insight.
Goddess of the Blue Pencil
There was quite a large stint during the middle ages where it was acceptable and in fact, encouraged to be plump. Wider, child bearing hips were the thing back then. Women even had cloth bundles placed under their skirts to make their rear and hips look bigger than they really were.
And deep down, most people would still rather curl up with a girl with a little extra meat on her bones than Kate Moss, even if the “ass visible in three cardinal directions” look is almost competely out. grumble grumble
Yeah that’s right about the fat=riches/status thing, Scarlett, or at least so I’ve learned, where thin was equated with not having enough money. I think it might be true in some places today, actually…but I’m not sure.
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- If we’re thinking of the same statue, nobody alive today knows what that statue was intended to represent.
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- No, not quite: in many cultures, fat=wealthy, not beauty. Fat people were commonly shown, or intended to be shown as being wealthy. And in my own non-expert’s experience, in East Asian art, it was men who were more often depicted as fat and wealthy.
- Not to pick on one person’s post particularly, but it seems as though every fat-activist acts like the notion of thinness being the ideal is something foisted on society by Madison Avenue. From what I have casually seen in examples of art, it goes back a long ways farther than that. I suppose it might be constructive to ask the converse: are there any example of regional art of past eras or societies that only featured fat people? - MC
China at one point was in a place where famine and scarcity was the rule of law. And if you look at the paintings of the rich at that time they are all very fat. Not just to show off their wealth but as a sign of beauty. Beauty as I have noticed has always seemed to be the exact oposite of what the poor are.
–lots and lots of dark skinned farmers - beauty: white white skin, blue blood type
–lots and lots of pale skinned factory workers - beauty: a good healthy tan from the beach or something
–lots and lots of obese people, more every year, and exercise can be expensive - beauty: toned muscular look
I think part of it is also that thin is childish. Childish implies youth, youth implies fecundity, fecundity implies great oportunities to pass on genes. Biology man.
I saw on Desmond Morris’ The Sexes that many cultures in the South Pacific prefer plump (not voluptuous, or curvy, but plump) women. Morris also discussed a tribe in Africa where the women wore butt-enhancers, because a full rear/hip area was a sign of fertility. In many cases, it’s a sign of fatness as well.
Also, there was recently a show on the Travel Channel about another tribe in Africa that had a fat man contest, where some men sit around for half a year and do almost nothing (it showed them hobbling around, because their leg muscles had atrophied) and drink milk to fatten up, and it’s a great honor to win the contest. I don’t remember if it was because it indicates wealth or if it’s about beauty, but I think it’s the latter. The fattest ones they showed though were still just chubby by American standards.
As an aside, I don’t know any guy who actually goes for the twig look of Kate Moss and other supermodels. It’s a shame if a girl actually think that guys like that look.
Going from memory(not an art historian, here) I think that in the US in the early 19th Century, “chunky” was in. Buxom, big hips, big stomachs, big was in. Skinny was depicted as a poor starving wretch. This comes from looking at prints, etc. from the period. BBW were the rage.
Well, I agree our media and popular culture seem lavish us with images of frail, thin, white, women. I certainly think it would be helpful to change this.
However, any time I get upset about what I see on television and in the news I try to look around and take a reality check. I dont think many people actually act upon this image in selecting their friends, boyfriend, girlfriend. Certainly, obesity is a different thing - but I have plenty of guy friends who hoot and holller at girls on television but thier real-life girlfriends run the spectrum of body types.
I think these images hurt young women the most. Impressionable girls and young women think the image of a thin body is what people want, but for the most part, our lives proves a different point. After all, if these images really did mean something - why is America one of the most “overweight” countries in the world ? Because the media does not reflect reality…
See also http://www.spanisharts.com/prado/rubens.htm or http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/rubens/ for examples of a more robust look than is popular today.
According to my Chinese history professor, the (in)famous Concubine Yang was supposed to be quite hefty…apparently there is an old poem describing her lounging in a hammock with her fat hanging down through the holes to form what was described as “love pearls” by the poet. This was apparently considered quite sexy at the time.
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Also, there was recently a show on the Travel Channel about another tribe in Africa that had a fat man contest, where some men sit around for half a year and do almost nothing (it showed them hobbling around, because their leg muscles had atrophied) and drink milk to fatten up.
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Milk? Amateurs. Any real man knows you sit aroung doing nothing and drink beer if you really want to grow your gut. 
With one or two fairly isolated exceptions (as noted by Skwerl), I know of no culture where obesity was considered beautiful, especially in women. (I confess to not having prior knowledge of the Chinese concubine or poem cited by Lamia.) That being said, the definition of normal / slender has changed in the West. As others have noted, full figures, large bosoms, wide hips, etc. have all been more fashionable at times.
