In 1912 a Cornell Medical examiner decided to try to find “the perfect woman” out of a pool of 400 women at Cornell University. Elsie Scheel was chosen as having the perfect physique, health, and beauty. She was 5'7″ and weighed 171 pounds, her BMI would be about 27 and very pear-shaped! Women all over the world sought to attain Elsie's standard. Her measurements were compared to Venus de Milo (an ancient Greek, armless statue). She lived to be 91, never took medications, was incredibly healthy, didn't eat junk food or candy, and her favorite food was beef steak. (Read the article and the one that preceded it on a study that suggests a lower mortality risk for people deemed to be overweight. By the way, I'm sure this isn't referring to those who are overweight and sick with diabetes or other chronic diseases, and living a very sedentary lifestyle, which Elsie did not. And that title cracks me up because…aren't we all at a pretty high risk for mortality?)
Along the same lines, a bunch of famous Renaissance paintings were photo shopped to give the famous beautiful female figures today's standard of the ideal woman's physique. You can see the before and after shots here.
That one is really interesting because you can see (in my opinion) how much healthier the women in the original paintings look, and more beautiful, too.
Lastly, here's a cool photo series a photography student did poking fun of the airbrushing/photo-shopping methods used in advertisements.
It just goes to show how far our society has gone in distorting the natural shape of healthy women (and men, probably too), and causing people to strive for unrealistic and unhealthy standards.
I'd love to know what you think about all of this?!
That is quite disturbing!
Advertsing is designed to make women dislike their bodies. So we will buy things.
Here is a perspective from a thin woman. I’m 5’7″ and my healthy (heavy) weight is 125. I eat a real foods diet: gluten-free, very low to no processed sugar (for health reasons, not to lose weight), a little grains, full-fat organic grass-fed dairy, pastured eggs/meat, and wild fish, some fruit, legumes, and nuts, and lots of veggies. It’s really hard to pack on the pounds when you’re not eating sugar, bread, or processed junk. But those would not be the healthy kind of pounds one should gain, anyway.
At 110 I do feel and look sick. At 125 I look thin (unless I overdo the rice and get a bloated tummy), but not unhealthy. I have lots of energy to be active, and I feel great. With the exception of the big boobs, many of the altered Ren women’s figures look just like mine.
There is a backlash against skinny in society today (in real life mostly, not so much in beauty/celebrity industries). Sometimes it’s balanced, as in real women come in all sizes, and all sizes can be beautiful and healthy. (Of course there can be truly unhealthy extremes on both sides.) Other times it can be downright hostile.
I’m not saying this to whine or complain. I’m happy with me the way I am. You asked what your readers thought, so just sayin.
Hi @Laura – it was good to hear another perspective, thanks for sharing! 🙂
Kel
I think that this type of post really isn’t helping things, honestly. It’s like the whole “strong is the new skinny”. All we’ve done is replace one ideal body image with another. So, if you’re saying that the retouched renaissance photos looked better before, and look “sickly” after – does that mean that if a woman is naturally thin that there is somehow something wrong with her, and that she should be ashamed and try to alter her body type to look like the “before” photos? All it does is make a whole other set of women feel bad about their bodies.
This article shows how subjective “beauty” actually is. Most of the skinny women who are considered ideal today would have been considered malnourished and repulsive in earlier times. I remember reading about another effort to find the ideal woman, and an actress was proclaimed the most beautiful woman in America. She was 5″10″ and weighed 190 pounds at the time, How times change.
Everyone has their own unique beauty, in my opinion, and good nutrition, being active, and being happy will really bring it out. I contend that everyone should be happy to look like their healthy self, and not try to look like someone else.
This is the best article! I’m 5’7 and weight 157 lbs. My goal is to be 147 or less , but I’m learned to love my figure and myself and if anyone doesn’t like they can go figure! lol. Love this article I shared it with friends.
Supermodel Cindy Crawford famously said, “Even I don’t look like Cindy Crawford.” At least, not in real life, without make-up artists, stylists, talented photographers, flattering lighting, and perhaps a bit of Photoshop. It helps if you shut out a lot of the media. I don’t watch TV or read women’s magazines anymore, and so have cut down on those messages telling me incessantly that I’m not good enough — but buy this product and life will be wonderful! It also helps that I’m in my 50s and have higher priorities now. What’s really crucial is getting to girls before the advertisers do, to capture their curiosity and imaginations with higher pursuits than looking cool and being popular. I understand the peer pressure and the stage-of-life natural interest in appealing to the opposite sex and being accepted by one’s peers (not limited to teens of course), but how wonderful if girls can fall in love with hobbies, intellectual pursuits, hands-on projects, skill-building interests of all kinds besides being a mannequin for the display of material goods or a blank page for a man to write *his* story upon. Things I wish I’d known as a teenager…
I might just bookmark that photoshop, because when I am at my preferred weight I look a lot like the women in the paintings. Still not too happy about the weight I have gained in the last two years but dammit, it’s my body and loving me is a radical act in this culture. Thanks Kel!
