Just like fashion trends, the “ideal body shape(s)” for both women and men changes through the years based on social and economic trends. Of course, socially preferred body shapes within the same population may vary based on ethnicity, socioeconomic class, national background, location, etc., but there are general, overarching trends. As someone who adores fashion history (it’s more tied to gender studies than you think!), visual culture, and mapping social trends, in high school and even now I was intrigued by the idea of ideal body types for each decade: Marilyn Monroe for the 50s, Twiggy for the late 60s, and so on.
Left: Twiggy; Right: Marilyn Monroe. Image from Italie Leanne. “Twiggy: I Wanted To Look Like Marilyn Monroe.” The Huffington Post. 29 Mar. 2010.
Realizing that even though your body type isn’t “in” now but was at some point in history or is somewhere else in the world can be incredibly gratifying. The first time I saw a Roman statue who actually looked exactly like my body type at age 18, I was so happy that there was once someone looked like me and whom an artist felt was beautiful enough to model for a mythological character. I love/d reading about the 1920s, because I would have considered pretty for a shape I was teased about in high school [ed. more about teasing vs. discrimination later]. I think a lot of people, especially women, have this idea that they were “born in the wrong decade/century/era” for their body type, and it can be empowering to see your shape as beautiful or sexy.
So when I saw the illustration “Wrong Century” by Tomas Kucerovsky I should have been happy, right?
I found this image here on facebook (http://tinyurl.com/7rkbgb2), but it’s making the rounds on tumblr, too.
Let me actually describe this illustration. We see parts of a woman being stared at and snickered at in an art museum. She, however, is in awe of a painting. Why? She sees for perhaps the first time her own body type in fine art, and she feels happy and beautiful. That’s what’s said on The Judgment of Paris forum here.
So what’s the problem?
The painting the subject is so enraptured with is The Rape of the Daughters of Leucippus by Peter Paul Rubens.
Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
According to the post on The Judgment of Paris forums, the subject of the illustration is meant to be at a real museum. Also, as someone who enjoys history and the classics, I know that, etymologically, the word rape was once used to describe to abduction (see “Rape of the Sabine Women,” “The Rape of the Lock”). Regardless, the painting depicts two clothed men (or one clothed man and one shoed, at least, man) forcibly abducting two nude (or recently stripped, judging from the fabric on the ground) women.
Now, you might say, “Well, the trope of ‘clothed men, naked women’ in European art is because women’s bodies are beautiful, and men’s aren’t,” and I beg to differ from an art angle: precisely what, then, is The David other than a very attractive nude man? Or The Creation of Adam in the Sistine Chapel? But yes, “clothed men, naked women” is a trope. What’s problematic about the illustration is that Rubens painted plenty of depictions of beautiful women who are not being attacked by men. For example, I think The Three Graces would have been absolutely perfect to illustrate Kucerovsky’s point:
The Three Graces. Courtesy of peterpaulrubens.org
Or, better yet, what about one of his paintings of Venus, the goddess of beauty? That would send a powerful message, that a Rubenesque body could depict the character who represents the pinnacle of beauty in Western art:
Venus at a Mirror. Courtesy of peterpaulrubens.org.
Now, one might argue that The Rape of the Daughters of Leucippus proves that this body type was/is so desirable that men would be overcome with lust for it and abduct or rape women to experience this. That’s not what rape is, and that IS justifying violence against women, the “she was asking for it” defense. Furthermore, I object to the idea of having the male gaze and objectification of women’s bodies as a yardstick for beauty. However, if Kucerovsky wanted to show the subject’s body type as an equal partner in a romantic and sexual sense, why not use Rubens’s Venus and Adonis, where both parties are depicting gazing lovingly at each other and the desire is mutual?
Venus and Adonis. Courtesy of peterpaulrubens.org.
On one hand, I know that beauty standards, despite the decade, are oppressive. I know that the art in this post is Western-centric and depicts white women as the standard of beauty. But I think that it’s also important to feel attractive and desirable, and I don’t mean in the male-gaze sense. Let me be honest and preface this story by saying that I have a body type that is “socially acceptable” for the ’10s and realize that I have the privileges of being cisgendered and white. I grew up in a decade in which tanning was still popular (and still is to some extent in my hometown), and I was teased for wearing sunscreen, for having legs that get blotchy in the cold, for blending in with the paint on the bottom of the swimming pool.
