Feminine curves have crept in and out of fashion over the past century like an item of clothing. So how and why did this battle for the body beautiful first come about?
World War I marked many changes for women. As countries such as Australia, the United States and the United Kingdom faced hard times, the ‘sit and look pretty’ attitude towards women was cast aside by governments. Instead, women suddenly became a valuable resource, filling the shoes of the male workers who had gone to battle or even being sent overseas themselves to work as nurses at the war camps.
But this new-found equality also marked the beginnings of a modern debate about what women’s bodies should ideally look like.
Blurring gender boundaries
A quick taste of equality caused many post-war women to cast off their stereotypical feminine shackles, sparking the backlash against the traditional ‘female’ look. Clothes became less constricting, hair became shorter and women strapped down their breasts for a more streamlined look in order to wear the new fashions.
The Flapper look became en vogue, with icons such as the quintessential Flappers Louise Brooks, Clara Bow and Joan Crawford donning fringed mini dresses with strings of beads on their boyish figures – as well as drinking, smoking, swearing and having sex like men. This was the decade that invented dieting and the first step towards the trend for the thinner, less traditionally ‘female’ bodies that have dominated the media in recent years.
Before the 1920s, strong identifying female features, such as large hips and a small waist, had been the order of the day. Images from the 16th to the late 19th centuries feature women in corsets designed to make the waist look tiny compared with the hips, accentuating the hourglass shape. Sculptures and paintings dating as far back as prehistoric times celebrate women with large buttocks and small waists as the epitome of beauty.
Is fat a rich issue?
Researchers believe voluptuous figures were more attractive to our ancestors because it was seen as a status symbol. Only the wealthy could afford to eat well, while the poor stayed slim from lack of food.
As food is much more available now, being fatter is no longer related to wealth. If anything, it has reversed: obesity is becoming more of an issue in poorer areas, with richer people being able to afford personal trainers, healthier food and cosmetic surgery to remove excess fat.
A global study was conducted in 1992 where 62 different countries were observed and results indicated being slim was preferred in countries where people didn’t have to worry about starvation, whereas in poor countries with a scarce food supply heavier women were seen as more beautiful. The social position of the woman also appears to play a role in body size. A study in 1998 showed that in more traditional cultures, where women are mainly housewives and mothers, fuller figures are preferred. While in countries where women had more economic and political power slender figures are most desirable.
Democratic nutrition
After the shift in the ideal of the perfect female figure in the 1920s, by the 1930s body shape was becoming much more of a focus, with scientists first categorising body shapes, or somatotypes. These were ectomorphs, who tend be naturally very slim; endomorphs, who can gain weight easily if they are not careful with diet and exercise; and mesomorphs, who are muscular and of medium build.
During World War I rationing had democratised diets, as governments had worked out how many calories people needed to play their part in the war effort and made sure everyone received this level of nutrition. So by the 1940s the young women were on average one inch larger around the waist than their Flapper mothers and aunts of the 1920s, as they had been better nourished. With the men off fighting in World War II fashions also changed again, this time becoming more feminised. Women began to opt for fitted suits and belted dresses to show off their waists, ready to welcome the war heroes back.
Idols of the 1940s included Rita Hayworth and Lauren Bacall who had the curvaceous yet slim silhouette that looked fabulously ladylike in a fitted suit or tea dress. By the 1950s nutrition was much better and women continued to get bigger built. Clothes became slightly more risqué, with feminine curves needed to fill the tight sweaters and pencil skirts that were the order of the day. Pin-up girls became an increasingly popular phenomenon and women in the media such as Marilyn Monroe, Sophia Loren and Jayne Mansfield showcased the traffic-stopping curves that were fashionable for the decade.
Flab is a fault of consumerism
When the swinging 1960s made its entrance, people had more money and technology was improving. Life had become a lot easier and consumerism was growing. Housewives no longer had to hand-wash clothes and scrub floors on their hands and knees. Instead they could press a button on their shiny new vacuum cleaner or washing machine to do the work for them.