Yeah! for Kelly! Great article1
Great post! I loved this: “aren’t we all at a pretty high risk for mortality?” 🙂 We as a whole society need to embrace different body shapes!!!
When I was a teen, we all worked to have a 19 inch waist. I managed it for a few months as a teen, and for a few weeks before my wedding. It was nearly a full time job, weighing food, calculating calories, doing just the right exercises at the right time of day.
Thing about those Renaissance ladies? The retouched versions look like they are one meal away from starving to death. Can you imagine those twiggy arms carrying water or kneading bread? Would those skinny legs hold up walking several miles to the fishing village to buy fresh fish for dinner? Would that waspish waist even be capable of carrying children and giving birth?
“Renaissance” means rebirth. I think it’s time for a rebirth of the standard of beauty.
It’s interesting, when I look at the Ren. paintings, I also noticed on the updated versions that the women’s breasts somehow magically became just a touch bigger! And in some, the nipples are a touch more pronounced too! I know for me personally, that when I’ve lost a bunch weight due to extreme stress (like the death of my sister) I melted down to a size 2. And you know what also melted away? My boobs! As soon as I began to put weight back on, my boobs returned, as well.
So, while I like the women with the meat and curves, the sad truth is we’ve all been brainwashed to think that skinny, boy shaped bodies with big knockers is what we are all supposed to aspire to. No thanks. I personally think that women like Christina Hendricks are the ladies we should emulate.
I noticed that, too, Susan!
I appreciate and agree with your overall point, but, oh, I hate having Christina Hendricks held up as a role model. I have never seen Mad Men, but I’ve seen lots of photos of Christina. Gorgeous, yes. In character, at least, she seems to live to be a sex symbol. You can see she struts with the confidence that says, “I’m sexy and I know it,” and she knows how to wield power over (some) men with her sexuality. I’m sex-positive, but being a sex symbol or vixen seems like a really limiting role for women.
Plus, I have a tall, slender pear-shaped body. Wrong proportions for a model (though I’m tall enough), and I could never fill out Christina Hendrick’s bra, no matter how much weight I gained. It just doesn’t go there! So if I were to try to emulate Christina’s body, I’d be in for a lifetime of disappointment, frustration, and dissatisfaction with my own perfectly fine body. We don’t all need to be model-thin, AND we don’t all need to be super-hourglass hotties, either. Women naturally come in a range of shapes, sizes and proportions. Even if we were all at our “ideal” weight and level of fitness, we’d have different proportions. So let’s not hold *any* particular shape or weight of woman up to be an ideal for all women.
Love this post, Kelly! I too agree that the before pics of the Renaissance paintings look very beautiful and natural and healthy! I’ve always been an “XL” size gal; I’ve got big bones and no matter how much weight I’ve managed to lose I’ve never looked like today’s idea of skinny beautiful. Now that I eat healthy, I could care less what anyone thinks of my size because I feel so darned GREAT! I wouldn’t trade my old, nutritionally starved self (even if it meant fitting into a smaller pant size), for my current, curvaceous, glowing with health size, for all the money in the world!!!
I agree with you that the before pictures in the Renaissance paintings are much more beautiful and healthy looking than the after pictures. I have lost a lot of weight since I began to eat healthy and I was feeling like I needed to lose more though my body seems to have leveled out where I am. After reading your blog today, I believe I will be more satisfied with my slightly fuller healthy self. Thanks.
Thanks, that was great Kelly! I think this is one of your best put together blogs ever.
Kelly, after looking at the before & after pics of Ren. paintings I agree with you. The originals are much more natural looking & beautiful. I took fashion illustration in college & the after pics are exactly how we learned to draw figures. The photo shopped pics tickled me but it’s really not funny. This is what impressional girls are seeing today & trying to attain.
I gained back all the weight I lost from a stupid lowfat diet a few years ago & am heavier than I would like to be. I am hoping to get myself straight in a healthy way & lose some of it. I’m not kidding myself that I will be that skinny tho. I went from size 10-12 to 4! And my mom did NOT like it!
The retouched photos (both sets) are very interesting. It kind of reminds of what I’ve been thinking about Trim Healthy Mama. I seem to hear about it everywhere. A good friend recommended it too me and I bought a copy and have read much of it. It is an easy read, and much of what they say makes sense. After eating mostly WAP for several years, I just can’t wrap my head around eating ANY meals with lots of carbs and almost no fat to go along with it! I look at the author’s pictures on the book and then saw them in the TV clip going around FB the other day, and they look too skinny to me. That just isn’t what I’m aiming for, even if society is pushing it. I should probably lose some weight but I’m guessing regular exercise is what I need to do, for many reasons. If that doesn’t take it off, along with healthy eating, then I’ll live with it.