When I moved to Japan, though, despite my finding Japan’s desire for fair skin (bihaku, 美白) as a standard of beauty problematic, it was gratifying to be told for the first time in my life that my “too pale” skin was beautiful. (Contrary to popular belief, though, I don’t wear sunscreen for the preservation of my coloring; rather, it’s that because as a very white person, I’m more susceptible to skin cancer and sunburns hurt.) Of course, peer-group teasing is not even in the same realm as institutionalized discrimination or widespread social discrimination based on appearance, but when your perceived physical fault is suddenly in fashion, it feels good.
I think the desire to feel at home in one’s body is universal. I think it’s important to be healthy and happy at all sizes and shapes. I think it’s important to have positive role models in the media. But we have to consider the message we are sending with art like “Wrong Century.” If you saw a woman in art who looked like you (or a female loved one) being assaulted by men, would you notice the attack before the body type and, if you did notice her body type, would you feel camaraderie with your double instead of rage or horror? The Rape of the Daughters of Leucippus is a well crafted painting by an author famous for his voluptuous subjects, but it should not be the “punchline” of an illustration meant to draw attention to changing beauty standards.
Addendum: Scalesoflibra writes in the comments,
The women in Rubens’ paintings aren’t as ridiculous on this point as, say, Michaelangelo’s Sibyls, but…that blonde Grace’s body is just so way off anatomically, it can’t be anything other than a chimera of a male body and what Rubens thought was beautiful for women. The women in “The Rape of Leucippus” also look like they were drawn from men to me; since the breasts are visible on the woman higher up it seems Rubens tried to “shrink” the shoulder girdle he was seeing, but the musculature and bone structure (tell-tale sign of a man: little to no space between the hip bone and rib cage) of the woman closer to the ground seem entirely male.
A woman pining over these images is the same as a woman pining over the Photoshopped models in today’s fashion magazines. Back then the Photoshop was just analog.
We like to think that photos are true to life, and yet, there is Photoshop; paintings, too, don’t have to be true to life. Embellishing details, changing angles, swapping bodies, or even embellishing secondary sex characteristics–the visual culture is, by nature, subjective.
I’ve been thinking about this sort of topic a lot myself recently, as I have also been getting interested in fashion history. Thanks so much for this post!
Thanks for commenting! If you interested in seeing more on the history of shape in fashion, check out Sociological Images “fat” tag (why not fashion or shape?): http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/tag/fat/. Lots of interesting posts on photoshop, the plump body ideal, and more there.
so agree with everything u said!
for my body type I’d would have been much more appreciated in the 50ies: curves are not so hot these days
That’s life, anyway. We need to stand up and be conscious of our body over the “trends” but also avoid tricky messages like the one in this painting.
Thank you for commenting! In the States, at least, there’s been some influence from the TV show Mad Men and Christina Hendricks’s voluptuous figure on said show. Interestingly, in both the TV and in real life, people tend to make assumptions about what kind of woman she is because of her looks, and she’s also been photoshopped to be thinner despite her famous figure. http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2010/09/29/de-curving-christina/
I also feel like you can’t win anyway–no matter what your shape, as a woman, you get to be the butt of sexual jokes, the male gaze, and assumptions about your sex life and eating habits for merely existing, so I’m glad to have others on the internet questioning this!
I think “Venus at a Mirror” would’ve been the best given the comic’s layout. Not only is it a strong, not boring composition that would’ve proven the point, it looks like Rubens may actually have been using a female model. The women in Rubens’ paintings aren’t as ridiculous on this point as, say, Michaelangelo’s Sibyls, but…that blonde Grace’s body is just so way off anatomically, it can’t be anything other than a chimera of a male body and what Rubens thought was beautiful for women. The women in “The Rape of Leucippus” also look like they were drawn from men to me; since the breasts are visible on the woman higher up it seems Rubens tried to “shrink” the shoulder girdle he was seeing, but the musculature and bone structure (tell-tale sign of a man: little to no space between the hip bone and rib cage) of the woman closer to the ground seem entirely male.
A woman pining over these images is the same as a woman pining over the Photoshopped models in today’s fashion magazines. Back then the Photoshop was just analog.
I’m going to addend the post to include your comments on the shoulder girdle! Thanks for the artistic perspective on the matter. I agree that Mirror is probably the best choice. The butts on the brunette Graces sort of defies physics there.
I do wonder about the intended audience of the art. If Rubens were alive today, he would be creating paintings with galleries, museums, tumblr, and websites in mind, but if this were commissioned, they would have had a viewership of the nobility and people calling on them. Of course, if you have trickle-down fashion, and we know that plump, curvy bodies are “in” for the nobility, so others may mimic or fetishize their shape and style, then certainly we have the “analog Photoshop.” Not to mention artists commissioned for portraits making the subject more conventionally attractive in the portrait than in real life.
