![the-cyclopes-are-watching:
torayot:
thepoliticalpartygirl:
The size-zero Botticellis: Artist Photoshops masterpieces to show changing perceptions of female beauty (Telegraph)
Photoshopping images of painted thin white ladies into slightly thinner painted thin white ladies shows… what, exactly? That the thin white cis-presenting female body is always presented as desirable and worth viewing? That, over a few centuries, the ideal size has shifted so that it is slightly thinner? What, exactly, can one draw from this that is apparently so thunderously enlightening?
I do recall that the thinner images are described as ‘grotesque’. This, to me, is the not-so-new ‘Marilyn Monroe was a size 12!’, ‘Real women have curves!’, ‘THEN VS. NOW: MODERN WOMEN ARE SKINNY HUSSIES, BOO!’ bullshit. It shames bodies. It uses simplistic reversals which feeds into more (inaccurate) assumptions than it reveals anything new.
I feel this paints a fairly inaccurate image of the past, where full-figured, half-naked women unselfconsciously disported themselves at picturesque beaches and bath houses, their ample milky flesh untouched by modern artificial vanities such as WeightWatchers and skinny lattes. Artists - obviously all great dudes, right? - simply captured these naturally beautiful women using their truthful eyes and paintbrushes. These lovely forms were then valued and celebrated by society. Hurrah, hurray!
Contrast that to now, where you have hawk-like fashionistas and celebrities, desperate half-starved young models, and skeevy photographers, conniving together to invent this modern phenomenon of self-hatred and dieting splashed over every billboard and inserted into every magazine spread. How undignified. Bring us back the good old days before Photoshop and Kate Moss!
But you see, we cannot simply assume that these nudes are a) absolutely truthful representations of ~*more natural*~ women’s bodies in the past b) entirely analogous to images of women today in the ways in which they are presented and consumed. It’s important to be clear on these points, because they’re the main ideas that we are using to compare and contrast with what we know about images of women’s bodies now.
Firstly: you [general you] are really kidding yourselves if you think that artists used just one model for reference, and furthermore never took any artistic liberties with the model(s)’ natural bodies. I mean that in every unfortunate sense. Anyway, these bodies are possibly as much of an unnatural amalgam of perfection as any “flattering” shot of a “good” model in an improbable pose made stunning by soft lighting and retouching today. Look at their flawless pale skin, all creamy chub and slender extremities, curiously free from the usual marks and scars, bones and muscle. They are still idealised and often impossibly perfect bodies within a fairly narrow range of size.
Secondly: These images were not used in the same ways as images of thin models and celebrities are today. You are looking at them now as you would with the images of thin models: these pictures are far more accessible on the internet and public art galleries with free entry, revered as cultural icons, renowned for their apparently universal beauty. However, it would perhaps be worth keeping in mind that these images did not pop up on the internet or on the covers of magazines, but would be secreted away in the houses of the very rich men who commissioned them. So paintings were even more exclusive than they are today, and certainly not as ubiquitous as images on TV, film, magazines, and so on. Undoubtedly visual and literary image have always fed into the public consciousness about what the ‘ideal’ image is, but you’d probably have to look more into prints than paintings for this.
Thirdly: Are they really so different? Yes, I do see and understand that these women are generally not quite so thin as those mostly presented as ideal today. However, they are still generally well within the range of normative thinness.
Also… we see celebrities and models in part as clotheshorses, they have a role in driving the fashion industry. That is why their images are so powerful - very simplistically, we are made to want to buy the clothes so we can be perceived as attractive and rich as them. Can the same, or similar, be said for 16th - 19th century women and the nude Venuses, do you think?
Think about gendered fashions. Note how it’s mostly the bottom halves which have been photoshopped. Generally, European women wore fairly close-fitting bodices, and in the Early Modern through to early 20th century, this transformed from stays into corsetry. I think if you want to make a comment on the historical female form in order to map onto present ideal beauty standards, you must think about how the body is shaped - physically and by social forces - and to place them within contexts.
I am going to round off with an image:
‘Deformities to the ribs as a result of wearing a corset ’ (source, via Project Gutenberg)
Tightly-fitting stays and corsets left their mark on bodies. There was a lot of debate about it during the 19th century, and the effects of corsetry on the body is still a hot topic amongst costume historians today. Men during the 19th century wrote reams and drew diagrams about it, condemning women for their vanity, comparing the unnatural corseted silhouette with the natural shape of the Venus de Milo. Some women liked corsetry and viewed it as a way of controlling their bodies which was not always about pleasing men, some women hated it because it was forced onto them since childhood and they had little real choice about it. The ideal shape continued to be an hourglass figure with a 20” waist, and this was enforced explicitly and implicitly as a requirement for women through images and text.
So this practise of inaccurately comparing bodies and beauty standards, making simplistic arguments, while doing very little to alleviate the actual social forces at hand, and shaming women’s choices and bodies, is really not new at all.
Do you think swapping one strict standard for another is great? Is that more important than opening choices?
^ What they said.
