| 'The Renaissance brought
a return of the celebration of the body and a loosening of Church influences.
There was not one dominant representation of this period, but three: the
slender Gothic, the Greek-inspired Venus of Botticelli that was neither
fat nor thin, and the later full-fleshed nudes of Titian. The late sixteenth
and early seventeenth centuries continued this celebration of flesh and
earthly delights as represented in the paintings of Rubens... In early
nineteenth-century America the ideal body was robust, healthy, and prolific.
A certain amount of fatness signified fertility and sexuality, but a thinner,
more fashionable model soon replaced this view. Insurance companies created
weight charts with corresponding risk factors. The previous view that fat
represented stored energy, power, and youthful vigor fell out of popular
favor, and the idea of fat as a liability replaced it. Fat became a threat
to life itself.
By the 1920s, the popular
media, along with medical experts, completed the shift from fat as fertility
and sexuality to the abhorrence of fat in any amount. Thinness symbolized
sex appeal and health. Magazines replaced art as the conveyor of ideal
body type and everywhere we looked, we saw articles that told us to eat
less and exercise more....'
From
"Fat Like Us" |
