Since When Was Thinness Equated With Beauty?

I apoligize in advance to Caroline who I'm using as an example, Caroline, if you ever see this, I'm sorry... but I also might be getting you new fans. Caroline Wozniacki has been one of my favorite women's tennis players for a few years, and she is now #1 in the world. I have also heard many of my friends comment that she is a "little chubby" or even "fat," and that they would prefer a skinnier girl.
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She certainly is not skinny, but that doesn't automatically make her fat, does it? Yes, she is a big strong girl, but that doesn't keep her from being beautiful on the tennis court.
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I thought my friends were maybe a little crazy to think the #1 tennis player in the world could be called "chubby." But then I saw an ad in Tennis Magazine where her legs were clearly photoshopped or airbrushed to make her look thinner, and to the trained eye, it was obvious. She looked unnatural.

And it's certainly not just Caroline whose pictures are being enhanced. It is quite often I see a famous woman's picture edited to make her look thinner, sometimes so much so that it is obvious that the picture has been tinkered with.

I can see how big, muscular men could be attractive to women, because they are likely to be strong and able to protect and provide for their family. But why has thinness become such an important factor for beauty in women? There are advantages to being thin, but there seem to be many more disadvantages. Thinness being equated with beauty has led to an increase in eating disorders like anorexia and bulimia, it increases health risks during childbirth if the woman has a very low percentage of body fat, makes you more vulnerable to the cold and to physical attacks, and makes you weaker. So what is the deciding factor that made thin beautiful? And how far back in history do we have to go before we see that thin is beautiful?

I think it has a lot to do with how men percieve women. Go back a two hundred years to the dawn of industrialization with more traditional families, and even to an extent today, men wanted women who were more submissive and would fulfill their social roles without complaint. A smaller, slender woman would be percieved by men as more submissive and obedient because they are physically weaker and visibly smaller.

But I don't think it's just social roles, it has a lot to do with industrialization too. It seems to me the most industrialized countries have the highest standard for thinness. The standard in America is pretty high, as thinner women are much more sought after by men, and most chubby or fat women strive to lose weight and become more like thin women. Just think of Weight Watchers, you never see a normal thin woman strive to be bigger, it's always bigger women striving to be thinner. But take a walk through Tokyo, Japan, and America's standard is no comparison. There simply are no fat women in Tokyo. What many Americans like myself consider normal is considered fat in Japan. And Tokyo is more industrialized, more technologically advanced, and more isolated from nature than any American cities. So what is it about industrialization that might make us want to percieve thin women as beautiful?

I believe it's subconscious attitudes we have about society that drive us to think thin women are more beautiful. This subconscious attitude has to do with evolution and survival of the fittest. The more industrialized an area is, the more densely populated the area is. We know that thin people need less food to eat, take up less space, and are more fit for surviving on limited resources. This is important because with a more dense population, there are less resources per person, so being able to do more with less resources is important.

This concept may not ring as true today, but it did at the dawn of industrialization when the Proletariat was forming into a definite social group. Living in slums, often unemployed, often living on little food, the Proletariat by necessity spawned a generation of thinner women because of their constant work and little food. If you were a male factory worker who was living in harsh conditions, you would be able to associate with thinner women more because their thinness was a mark of their struggle to survive. A bigger woman may have been looked down on by the majority of the Proletariat because her good health was a mark of her affluence.

As time went on, the Proletariat started to dominate city life and city culture, and city culture started to dominate the world culture, so the Proletariat's view that thinner women are more desirable became the world's view.

your kidding right, they are saying they would prefer a skinnier girl then her?? She is banging and if she was any skinnier those gorgeous boobs would start getting smaller too!

Naw I just don't like to see their fat rolls jiggle around while being intimate. Nothing really more complicated than that.

You can say there's nothing wrong with being fat and there isn't and you can say their beautiful and they are but don't pretend that they are as desirable as thinner women. Perhaps to some they may be but not to the majority of men they aren't.

You can say it's wrong and blame anything you want to on it but it's just a fact of life. Men as a whole do not prefer fat women.

S and F for you. Interesting read.

I don't really find thin women attractive at all. Sure they're easy on the eyes but it like what described to my friends the 'cookie cutter' effect. Seems all women I see who most men perceive 'catching' are thin. Now a days there are too many thin women with nearly the same figures and fashion styles. Like cookies from a cookie cutter .

Over time it gets tiresome and drab to see the same kind of women over and over so I just ... lost interest.

I'll get tons of flak for this but ehh ...

reply to post by Wang Tang


I think thinness being equated with beauty blossomed in the public eye with the fame of fashion model Twiggy, a super-thin English beauty who dominated the scene in the 1960's.

