Pleasantly Plump in 1891

[plumtreeblossom]

Sigh, I would have been so fashionable then.

The scary thing is that by today's insane standards, even the slimmer model on the left would be judged to have a "thick" body type.

Comments

[chanaleh.livejournal.com]

"BECAUSE OF OUR NEWLY FOUND VIGOR WE HAVE TAKEN UP GRECIAN DANCING AND HAVE LEADING ROLES IN ALL LOCAL PRODUCTIONS."

Love it. :-)

[trowa-barton.livejournal.com]

Was that the case for "Merry Wives"? :)

[plumtreeblossom.livejournal.com]

Well, I did get cast in that...

[trowa-barton.livejournal.com]

Frakkin' Roaring Twenties...

[plumtreeblossom.livejournal.com]

This was actually 1891. By the Roaring 20s, thin was in.

[trowa-barton.livejournal.com]

That's what I meant. I blame the '20s for changing cultural perceptions of beauty from rubenesque to Flapper Anorexic.

[ron_newman]

I was born much later than the 1920s, but I remember these ads for Wate-On in comic books and (I think) Boy's Life when I was a kid.

[chienne-folle.livejournal.com]

My mother was born in 1933, and when she was a teenager, boys scorned her because she was skinny. She didn't want to be rubenesque -- plump wasn't in -- but it wasn't yet the case that "You can't be too rich or too thin."

[chienne-folle.livejournal.com]

I think the no-such-thing-as-too-thin ideal came in with Twiggy.

[http://users.livejournal.com/urban_faerie_/]

I've seen that advertisement before and I love it! Especially the bit about Grecian dancing. What the hell is that anyways?

I've always felt like blaming Flappers or Twiggy for the present "thin at all costs" mentality is a little unfair. Flappers partially came from women liberating themselves from the corset for the first time and favoring short, loose garments so they could enjoy their new found freedom to vote, smoke, dive cars and drink in public. :)

Although dieting did start to come into popularity in the early 20th century (the advent of the bathroom scale becoming a popular household item is also partially to blame for this) all flappers were not anorexic. Many of them were women with boyish figures who were sick of stuffing their bras.

Ditto for Twiggy, look how different she is from the 1950s ideal and how that coincides with the rebellious attitude of the late 60s.