Lillian Russell:
Hollywood dancers, 1930s:
Beauty contest winners, late 1940s:
Posted on 11/11/2007 10:47:56 AM PST by neverdem
HEALTH and beauty. They seem inextricable. That smiling, slender woman on the cover of Self magazine. The ripped guy looking out from the pages of Men’s Health. They’re thin. Their eyes are bright. They look like they’re bursting with energy.
They may well be. But they might be better off if they had listened to their grandmother and...
--snip--
Today, poorer people are most likely to be fat and so, said Abigail Saguy, a sociologist at the University of California at Los Angeles, “fatness is associated with downward mobility.” Weight has thus become a moral issue couched in health concerns, she said. After a while, it almost becomes inconceivable that anyone would see a fat person differently.
So what does this all mean for the chubby among us, who may be the healthiest, or at least, the most likely to live the longest? Will chubby become fashionable? That may have to await the day when chubby becomes inextricably linked to health, or privilege.
Dr. Brown, the Emory anthropologist, related how in the 1950s, white South African public health officials tried to warn people in a Zulu community about the dangers of obesity. They put up two posters.
One showed a fat woman standing next to an overloaded truck with a flat tire. “Both carry too much weight,” the poster said. The other showed a thin woman sweeping up dirt under a table while a fat woman stood nearby, leaning on the table for support. “Who do you want to look like,” the poster asked.
The Zulus thought the first poster showed a fortunate woman, so rich that she was fat and with so many possessions that her truck was overloaded. As for the second poster, they thought the thin woman was the servant, working for the obviously affluent fat woman.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Lard-asses will become the next ‘protected’ class...when their votes can be weighed....
I don’t know about health, but I know I love a woman with a little substance to them. I’ll take a belly dancer over a supermodel any day.
Lillian Russell:
Hollywood dancers, 1930s:
Beauty contest winners, late 1940s:
Yep. Those so-called “smart perfesser-chicks” at UCLA really understand what it’s like to be a woman in Zulu society, don’t they?
*SMIRK*
Zaftig is nice.
Maria Bartiromo favors her so much.
I agree.
A little extra padding is nice, as in the case of the pictures you posted—but in a few years the smooth padding turns to ugly lumpy cellulite. At that point, would you rather have a 53-year-old look like slender Christy Brinkley or like one of the DU women? I mean, just consider what Hillary’s thighs look like!
One showed a fat woman standing next to an overloaded truck with a flat tire. “Both carry too much weight,” the poster said. The other showed a thin woman sweeping up dirt under a table while a fat woman stood nearby, leaning on the table for support. “Who do you want to look like,” the poster asked.
The Zulus thought the first poster showed a fortunate woman, so rich that she was fat and with so many possessions that her truck was overloaded. As for the second poster, they thought the thin woman was the servant, working for the obviously affluent fat woman.
Life imitates art:
[The birth control poster] portrayed two contrasted scenes. On one side a native hut of hideous squalor, overrun with children of every age, suffering from every physical incapacity — crippled, deformed, blind, spotted and insane; the father prematurely aged with paternity squatted by an empty cook-pot; through the door could be seen his wife, withered and bowed with child bearing, desperately hoeing at their inadequate crop. On the other side a bright parlour furnished with chairs and table; the mother, young and beautiful, sat at her ease eating a huge slice of raw meat; her husband smoked a long Arab hubble-bubble (still a caste mark of leisure throughout the land), while a single, healthy child sat between them reading a newspaper. Inset between the two pictures was a detailed drawing of some up-to-date contraceptive apparatus and the words in Sakuyu: WHICH HOME DO YOU CHOOSE?... Nowhere was there any doubt about the meaning of the beautiful new pictures.
See: on right hand: there is rich man: smoke pipe like big chief: but his wife she no good: sit eating meat: and rich man no good: he only one son.
See: on left hand: poor man: not much to eat: but his wife she very good, work hard in field: man he good too: eleven children: one very mad, very holy. And in the middle: Emperor’s juju. Make you like that good man with eleven children.
And as a result, despite admonitions from squire and vicar, the peasantry began pouring into town for the gala, eagerly awaiting initiation to the fine new magic of virility and fecundity.
— Evelyn Waugh, Black Mischief.
I used to worry about no longer being a size 10 instead of a size 3. Then, I got a few comments similar to this from fellows I know.
Although I should be worried more about my word placement. Take out “no longer” from previous post and it makes sense.
Thanks for the pics.
Yep I have said for years that to fashion designers the perfect woman is a hairless 13 year old boy, just add breasts so you can call them women. To me the perfect woman is built for comfort not for speed. Give me hips, brains, beautiful eyes, a knowing smile and all things natural.
I like real women with real women’s bodies. There is nothing remotely attractive about the anorexic, bony-bottomed, size zero boyish waifs who infect many women’s fashion magazines. They frequently appear to be the idyll of gay fashion designers, not of real men.
OK, the left-handed people. They gotta go...
LOL Rich men value skinny women because they look good in designer clothes.
Poor men value heftier women because it means they are well fed and well taken care of.
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