Yes! Sometimes people are just skinny. Sometimes they’re just not. This, people, has been happening for centuries and I don’t need to be alienated so, what?, other people can feel better about themselves? Love yourself and let me love myself, too.](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lzan5r9k2W1qz6f4to1_500.png)
The size-zero Botticellis: Artist Photoshops masterpieces to show changing perceptions of female beauty (Telegraph)
Photoshopping images of painted thin white ladies into slightly thinner painted thin white ladies shows… what, exactly? That the thin white cis-presenting female body is always presented as desirable and worth viewing? That, over a few centuries, the ideal size has shifted so that it is slightly thinner? What, exactly, can one draw from this that is apparently so thunderously enlightening?
I do recall that the thinner images are described as ‘grotesque’. This, to me, is the not-so-new ‘Marilyn Monroe was a size 12!’, ‘Real women have curves!’, ‘THEN VS. NOW: MODERN WOMEN ARE SKINNY HUSSIES, BOO!’ bullshit. It shames bodies. It uses simplistic reversals which feeds into more (inaccurate) assumptions than it reveals anything new.
I feel this paints a fairly inaccurate image of the past, where full-figured, half-naked women unselfconsciously disported themselves at picturesque beaches and bath houses, their ample milky flesh untouched by modern artificial vanities such as WeightWatchers and skinny lattes. Artists - obviously all great dudes, right? - simply captured these naturally beautiful women using their truthful eyes and paintbrushes. These lovely forms were then valued and celebrated by society. Hurrah, hurray!
Contrast that to now, where you have hawk-like fashionistas and celebrities, desperate half-starved young models, and skeevy photographers, conniving together to invent this modern phenomenon of self-hatred and dieting splashed over every billboard and inserted into every magazine spread. How undignified. Bring us back the good old days before Photoshop and Kate Moss!
But you see, we cannot simply assume that these nudes are a) absolutely truthful representations of ~*more natural*~ women’s bodies in the past b) entirely analogous to images of women today in the ways in which they are presented and consumed. It’s important to be clear on these points, because they’re the main ideas that we are using to compare and contrast with what we know about images of women’s bodies now.
Firstly: you [general you] are really kidding yourselves if you think that artists used just one model for reference, and furthermore never took any artistic liberties with the model(s)’ natural bodies. I mean that in every unfortunate sense. Anyway, these bodies are possibly as much of an unnatural amalgam of perfection as any “flattering” shot of a “good” model in an improbable pose made stunning by soft lighting and retouching today. Look at their flawless pale skin, all creamy chub and slender extremities, curiously free from the usual marks and scars, bones and muscle. They are still idealised and often impossibly perfect bodies within a fairly narrow range of size.
Secondly: These images were not used in the same ways as images of thin models and celebrities are today. You are looking at them now as you would with the images of thin models: these pictures are far more accessible on the internet and public art galleries with free entry, revered as cultural icons, renowned for their apparently universal beauty. However, it would perhaps be worth keeping in mind that these images did not pop up on the internet or on the covers of magazines, but would be secreted away in the houses of the very rich men who commissioned them. So paintings were even more exclusive than they are today, and certainly not as ubiquitous as images on TV, film, magazines, and so on. Undoubtedly visual and literary image have always fed into the public consciousness about what the ‘ideal’ image is, but you’d probably have to look more into prints than paintings for this.
Thirdly: Are they really so different? Yes, I do see and understand that these women are generally not quite so thin as those mostly presented as ideal today. However, they are still generally well within the range of normative thinness.
Also… we see celebrities and models in part as clotheshorses, they have a role in driving the fashion industry. That is why their images are so powerful - very simplistically, we are made to want to buy the clothes so we can be perceived as attractive and rich as them. Can the same, or similar, be said for 16th - 19th century women and the nude Venuses, do you think?
Think about gendered fashions. Note how it’s mostly the bottom halves which have been photoshopped. Generally, European women wore fairly close-fitting bodices, and in the Early Modern through to early 20th century, this transformed from stays into corsetry. I think if you want to make a comment on the historical female form in order to map onto present ideal beauty standards, you must think about how the body is shaped - physically and by social forces - and to place them within contexts.
I am going to round off with an image:
‘Deformities to the ribs as a result of wearing a corset ’ (source, via Project Gutenberg)
Tightly-fitting stays and corsets left their mark on bodies. There was a lot of debate about it during the 19th century, and the effects of corsetry on the body is still a hot topic amongst costume historians today. Men during the 19th century wrote reams and drew diagrams about it, condemning women for their vanity, comparing the unnatural corseted silhouette with the natural shape of the Venus de Milo. Some women liked corsetry and viewed it as a way of controlling their bodies which was not always about pleasing men, some women hated it because it was forced onto them since childhood and they had little real choice about it. The ideal shape continued to be an hourglass figure with a 20” waist, and this was enforced explicitly and implicitly as a requirement for women through images and text.
So this practise of inaccurately comparing bodies and beauty standards, making simplistic arguments, while doing very little to alleviate the actual social forces at hand, and shaming women’s choices and bodies, is really not new at all.
Do you think swapping one strict standard for another is great? Is that more important than opening choices?
^ What they said.
Yes! Sometimes people are just skinny. Sometimes they’re just not. This, people, has been happening for centuries and I don’t need to be alienated so, what?, other people can feel better about themselves? Love yourself and let me love myself, too.