Interesting, I guess if you’re being generous you might guess that that painting was the one which originally inspired the idea, so Tomas felt he should stick to it. I’m stretching here though.
You do wonder about what people choose to ignore when trying to make a point. I judge/coach the occasional speech contest, and a couple of years back there was something of a mini-trend for Hitler. Specifically saying what a great orator he was. And nothing else. It’s not like they were even trying to be deliberately provocative. If you’ve got the entire span of recorded history to choose from, surely you can come up with some less distracting examples?
Scalesoflibra makes an interesting point. In the same way that suntans go in and out of fashion according to how expensive they are to obtain, might the same be true of body size? If food and leisure are at a premium (as I imagine they might have been in renaissance Europe) then perhaps those ‘ideal’ bigger body shapes were just as unobtainable for most women as the slighter ones are today? It’s just today it’s far easier to disseminate those unrealistic images to groups beyond the elites who can afford to aim for them. Perhaps, this is just an idea.
And for your further contemplation- http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/shortcuts/2012/mar/11/old-master-nudes-skinny-models
Thanks for the comment! I had seen the Old Masters, Skinny Models link, but it would be good to include in a gender reader about bodies, so thank you!
Abraham Lincoln was also a great orator, as was Martin Luther King, Jr., and a variety of others who had stakes in minority rights. I imagine the trend was because everyone cites Lincoln and MLK. Yes, Hitler was able to manipulate the fears of people in order to control them, but wouldn’t a truly great orator play to reason and emotion to get people to do good in the world? Food for thought for those students.
You’re very right about body size/shape trends and unattainability. I think the preference at some points in history for women with fair skin and soft, rounded bodies pitted women who could afford to eat more and not do hard labor versus farmers who would be more likely to be tanned and more muscular/lean. In the 1920s, we see the beginning of the thin and tan look as women of the non-labor classes throw off ideas about what is proper for a lady and participate in outdoor sports like tennis and swimming–to have the leisure time for sport and tanning would be luxurious, and that sort of style has come back more often since then. Currently, the well-off can afford personal trainers and tanning beds (BLEH), but there’s still a trend of wanting to be thin but not muscular, because muscular = masculine, which must always be considered the opposite of feminine (which is silly). More on that in a later post…
Well deconstructed. It is a curious choice by the illustrator…almost as if he just chose the first thing he found without knowing much about the subject.
Thank you. I have no idea why people forget that writers, directors, and artists have control over the way they depict females and female bodies in their work. Everything is a conscious decision.
Somehow, this old post just reappeared on my RSS reader, and so I saw it (again? for the first time?). All I feel I can say is, very well said.
The point about “Photoshop,” that is, about all of these paintings representing various ideals, or imagined conceptions of the appearance of female bodies, is also an excellent one. I don’t know about any of these particular painters, but, certainly, there were many great painters who, in the time in which they lived, did not have access to female models, and so had to sort of adapt their skill at depicting the muscular male body to the depiction of female bodies – Michelangelo’s rather masculine women are a prime example of this.
I agree, also, that the Venus is probably one of the best alternatives, that might have been included here instead of the “rape” scene. Funny that this Venus painting should come up – I was just reading about the very same painting, in an io9 article about the “Venus effect.” In short, the idea that we (the viewer of the painting) and the Venus within the painting are seeing the same image in the mirror is a falsehood, according to the basic geometry of optics. If this were not a painting, but were a real woman with a real mirror, and if we were seeing her face in the mirror, she would be seeing not herself, but us (the viewer). Which, I guess, is a part of why this composition works so well for the “Wrong Century” context, and why this composition works so well in general, adding greater symbolic/metaphorical meaning to the whole painting – if what is reflected in the mirror is not actually the Venus, but the viewer-as-Venus, the viewer-as-beautiful.
http://io9.com/5970962/why-the-venus-effect-has-been-tricking-you-for-centuries
Thanks! I think it might have gone to the RSS feeds again because I wrote it before I bought a domain name but tweaked one part of it recently. I did see the i09 article–really interesting stuff. It’s really a pity that the artist didn’t go for that painting, especially because of the added layer of symbolism you wrote about (which I love). Creating art is so intentional and yet so many artists seem to be completely unaware of the politics of gender.
Speaking of mirrors, you might be interesting in the cinematography of the miniseries Parade’s End, in which mirrors and characters’ looking into them forms a visual theme.
Thanks for the great comment and the link!
[...] as the pinnacle of beauty but having no worth otherwise: the Venus forever looking in her mirror, the object of the (male) gaze, not the subject of her own agency. Should a gallery or museum try to strive for the inclusion of women artists (and artists of color, [...]