"She came at me in sections -- more curves than a scenic railway. She was bad. She was dangerous. I wouldn't trust her any farther than I could throw her."
-- Fred Astaire as Tony Hunter in The Girl Hunt Ballet in The Bandwagon, about Cyd Charisse
Oh yes. Bettie Page was MY feminine ideal from the first time I saw those cheesy Irving Klaw books they used to sell in the back of the drugstore.
--- "Mr. WD" <mister.wd at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 7/5/07, andie nachgeborenen
> <andie_nachgeborenen at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > Maybe Jennifer Hudson will help people appreciare
> > curves again.
> >
> > Today, Marilyn Monroe and Bettie Page would be
> thought
> > fat; my daughter, who has that kind of figure, has
> > real body issues.
>
>
> The really weird thing about this allegedly new
> conception of female
> beauty is that -- despite this increasingly skinny
> female ideal put
> forth in "the media" -- bi and heterosexual men
> still seem to be more
> attracted to Marilyn Monroe/Bettie Page type
> figures. If classical
> sculpture is any indication, it would appear that
> this has been the
> case for a very long time.
>
> I'd be curious to see a study on U.S. men and
> European men, but I'd
> guess their tastes are pretty similar to those of
> Brazilian men:
>
> "Experts also agree that Brazilian men, whatever
> their class or race,
> have been much slower to accept slenderness as a
> gauge of feminine
> beauty. When they are looking for a sexual partner,
> Brazilian men are
> consistent and clear in saying that they prefer
> women who are fleshy
> in the rear — "popozuda" is the wonderfully
> euphonious slang term used
> here — and have pronounced curves.
>
> "In the past, that standard was so firmly
> established that some
> Brazilian women resorted to breast reduction or
> buttock augmentation
> surgery, sometimes even transferring their own
> tissue from top to
> bottom."
> ...
> Ms. del Priore, the historian, pointed to other
> fundamental changes,
> which she said have led to a rebellion against
> machismo and the
> patriarchal structure that she believes persists
> here.
>
> "This abrupt shift is a feminine decision that
> reflects changing
> roles" as women move out of the home and into the
> workplace, she said.
> "Men are still resisting and clearly prefer the
> rounder, fleshier
> type. But women want to be free and powerful, and
> one way to reject
> submission is to adopt these international standards
> that have nothing
> to do with Brazilian society."
>
> <
>
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/14/weekinreview/14roht.html
> >
>
> The problem, then, isn't men per se, but a beauty
> culture that emerges
> out of capitalism -- one that establishes norms that
> both deny women's
> interests and het. and bi men's desires.
>
> It's a shame that so much of the discourse around
> women's negative
> body images comes in the form of moralistic
> condemnation of the
> fashion industry for hurting women's feelings (often
> accompanied by
> some throw-away, new agey bromide along the lines of
> "every women is
> beautiful"). Moralizing is ineffective because it
> can easily be
> brushed-off as unrealistic and an attempt to
> circumvent actual beauty
> in favor of some other good, like public health.
>
> What's missing, it seems, is a discourse that
> reasserts the old
> feminine body ideal. (i.e. Marilyn Monroe was just
> better looking
> than [some skinny celebrity]). I suppose it could
> be replied that the
> old ideal was just as oppressive (which may be true)
> but it was a hell
> of a lot healthier and, IMO, attractive.
>
> -WD
>
>
>
> __________________________
> thevanitywebsite.blogspot.com
>
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