Rather than playing out in the streets, the advent of television meant kids started to become couch potatoes, staying indoors to watch the ‘box’. These factors carved out the beginnings of the ‘pear-shaped’ body, where women carried more weight on their hips, bottom and thighs than the rest of their body.
But, as many women became fatter due to unhealthier eating habits and less physical exercise, famous women became thinner. Women in the public eye, such as Audrey Hepburn, Jean Shrimpton and original ‘waif’ model Twiggy all had slimmer, less curvaceous bodies than the 1950s icons, to neatly fit into their miniskirts, knee-high boots and shift dresses.
The waif look that Twiggy embodied was a catalyst in the media’s ongoing love affair with the women and anorexia story angle. Although not anorexic herself, Twiggy had the super-slim body shape that a large proportion of the population cannot achieve without starvation – which encouraged some women to resort to starvation to emulate this so-called fashionable figure.
Taking charge of the female body
In the late 1960s and early 1970s the feminist movement brought women’s body issues into the public arena. Some women stopped wearing makeup, high heels and bras to try to head back to nature and feel more comfortable and in control of their bodies.
The media also started to feature women who looked more feminine and healthy again. Icons such as Farrah Fawcett and Bo Derek emerged, flaunting their near Amazonian, toned body shapes and glowing tans in bikinis.
Clothes such as denim jeans and miniskirts were still in fashion and pressure was on for women’s thighs and buttocks to look good in these trends. This created a plethora of new body issues for women, fuelling an industry of cellulite creams, exercises for ‘buns of steel’, liposuction to surgically remove fat and body image-related diseases such as anorexia nervosa and bulimia.
As body image awareness continued to grow, women in the late 1970s started to participate in more sport and to exercise regularly, which paved the way for the extremely body conscious 1980s.
The mantra of the western world in the 1980s was to have everything bigger and flashier than ever before. This can be seen in the makeup, clothes and figures women sported in much of this decade.
There was a heightened emphasis on body image and fitness, and looking healthy was de rigueur. Aerobics classes and gym-going became popular pastimes. Enviable female figures included the ‘supermodels’, namely Cindy Crawford, Claudia Schiffer and Naomi Campbell, as well as Jane Fonda, who all put in more than their fair share of hours at the gym.
Women had also become increasingly present in the boardroom and wanted powerful-looking bodies to match their powerful careers. The 1980s’ powers suit with its large shoulder pads was as much about emphasising power as it was about accentuating small waists. The ultimate body shape was lithe and lean with increased muscle tone – the new ‘alpha female’ who was a serious contender for the traditional alpha male.
Return of the super-waif
But the money, power and flash lifestyle couldn’t last forever and a recession in the late 1980s hit the world hard. Fashions in the early 1990s became much more low key and the grunge trend emerged.
This was also the decade that saw the advent of the ‘heroin chic’ look, where extremely thin, disorientated models stumbled down the catwalk. They were light years away from the athletic look sported by the supermodels of the 1980s and perhaps an extreme version of the 1960s waif look.
The poster girl for this look was, and still is, Kate Moss, who rose to fame with the controversial Calvin Klein advertising campaigns – which sparked outrage as the ads showed Moss looking highly sexualised yet with her waiflike figure much younger than her 18 years. Since then this model/fashion icon has been the face – or body – that’s launched a thousand trends for young women across the world. From skinny jeans and moccasin boots to Trilby hats and waistcoats, Moss’s influence on fashion has also left her open to blame for girls with eating disorders everywhere, as impressionable young women starve themselves to achieve this super skinny look to fit into their super skinny jeans.
Body shape schizophrenia
In the turn of the new Millennium, or the ‘Noughties’, it seems no one is able to decide what body shape is most desirable, but there is one thing that’s certain: we are more obsessed with body shape than ever.
