I'VE always joked that I would have been a sex goddess in the time of Peter Paul Rubens. One look at my wobbly butt and he'd have chased me around his atelier. To prove my claim, I ask you to peer at his painting The Three Graces (circa 1639). It's all cellulite ripples, knee dimples, jiggling triceps and enough back-fat to send Lucian Freud into paroxysms of artistic envy.
The same triumvirate, in Botticelli's 1482 version, are lean-flanked, but with noticeable bellies and full bottoms. Yet by the time Edward Burne-Jones sketched the girls in the 1890s, they were lithe and athletic.
Bizarrely, women's bodies are as
subject to faddish whims as the ever-changing fashions that adorn them. Clothes only feed this fetishism. Think waist-cinching corsets, bum-exaggerating bustles, asexual Flapper silhouettes, and the "get 'em out for the boys" display afforded by a low-cut bodice atop an Empire waist.
Word on the street says curves are back. Oh, how I laughed reading that – moments before slamming my head repeatedly against the wall.
To begin with, let's be clear about "curves". If you mean Kelly Brook or Scarlett Johansson, you're disqualified. These beauties are simply variations on the slobbered-over "ideal" female of the past few decades: a woman possessing the legs and stomach of an adolescent boy and the breasts of a Russ Meyer super-vixen. But we're allowed buttocks, now, as well! Though I can't help noticing how many of the examples used to illustrate this trend are ethnic women: Jennifer Lopez is Latina, Beyoncé is African-American, Salma Hayek is Mexican. (Funny that none are of Asian extraction, even though an ample female form is much more acceptable on the subcontinent than here.)
A recent article exploring this mind-boggling phenomenon angered me. It explained, in all seriousness, that the reason we're "officially over skinny" is, wait for it, because we're bored. So it's not at all related to a long-overdue acceptance of the normal range of body types. And nothing to do with women's mental or physical health.
No, the piece explained that "shape" fell out of favour in the first place because "so many of the clothes in the forefront of fashion simply don't work for women with curves".
Erm… if that's the case – and forgive me for stating the obvious – doesn't it stand to reason that it was fashion that took a wrong turn, not women? Who put the fashion industry in charge of female anatomy, anyway? Maybe we should have surrendered our egos to car manufacturers or electricians? It makes the same amount of sense.
Even this newly acceptable curvier figure must adhere to certain rules, apparently. You need a small waist and a flat stomach to "contrast with those fuller hips… a pair of nice arms, good ankles and a well-defined clavicle make all the difference."
In other words, ignore logic and biology. Whatever the trend, no-one's in the clear. Imagine if someone decreed two heads were "in", or three ears? What if fashion designers and film-makers got behind the craze, making superstars of the genetic mutants who came by such attributes naturally? What if surgeons worked overtime modifying us to conform? Then suppose these twists on personal topography went out of style? Oops!
Maybe Rembrandt and Rubens were chubby-chasers and atypical for their time, but I don't think so. I am not advocating obesity, and I do prefer my current weight, but I hotly resent the conditioning that convinces men and women alike that the definition of female beauty is so narrow and unachievable.
The full article contains 614 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