Perhaps as we find ourselves in a much more densely populated world, we find thin-ness more attractive in that it is not as conducive to procreation as is the 'lady-with-wide-hips'. If it weren't for c-sections and modern healthcare these thin girls would be unlikely to be able to give birth without dire complications.

Originally posted by anon102
S and F for you. Interesting read.

I don't really find thin women attractive at all. Sure they're easy on the eyes but it like what described to my friends the 'cookie cutter' effect. Seems all women I see who most men perceive 'catching' are thin. Now a days there are too many thin women with nearly the same figures and fashion styles. Like cookies from a cookie cutter

.

Over time it gets tiresome and drab to see the same kind of women over and over so I just ... lost interest.

I'll get tons of flak for this but ehh ...

Thank you, that leaves them for the rest of us then

Originally posted by kalunom
Perhaps as we find ourselves in a much more densely populated world, we find thin-ness more attractive in that it is not as conducive to procreation as is the 'lady-with-wide-hips'. If it weren't for c-sections and modern healthcare these thin girls would be unlikely to be able to give birth without dire complications.

That's like the frosting on the cake hehe beautiful women that can't give birth...heaven

You can blame the Ziegfeld Follies for this.

en.wikipedia.org...

She is fine but my ideal woman would be thinner..... just me

look at bordello paintings from the old west or anything around the turn of the century: Guys liked bigger women!

I think it boils down to this:

Guys who like sex like women who are healthy and strong and not skinny (sometimes even large)

Meterosexual guys obsessed with appearance over the fun things in life prefer skinny women.

Originally posted by Jinglelord
look at bordello paintings from the old west or anything around the turn of the century: Guys liked bigger women!

I think it boils down to this:

Guys who like sex like women who are healthy and strong and not skinny (sometimes even large)

Meterosexual guys obsessed with appearance over the fun things in life prefer skinny women.

Some would argue that skinny women are the fun things in life.

Originally posted by jstanthrno1
She is fine but my ideal woman would be thinner..... just me

But why? Sure she is big, but it is all muscle, it's not like she's going to have fat jiggling around when you have sex with her.

(not that you have to worry about having sex with her )

reply to post by kro32


Not in my experience... but hey if you like getting a bruised pelvis nothing soft and smooth to spank be my guest! ha ha

Edit: That first picture in the post is insanely hot how could anyone want to photoshop her!! ??

America didn't start equating being thin with being attractive until the Ziegfeld Follies came along in the early 20th century. Before that it was preferred for women to be a little on the chubby side.

Originally posted by Jinglelord
look at bordello paintings from the old west or anything around the turn of the century: Guys liked bigger women!

I think it boils down to this:

Guys who like sex like women who are healthy and strong and not skinny (sometimes even large)

Meterosexual guys obsessed with appearance over the fun things in life prefer skinny women.

Thank you for your old west example, very good example. It is important to understand men don't inherently like skinny women, it's something men are conditioned to desire.

As for your next generalizations, you bring up an interesting point although your generalization might be over-generalized. Guys who pay too much attention to the appearance of women will prefer skinny women, and in high tech industrialized cities like Tokyo where the population density is 1 million people per square foot, not just meterosexual men, but all men will pay more attention to external appearances because there are so many women to pay attention to.

But if you live in rural areas where you have a lower population density, men don't have to base their desires on superficial appearances as much.

Your illustration is of a normal, healthy women.. I see nothing wrong with her at all... her shape is balanced with fine muscle tone.

It is media on all it's forms that pushes the super-skinny body-shape manipulation onto women... and some of the younger girls fall for it.. well some do. Many in my area tend to go the other way.. into obesity.. although most of the women in this small country town are very large so that must be the form that the younger girls follow. Eat big and stay lazy, lol.

We all know what matters is the person and not so much how big or thin they are.. although one does have to wonder at their self-esteem.. which is a whole other problem in relationships.

Either way, this tennis player is healthy and happy.. that's all that matters.

Originally posted by Nosred
America didn't start equating being thin with being attractive until the Ziegfeld Follies came along in the early 20th century. Before that it was preferred for women to be a little on the chubby side.

Could you explain how this changed America's perceptions, I'm not familiar with the Ziegfeld Follies.

Well if I was a caveman and I seen two women- one the size of the beasts that roamed Al Bundy's shoe story, and one like Mischa Barton... I am the hunter gatherer..

fat lady- I hunt.. she eats..

skinny lady- I hunt.. we eat.

I believe it's the inner Pedophile in men, and the Green Eyed monster of Jealousy in Women that is driving the skinny market. It's become massively popular since Kate Moss and CK advertisements and the trend has just continued with young models like Gemma Ward starting out when she was just 15 years old.

Also with womens beauty products - because you can put a higher $$$ selling something which is designed to achieve something which is harder to achieve, in this case, weight loss and being thin.

All the negative press about obesity and health just adds to the pile.