The reasons for the change I personally find rather interesting. The first culprit is the media, particularly film. The human eye perceives 3-D shape in two ways: 1) binocular vision (each eye sees the object from a slightly different angle, and the brain fuses the two images); and 2) shadow, tone, and other modelling cues (which can be seen with only one eye).
Well. Film (and photography in general) presents a single image – no binocular info to render the body in 3-D. And early film and photography required such intense lighting, it tended to wash out shadows. The result – a flat image which made the person look larger. This is the source of the old adage “the camera adds ten pounds.” Thus, to compensate, actors and (especially) actresses would try to be under-weight.
The second cause is a sort of run-away evolution. (This is actually a naturally observed phenomenon in many animal species.) If being ten pounds underweight is good, then being 11 pounds under must be better, and being 13 under better still.
And of course, these underweight people are then presented to us, over and over again through TV, larger than life in the movies. It’s only natural that many of us want to emulate them.
This is just the history; that doesn’t make it right.
– Beruang
During most of the 19th century, the desired shape (in Europe and NA) was an extreme hourglass shape. That’s why women wore corsets to cinch in their waists but also had bustles to make their rear ends look bigger.
This changed about 1920 to the skinny look which continues today, getting ever more extreme. But that’s not the shape men really want. As can be seen for example, in Anna Nichol Smith and the other Playboy playmates who almost to a woman do not have the anorexic look common to supermodels.
China at one point was in a place where famine and scarcity was the rule of law…
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- Not quite: at one point, the rule of law caused famine and scarcity. And the point I refer to occurred during relatively recent times, are you refering to another? Chinese art goes back thousands of years and overall you don’t see many images of fat people.
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- The first example might be true as far as (some) examples of different cultures mixing, but skin color in itself isn’t part of this discussion.
- The second point refers to a very, very recent trend. I am assuming a time span of at least since the Great Pyramids here.
- The third point (I’d bet) is just plain false. Most poor people the world over are starving/thin, not fat. And even in most countries where most people aren’t starving, being slim is still considered the ideal.
- Oh come on now, really? Not one?
- Americans are fat because even a poor American can afford to eat junk food, and poor people tend to be less educated about everything, dietary facts included. And I don’t think the media in any country quite reflects reality.
- Well, you can be in any shape there is and somebody will want it, but Anna wasn’t exactly a heifer in those photos. It’ll really be news when Playboy runs a 700-pounder in the centerfold. Good news or bad news I dunno.
-A quick scan of some art books I own seems to show that fat people have been discriminated against (at least as art models) in many countries for a very long time. The point is not if it is right or wrong, but that it isn’t some modern contrivance. - MC
Is there a difference between fat and obese/obesity? Because in the first post, it was if a culture ever considered that fat=beauty, but on the last post, it talks about obesity.
From what I know, people must have SOME fat.
Bingo. Beware the fallacy of the excluded middle. When someone claims that other times and other places have/have had models of female beauty that are heavier than the current Western model, they are not necessarily claiming that other cultures like their women to be morbidly obese.
Vague memory alert: Sometime within the last two years, a team of anthropologists published a paper on various cultures’ ideas of female beauty. What they found is that there is a certain waist-to-hip ratio that turns up again and again, though there are differences in how slender or well-rounded men of various cultures like their women. If this is some sort of innate preference and not just an interesting coincidence, then the fascination with supermodel type figures is really odd - since such models generally have extremely slender hips, giving them a silhouette which (ignoring their breasts) is more like a pre-pubescent girl’s than the t-and-a figure from the aforementioned study.
Models have small hips, but they also have small waists. The ideal measurements for an American fashion model are around 34-24-34. The waist measurement is about 70% of the hip measurement. The measurements required of Ziegfield girls were 36-26-38. Again, the waist measurement is about 70% of the hip measurement.
The model measurements above don’t indicate a stick figure, but an hourglass – a very narrow hourglass. The Ziegfield girl measurements are similarly proportioned, although larger and a bit more bottom-heavy or pear-shaped. Taking height differences into account a Ziegfield girl would be considerably fuller than a modern model, but their waist-to-hip ratio is roughly the same.
I recall seeing something about waist to hip ratio on TLC once. Not only do men the world over seem to think a waist to hip ratio of about .7 is just dandy, but it seems that a waist to hip ratio of about .7 indicates maximum fertility.
An anorexic woman’s waist to hip ratio is closer to 1.0 and they are not very fertile. A morbidly obese woman can have a waist to hip ratio of more than one and can also have fertility problems. The women in Ruben’s paintings have a wasit to hip ratio of about .7 by the way as did Marylin Monroe and Twiggy. This might be evidence that the body type that men are attracted to is hard coded and not the result of Madison Avenue.
Not quite. While the waist-to-hip ratio may be “hard coded”, there’s still a big difference between Marilyn Monroe and Twiggy. I don’t see any evidence to suggest that preference for one over the other isn’t cultural, or simply a matter of personal taste.