This. Back when it was hard to get enough food, fat was high-status because the rich were fat and the poor were skinny. Nowadays it’s harder to keep weight off than to put it on, so it’s looking near-starved that is high-status. It’s the same way as how high-status feminine clothing is always impractical; rich women don’t need to wear practical clothing, and stylish feminine clothing has always imitated that of rich women. Women harvesting crops didn’t wear high heel shoes, so high heels became more stylish than flats.
I think the premise of the OP is somewhat flawed that women are flocking to this ideal of being thin just to be thin. Women who are built and in decent shape with curves are typically going to get the most positive male attention well outpacing that given to thin women and they known this. Other than models the other main place this lean body type is sought after is in actresses and performers so they look OK on the camera, and in upper class or upwardly aspirational women where it is connected to working out intensively and being fit moreso than just being thin for aesthetic reasons.
Re this last note there is a connection (and a valid one in this obese tending industrialized society of ours) between thinner = healthier. Women who are out of shape are often judged harshly by men regardless of what condition the men are in.
If it’s correct, it means this look isn’t thought of as an ideal to aspire to, it just happens that clothes look better on skinny models, so they use skinny models. Even if it ends up actually becoming an ideal, it wasn’t the intent.
Zombie Richard Nixon?
You mean people might actually be able to wear comfortable clothes and dress to the climate without be shamed for it? Shocking!
There’s a lot of confusion in some straight male circles, the idea that women are dressing to please them. Laughable. Why should anyone care what straight guys like? They have no taste and are totally beside the point. Do you know what group of women are dressing to please straight dudes? Strippers and street walkers.
Oh, I agree: The idea that clothing can be used to attract the opposite sex is almost as laughable as the idea that straight women have a sex drive.
Basically, fashion designers are shit at their jobs. At least they aren’t designing clothes that only look good if you don’t have any arms.
I didn’t make either of those claims.
A fashion model is a coat hanger with a pretty face, that is all. The fact that they have very pretty faces fools people into thinking their thinness is part of their beauty.
In Gap’s case, I think they chose a thin model for their ad to hide the fact that their “Curvy/Skinny” style of jeans only looks good on the latter half.
For what it’s worth, Twiggy has no idea how this happened either. She thought she was too thin to ever model anything, and aspired to be a stylist/designer. She wanted to look like Marilyn Monroe.
It’s a tossup whether the model as disposable commodity came from the difficulty of staying thin for more than a season at a time, or the idea that it’s okay for humans to be that specific shape is justified because they’re not going to stay there very long, but the short career of a model does play into it. Girls come and go very rapidly, and there’s going to be less variation in shape between two women who are 34-22-34 with very little squish than there are between two women who are curvy and 38-26-38. The greater uniformity at the small end of the scale means that one when girl snaps and can’t keep her diet up anymore, you can fit her dress onto the next girl in line without a lot of fuss.
You realize that fashion designers were responsible for the clothes in those photos? Maybe not the name designers , but fashion designers nonetheless.
Hey, you said that women don’t dress to please straight men. (Which perpetuates the homophobic stereotype that gay men are fashion mavens, BTW.) That means that women don’t use clothing to attract potential mates, in your mind, and that slides neatly into the Victorian sexist notion that straight women don’t naturally have a sex drive until they’re “corrupted” by men.