It’s difficult to get through a day without hearing or reading some kind of reference to women’s body shapes in the media. Celebrity gossip magazines would have little to write about without touching on this subject in every issue. The earlier part of the decade gave us ‘bootylicious’ icons such as Jennifer Lopez and Beyoncé Knowles – and much of the female population breathed a sigh of relief as women in the public eye finally had curves again. But in fact they were both only about a dress size 10 at the most – still slim compared to most of the western world female population, who are on average a dress size 14 to 16.
The latter part of the Noughties has sparked the ‘size zero debate’. Celebrities such as Victoria Beckham, Nicole Ritchie and Lindsay Lohan have all shrunk down to worryingly thin proportions and been pictured on the front of gossip magazines looking skeletal and malnourished in a bid to reach the ‘ideal’.’Normal-sized’ women such as actresses Kate Winslet and America Ferrara are applauded for not giving into Hollywood’s super slim trend, even though neither of them could be counted as overweight and are still slimmer than the majority of women.
Perhaps the most noticeable trend over the past century is that women in the public eye have continued to get thinner while ‘non-celebrity’ women are, on average, now much heavier than their grandmothers were.
Early bloomers
As well as the abundance of food and the lack of physical exercise, other aspects of modern life have also been blamed for this great change in women’s body shapes.
According to a study conducted in the United States, one of these is the break up of the nuclear family, which can cause a presence of ‘strange males’ in the family unit, including step-fathers and step-brothers and can apparently speed up a pre-pubescent girl’s path to maturity, giving her a much more developed female body at a younger age.
The study, which involved nearly three decades of research and looked at 1,400 families, showed girls living in step-families are almost twice as likely to reach early puberty compared to girls from non-divorced homes.
While only 18 percent of girls from families that were still intact started menstruating at age 11 or younger, 25 percent of girls from homes where the parents were divorced and 35 percent in step-families started their periods at age 11 or younger. On average, girls with stepfathers menstruated nine months earlier, and in divorced homes four months earlier than girls from still intact family units.
Researchers believe this early puberty could either be a response to life in a hostile environment caused by divorce in the family, or the presence of a strange male as an environmental cue that induces sexual readiness in young females.
The other aspect of modern life that may affect puberty is television. According to scientist Dr Aric Sigman watching television causes early puberty, as it affects levels of melatonin, the hormone linked to when puberty occurs in girls. Melatonin levels increase in the evening when it gets dark, but staring into a bright screen at this time of the day may hinder its production.
Grass is greener syndrome
All of these changes in body shapes have left most women with a warped view of how their body should look. If you are to believe everything you read then the perfect female form has impossibly long, slim legs, a tight, toned middle, a small, pert derrière and huge, round breasts.
But only an extremely small number of people are built this way. Most people either have a large bust balanced out by an equally generous rear, or they are slender all over, with small breasts.
Unless we can change society’s distorted view of how women are supposed to look, this debate will continue to run for the next hundred years.
East meets West
As further proof that fat is a consumerist issue, obesity has grown in China at an alarming rate – along with its rapidly expanding economy.
The first McDonald’s restaurant opened in China 15 years ago, and there are now 600 outlets across the country, as well as more than 1,200 KFC outlets.
A survey by AC Nielsen polled more than 14,000 adults in 28 countries worldwide and found that 41 percent of respondents in mainland China eat in a fast-food restaurant at least once a week, compared with 30 percent in Australia and 35 percent in the United States.
This increased consumption of high-fat, high salt food, combined with less manual labour and increased use of cars, has left China on a path to obesity. Data estimates that 22 percent of Chinese adults (around 200 million people) are now overweight – and seven percent (around 60 million people) are now obese.
There are further worries for China’s children. Government rules in the past decade stopped parents from having more than one child due to overpopulation and this has resulted in a child nation of spoilt ‘little emperors’. According to data from China’s Ministry of Education, eight percent of 10 to 12-year-olds in Chinese cities are now considered obese and 15 percent are overweight.
