Female Body Shape in the 20th Century

Anyone interested in pursuing this subject should find a copy of "American Beauty" by Lois Banner (published in 1983 but available used through Amazon for about a buck). Among the fascinating facts therein: When the musical "Florodora" opened in 1900, it created a sensation because of its chorus of six "Florodora girls," each chosen because she was 5'4" and 130 pounds. That body type (close to today's average for American women) was considered charmingly petite compared to the ideal beauty of the immediately preceding age: the super-voluptuous "golden-haired goddess" Lillian Russell. At the height of her international popularity as a stage star, she weighed 230 pounds.

BMI is worse than useless - it misrepresents such a large proportion of the population that bad conclusions drawn from it will have effects in the future. This is well known, but still people lazily persist in trying make assertions with it. Yes, there are problems with body image, health, and particularly the fashion industry. But it the fact remains that most members of the population are overweight or obese and getting more so - so it's pretty obvious that those whose job it is to be in good shape (for some definition of good) will get further away from them. The widening gap also correlates rather nicely with increasingly sedentary lifestyle and worsening diet but no-one cites that as the cause. Try comparing the population of an active and undernourished developing world population with that of mainstream western women and you'll find the same results, but I bet you won't blame fashion, misogyny and body image.

Whoa. Don't blame men 100% for what's considered beautiful from decade to decade. It's a little crass of us ladies blaming men for all those expectations. Lets not forget that women also have expectations for male body types. Hey, honestly I'm not attracted to doey dudes and the majority of us know that we aren't. So calling the female body expectations over the years, totally misogynous is a little like bra burning. What's made women so self centered to think that we're the only ones with body image issues?
Studies show that women set standards to compete with other women.

Quito you're high, dude. How dare you try to compare the massive, unchecked flood of body image bullshit that's hurled at women daily with the occasional negative image aimed at men? There is no comparison, so don't even try it.

jej said:
im currently a fashion model in nyc..and this whole thing is ridiculous[...]

Hahaha, blaming gay fashion designers for skinny models! HAHAHAHA. That's awesome.

m!* said:
Hahaha, blaming gay fashion designers for skinny models! HAHAHAHA. That's awesome. [...]

It sounds a bit nuts, but there have been actual sociological studies theorizing the same thing, that the influence of gay men in the fashion world makes the androgynous look more prevalent.

And the biggest shame is that the medical community is buying into this wafer thin image as being healthy

I found this very interesting. I wonder, why are hips so dreaded in women? Personally, although I am female I consider hips to be the sexiest feature of a woman. Has far as breasts go I am all about natural breasts. To me a woman is beautiful no matter how large or small her bust is! When I open tabloids in the supermarket line and see pictures of women with astronomically large, unrealistic, implant endowed cleavage the only thing I can think is how do they find the time to get clothes that will cover their enourmous chests? Not to mention the inevitable back pain my large chested friends mention to me quite often or the effects gravity plays in old age on breasts!!!

i don't know how many times i've heard people saying they're fat!
It really annoys me, they literally have nothing on them, i feel like saying eat some food will ya! It really shocks me that how many people are so obsessed with their weight, i myself am 5 foot and 1 inch and weigh 84 pounds.
Yes it's not alot but i can't help it! I eat normally and exercise regularly. I'm 13 going 14 in 3 months, i''ve got a curvy body overall and my breats are small, but i'm still growing and i only got my period a few months ago.
As long as you eat healthly and NOT starve urself, u'll be fine.
Remember!
It's beauty that captures your attention but it's personality that captures your heart.

Please, all this talk of women having themselves a pity party, is just sickening and brutally insensitive and ignorant to men that desire to have the perfect body. Men have insecurities about their body just as much as women do and feel just as much pressure. News flash, this constant bitching and bra burning that some of the posters are doing, is... uh... erm like a total turn off for men.

Sprinkles said:
News flash, this constant bitching and bra burning that some of the posters are doing, is... uh... erm like a total turn off for men.

And this sentence is a turn off for all women. I hate to speak for all women, but I can't think of one that will enjoy a man calling her a b**** or a bra-burning feminist.

Sprinkles said:
Please, all this talk of women having themselves a pity party, is just sickening and brutally insensitive and ignorant to men that desire to have the perfect body. Men have insecurities about their body just as much as women do and feel just as much pressure. News flash, this constant bitching and bra burning that some of the posters are doing, is.[...]

