Message of the day: 2nd February 2015

The change of “the perfect body” through history

By analysing the art of different eras, it is evident that there have been dramatic changes in what is considered a beautiful and desirable female body. The social and historical context of each historical era plays an important role on what constituted the ideal female body weight and appearance (Bonafini & Pozzilli, 2010).

The origins of the representation of an ideal body could possibly lie in the art of Paleolithic times, where the features of a woman’s body that express fertility and fecundity were considered as beautiful (a figure that today is almost considered by medicine as a target for therapy). The ideal of female beauty has shifted from a symbol of fertility to one of mathematically calculated proportions (fifth century bc), based on geometrical precision and proportion, and the unachievable perfection of body forms. However, in the Renaissance and Baroque period, the consideration that beauty belonged, as in the Palaeolithic period, more to the world of the senses, is apparent. The sensual round beauties only continued to a limited extent into the late 19th and 20th centuries, which saw a revolutionary mutation of the ‘ideal figure’. Deeper into the 20th century, the growing advertising and motion picture industries began showing images of extremely skinny figures (Bonafini & Pozzilli, 2010).

It is of great importance analysing the perception of an ideal body weight in light of the research showing that the comparison with “the perfect body” is associated to increased risks of developing an eating disorder (Thompson, J. K. & Heinberg, L. J, 1999). Furthermore there is evidence that, particularly in adolescence, these tendencies highly correlate with suicidal ideation (Brausch & Muehlenkamp, 2007).

Picking up on this issue, brands like Dove, Debenham’s and H&M have launched advertisement campaign to include diverse body types in their catalogs and ads. Furthermore, organisations like The Representation Project are working to educate women and girls about media literacy and how to handle the images of women we see on television and advertisements. In addition to the work of brands and organisations, looking back on the “ideal” women throughout the past century tells us just how arbitrary any vision of “the perfect body” is.
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Bonafini, B. A. & Pozzilli, P. (2010). Body weight and beauty: the changing face of the ideal female body weight. International Association for the Study of Obesity, 12, 62-65

Brausch, A. M. & Muehlenkamp, J. J. (2007). Body image suicidal ideation in adolescents. Body Image, 4(2), 207-212

Thompson, J. K. & Heinberg, L. J (1999). The media’s influence on body image disturbance and eating disorders: we’ve reviled them, now can we rehabilitate them? Journal of Social Issues, 55(2), 339-353

therepresentationproject.org