Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!att!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!bloom-beacon!ora!daemon From: smd@lsuc.on.ca (Sean Doran) Newsgroups: soc.feminism Subject: Re: Female human aesthetics Message-ID: Date: 23 Nov 90 07:54:34 GMT References: <1990Oct29.185629.3652@nntp-server.caltech.edu> <3416@aipna.ed.ac.uk> Sender: ambar@ora.com (Jean Marie Diaz) Organization: Law Society of Upper Canada, Toronto Lines: 137 Approved: ambar@ora.com In article <19158@oolong.la.locus.com>, Judy Leedom Tyrer wrote: | I remember an interesting theory of beauty which drew a significant | correlation between what is considered beautiful and the diseases of | that time period. The conclusion was that beauty = health. I am not entirely sure that this is a particularly good theory. During the Victorian era, European women bound themselves up in corsets in order to conform to society's image of a beautiful woman: a very very narrow waist with large hips. This practice evolved to the point that women collapsed their abdominal cavity into a waist of about 12 to 20 inches. Naturally, this sort of squeezing led to some serious health complications among fashionable women, and soon many women were unable to walk up or down small inclines without assistance or time to breathe between steps. Being beautiful in the Victorian era led to being very very ill. There is also the old practice of binding the feet of Chinese women, in order to make the women beautiful. The binding did such damage to the feet that the arches of many women were completely folded, with the toes forced under the sole of the foot. This did not lead to the good health of women, who often suffered foot, leg and back problems as a result of their fashionably deformed feet. | In the Renaissance period, consumption was a major cause of death. | The inflicted person literally wasted away to skin and bones. During | this period fat was considered beautiful Among both men and women of the various eras during which fat was thought to be a sign of fashion and beauty, I am sure that many people did not have particularly good hearts or unclogged arteries or healthy livers. Fat may have been considered beautiful, but could these men and women really be considered healthy in retrospect? Moreover, I would not agree with your suggestion that fatness during the many periods that it was a sign of beauth was a response to illness. During Henry VIII's time, for example, and during parts of the Victorian era, people became fat to proclaim themselves as rich landowners who could afford to eat, and to eat fatty meat and rich foods at that. Certainly during those periods, there was no plague of wasting diseases. | In the 60s heart attacks became a prime killer of humanity. And there | was a direct link made between obesity and heart failure. So "think | was in". In the 60s heart attacks were a major cause of death only in North America, and mostly in certain areas of the U.S. and Canada. While it seems reasonable that the high incidence of fat-related disease and the attendent publicity may have affected both personal attitudes and fashion, in retrospect, it was not for the better. Presently, a great number of young women suffer from various sorts of eating disorders, such as anorexia nervosa and bulimia. Most young women in North America do not consume enough food to meet their energy needs, and many have suffered a lack of homeostasis or auto-digestion of body proteins. This is more likely because of current fashion trends and the contemporary definition of 'beauty' than any real fear of disease. After all, the health risks faced by someone suffering chronic undernutrition are far more serious and more dangerous than someone who overeats. With present fashion trends favouring pencil-thinness, I cannot agree the principle that beauty == health, or in this case, even what is thought to be healthy. I suggest that even if there were a heart-attack plague during the 50s-60s in North America, there was none during the various periods before or during the times when thinness was considered a sign of beauty, and when women and occasionally men underate or bound themselves in corsets to look 'beautiful'. Perhaps the public health scare about fat may have influenced fashion, but it was not likely the sole cause, and it most certainly would not have been the cause in the more distant past. | Lately, AIDS is the greatest fatality fear. Since AIDS victims tend | to become quite skinny, there is an increase in weight seen in models. | If you compare the swimsuit models of today with those of 10 years | ago, you will notice that there are fewer rib cages showing and more | muscular thighs and buttocks. This is reflected in the fashionable, trendy popularity of aerobic exercises, and I expect that since this trend has been developing since the very early 80s, AIDS has very little to do with it. People with AIDS firstly are generally indistinguishible from the person without AIDS, until the disease is in its terminal late-stage. This is the case for most fatal chronic diseases, such as cancer. Until a PWA develops e.g. pneumonia, she or he will be able to eat and metabolize normally, and will often do so unless hospitalized. Secondly, people who are known as people with AIDS tend to be people who are treated as outcastes, paraiahs, people who are excluded from society at large. PWAs are not discussed, and have never been given a large amount of publicity, and consequently most likely have not been a real factor in changing fashions. Moreover, considering that AIDS is perceived to be a sexually transmitted disease, I would bet that if AIDS were having any effect on fashion, it would be to promote "safer sex", not to promote muscle tone. I suggest that Jane Fonda's workout has had more effect upon the fashion industry and North Americans' concept of beauty than has AIDS. | I believe that we are seeing healthier looking models. And I thought | the idea of healthy being beautiful made a lot of sense for both | genders. I think that if models are becoming less thin, it is likely because of the very real health problems women suffer to look as beautiful or as fashionably meatless as fashion models. As in the past, when people recognize that it is a great effort or physically taxing and harmful to look fashionable, they may neglect fashion, or adopt an alternative, new style. This may be happening, but I doubt that it is happening because of AIDS or the spectacle of emaciated people. I believe that if in fact models are growing less thin, that it is because women are rejecting the ridiculously small-waisted clothes they have been advertising, since it is difficult to fit into them in many cases. Fashions only last as long as they are accepted by the majority of people, and when the avant-garde or the trendy set begin to prefer another, new style, possibly one that is easier to ape, then fashion will change, and with it, the definition of what is beautiful. All things change, when something newer, better and easier is introduced. This eternal change has been with humanity since long before plagues or AIDS. Occasionally the change is forced by events (cf. the Chinese Cultural Revolution), or influenced by social prejudices (e.g. the Purdah), but I doubt very much that a real case could be made for suggesting that fashion and definitions of beauty tend to change because of disease. -- Sean Doran