Come on people. It's absolutely terrible that we as women don't consider men's sensitivities when it comes to these issues. Whether it's sex, body issues or anything, women have come to decide that males are just emotional icicles. Not fair and any psychology study that says so is a cruel pseudoscience. And by the way, I'm not some chauvinist, I'm a female who happens to have sympathy for the opposite sex... wow a rarity!

I see where Sprinkles is coming from. It's unfair for women to get all the attention when it comes to body image.

Sprinkles said:

Come on people. It's absolutely terrible that we as women don't consider men's sensitivities when it comes to these issues. Whether it's sex, body issues or anything, women have come to decide that males are just emotional icicles. Not fair and any psychology study that says so is a cruel pseudoscience. And by the way, I'm not some chauvinist, [...]

Just because you are female, it doesn't mean you are not a mysogynist.

I think body image has gotten out of hand. I see it on T.V. all the time and I want to look like people that are obviously unhealthy. Ex: Nicole Richie, Lindsay Lohan, etc. It's hard not to think about it when that is all you see on T.V., magazines, etc. I mean I'm 5'foot tall and weigh 96 pounds. I have a BMI of around 19, and I think I'm a fat ass!! What the hell is wrong with me????and everyone else??????It shouldn't matter!!! The media has corrupted our minds and have made us believe anorexic thin is beautiful. This is crazy!!!!

Caring about the feelings of the opposite sex, (in this case men), is not misogyny. I hope my generation (Y) will see that men have insecurities just like women. I hope females can learn to empathize with them, instead of condemning them. Condeming men for all the body image press is a really easy cop- out, given the fact that it is a well known secret that women set standards to compete with other women.

I care about the feelings of the men in my life, because its appropriate, and they care about MY feelings.

Give me an example of a large-breast-ogling-male who cares about that female's feelings? The objectification of women or this idea of perfection and ideals of beauty has exactly zero to do with empathizing.

I am sorry to say, Sprinkles, I find your response horribly misguided.

this is quit an interesting article. At the moment I am studying the effects that the "ideal" body image has on people. After reading all these blogs it seems obvious that many people men and women are affected by these ideals. Lets think logically though. You can't blame men for all these stereotypes. Most are what us women create on our own, and don't deny it. We see girls strut around looking like all that, and I for one have felt insecure. Yes, no doubt the media does have some affect on people, but lets not be too hasty to blame them for all of it. Using men as a scapegoat doesn't help. It's all of us who create this image. No one wants to see anything "ugly" on tv, say having an overweight women model out the instyle fashion cover..sorry not gonna happen. Media is a bussiness, a bussiness can't strive without offering you what it is you want, so if that's what people are buying into, then that's what they want.
For all those men out there, regarding sprinkles comment, I hope you don't judge yourselves by those huge brawny men in magazines. To all women, you're beautiful. Thin or fat are based on how YOU percieve them!

Sarah said:
No one wants to see anything "ugly" on tv, say having an overweight women model out the instyle fashion cover..sorry not gonna happen. Media is a bussiness, a bussiness can't strive without offering you what it is you want, so if that's what people are buying into, then that's what they want.

Why, why, why does everyone always assume that the only alternative to underweight models is overweight models?

You know, the media really has nothing to feel guilty about men and women feeling like shit about themselves. All cultures have their body preferences. Cultures have had body preferences since ancient times and if I'm not mistaken, there wasn't magazines back then. In some countries, (Asia), if a woman's face is scarred, her chances of getting married are not good. Back in the ancient Orient, the color of light skin is crucial. In fact, this is still the case. I just recently heard that people were getting mercury poisoning from face creams that were suppose to whiten complexions. So North America; you have nothing to feel guilty about.

I like curvy woman, being too thin means you have no shape. Society today just makes woman feel whatever body shape they have is just not perfect enough. Theres always something that could be improved. I'm 22 and i weigh 55 and i have love handles and i'm fine with it. I just need to excercise to tone up but not to eat less and become stick thin.

Be happy with what you have ladies. Human being are meant to be different and special thats what makes them unique.

Sandy said:
I like curvy woman, being too thin means you have no shape. Society today just makes woman feel whatever body shape they have is just not perfect enough. Theres always something that could be improved. I'm 22 and i weigh 55 and i have love handles and i'm fine with it. I just need to excercise to tone up but not to eat less and become stick thin. [...]

Interesting. I just did a similar study, but starting further back in history (see my web page). The waifish figure was only very recently introduced as a standard of beauty. Not to knock thin women--I think every body should be accepted and loved in its natural state.

Phew...you are on about androgyny.have u thot abt the other side...being CURVACIOUS.
most Asian (and here, i don't include the Far East) and African women are big-built.
In India, a full-bodied woman was considered the "ideal" type, but now, thanks to westernisation, being twiggy is where it is at.
we have beauty clinics touting 'weight loss' programmes- with guarantees of "losing 5kgs and no sweat"; toning up;body-sculpting;liposuction,etc.- emerging all over the country complete with photos of skinny models.
Something alien to the Indian culture and a dangerous precedent which is getting worse each day!!
Anorexia and bulimia are still considered a western phenomenon despite all the "visible signs."
I shudder to think where all this is leading to..

If you are talking to me ("Andro Chick"...I thought I was being clever)...I think that all body types are awesome! I was just saying that I have a "boyish" body because that is the way I am built. I'm definitely not twiggy. I think you're right on-- people from different areas have different body types and we shouldn't try to be something we are not.

preeti said:
Phew...you are on about androgyny.have u thot abt the other side...being CURVACIOUS.
most Asian (and here, i don't include the Far East) and African women are big-built.
In India, a full-bodied woman was considered the "ideal" type, but now, thanks to westernisation, being twiggy is where it is at.
we have beauty clinics touting 'weight l[...]

Er...that sounded a bit stupid. I should say-- people in general have different body types, and probably the area that you are from (as well as many other factors) have something to do with that.

I wrote an article on this myself!

Jej interesting point I never thought of it that way, but that makes a lot of sense...

I don't really live my life worried about fashion models because a lot of them don't look normal anymore. In the early 90's late 80's, I thought we really had a lot of beautiful models who were skinny but looked healthy like Tyra and Naomi Rebecca Romijn but as we got into the later 90's and the 2000's its just gotten crazy. Some of them look like their skin has a guant yellow tint and they don't look halthy. I think no matter what size you are the goal is to be healthy...

serotonin
I come close to your stats. I'm a 4'11" female, and thanks to bowflex a considerable portion of my 125lbs is composed of muscle. I also eat only organic and unprocessed natural foods. I do consider my self pretty healthy.

I do NOT appreciate how there are No women of color in anyone of these "model" body types. It's actually ridiculous.

In the 1920s, the flapper thing was more a fashion trend than aesthetic so were the Mod-New Flapper look of the 60s and the heroin chic look of the late 90s to mid-2000s.
Besides that the sex symbol of the 20s was Theda Bara (presumed to be the anagram for "Arab Death" but in reality a childhood nickname) for her dark eyeliner and curves. In the 90s it was Pamela Anderson of Baywatch fame. Whoever said that skinny women were considered sexy in the 20s or 90s, even now!

I think that society should tolerate that all men and women come in many shapes and sizes, not just curvy and muscular. I mean there are endomorphs (fat men, most women (including curvy and fat)), ectomorphs (lanky and skinny men and women) and mesomorphs (robust men and women).

However it is easier for a skinny man to become a mesomorph through outrageous exercises and antics, ala the Red Hot Chili Peppers and a plethora of other male rockers who dance and jump on stage. To be honest, men (even the round ones) have more lean muscle mass than women so it's easier to make the transition from skinny to robust.

Among women, it's more difficult and even if you work out, you still have some more fat, even more than men but not necessarily obese. Even lanky women have some fat.

Well, the Kate Moss trend is more evident among fashion models and girls than the Twiggy trend. No girl or model of the 60s suffered from anorexia or even vowed to copy Twiggy's frame.
By the way, I'm a comics reader and the majority of female superhuman characters are toned but curvy, some skinny. The skinny aesthetic is arbituary and ironic, men still consider rounded women attractive (most of them I mean).

Jej, designers don't just pick skinny young women because most of them are homosexual men, they are also looking for the hanger factor (lanky women have wide shoulders and narrow hips so they are good for hanging gowns and suits).
But the clothes sometimes look weird on skinny girls, even the makeup since most she-ectomorphs are androgynous (narrow hips, a boyish face). Besides that, I think that modern designers are blind to the fact that there exists many different body shapes for women (curvy, rectangle, pear, apple and round).

Let's face it--- the thinner you are, the longer you will live. There are no fat 90 year olds. You can be pissed off at the media for pushing uber-thin fashion models upon us and proclaim your self proud for being women enough to carry that extra 20, 40, or 100 pounds, but as a whole the fact remains--thin people have better health then their chubby counterparts. Junkies and self-starvers aside, its reality. Put the m&m's down!

Again, I don't think many men pursue skinny women again. It's actually more a womanly competition on looking great on clothes that are intended for slighter silhouettes. Besides the image of a skinny woman with a huge chest is unnatural since skinny women don't have that much fat in their chests as would curvy and fat women do. Jan and Androchick, I agree with you on that subject.

In reality, it actually is impossible to find a big-chested she-ectomorph because that doesn't exist, the closest would be fat and curvy women.

There's also a problem with designers as well. Jej, you are correct designers who throw in fat and curvy models are actually making money from it, if they were for real, then they would have designed gowns for such women and these would have frequented fashion shows alongside lanky girls. There's also a problem with fashion magazines that temporarily show voluptuous women but also more for drawing profit.

Mia, it's not that you don't have hips you technically have narrow hips! If you didn't how can you move or give birth?ly speaking, modern models have narrow hips, broad shoulders, flat chests atypical of ectomorphs. But again, why can't people know that woman ectomorphs, when not post-pregnancy, are supposed to be flatchested and thin they can't have a lot of fat in their breasts unless after giving birth to kids!!!

It appears the image of women, for women has become less voluptuous and more immaturely masculine for the thin bodies on the catwalk, boyish faces and long legs. They aren't pretty as girls, but they'd be better looking as men. Even for slender Hollywood actresses, they don't look that pretty, make them wear short hair, suits and men's wing shoes, they're androgynous!
Catwalk models sometimes when wearing makeup, a dress and long hair look more drag than a voluptuous woman wearing short hair, a nice not-so-body hugging sweater and pants with flats. Worse! They look a bit more than just transevites.

Besides that, the women in many paintings facially look more feminine than catwalk models.

What does skinny have to do with sexy? That is true in the case of television and movie media but in other media, they embrace the curvy girl ideal.
In popular television media (in the West, specifically catering to both men and women), the ideal stereotype would be that of a lanky girl. In some comics (like the webcomics and superhero comics I like), it's reverse but males would be portrayed as either muscular or rectangular, females often curvy. There is little room for skinny women there.

I think the media contradicts itself in terms of the portrayal of ideal women's bodies. Besides that, I don't think skinny women are sexy for men and it is not so in other media (like certain comics and video games). Furthermore, in certain media women would have curves so to distinguish them from men.
The Pussycat Dolls look skinny and ghoulish with the dark makeup in comparison to the majority of curvy girls found in certain comics (I'm excluding alternative and newspaper comics).

Jej, if 99% of designers are homosexual men, what about 1%, are they lesbians or heterosexual? So what if Donna Karan is bisexual?

you know what? I am 5 ft. 7 in. I used to weigh 148 pounds. I was depressed then, but deep down i was happy with my body. I was happy with the way i looked. I was happy to eat, and happy to be alive. Now i lost weight. I am now 126 pounds. Give or take 2 pounds. People started to make a big deal about my weight loss. Complements, and my counselor telling me that i was borderline anorexic. Teachers noticed. Friends noticed. Parents, family, neighbors, anyone you could possibly think of. I felt like they were all watching me. Waiting for me to loose more, or gain. I felt like if i gain a pound, or loose a pound they notice. I get weighed every time i go to my counselor, and it makes me mad. I freak out, cause i know she is watching my weight, and knowing that she is making a big deal out of it, makes me want to too. Honestly if people didn't make such a big deal about my weight then i would not only eat certain foods, weigh myself constantly, or starve and stuff, binge and ride bike 11 miles, i would just be as close to normal as i could be. My point is, i was happier about my body weighing 22 pounds more than i am now. Now i am not depressed, and happy about my life, but my weight, what i eat, and how many calories i eat is an obcessive habit to worry about, an annoying factor that i put up with, something that i don't want to deal with but for some reason i do, now i hate my body, i feel fat, and all kinds of stuff. So just be happy with who you are. Don't let some one's complements lead you on. Listen to your body when your hungry. Don't be like me. Now i spend every minute worrying about calories, and fat.

i think that the slenderness trend should actually end prompto, i think a woman with sonftness to her looks is more atrractive as opposed to the bony look, hell but that is just my opinion!!

ooh again b4 i forget,am 45kgs and kinda short, av been trying to gain weight for years but it seems thats just aint happenning,av triwd eatig alot but that didnt work i want to reach 55kgs can somei pliz tell me how i can reach my ideal weight? pliz

Sally, do you lift weights? Give your body a reason to grow.

I have a rather petite, round body which makes me look like a ball rolling down the street sometimes. I think people who are claiming that boyish bodies are great must be really desperate. Curves are a way of telling that you're a woman and not a man. My advise for those who look like boys, get some help!!