Sunday, February 12, 2012

Beauty Ideals, aka She's fat

So my hubby sent me a link to a...interesting/disturbing link from the Toronto.com: Anna Utopia Giordano gives Venus a new lean, mean figure

So Anna, is the Italian "artist", who photoshopped Renaissance masterpieces of beautiful women of the day. The ideal then was, as far as I can see, about size 12-14 in today's sizes, with small perky breasts. To me, they look like real women. Healthy, "sturdy" women (i.e. you won't break them when you fuck them).  I look at these women and think: fuck, I'd love to be that skinny!

The article calls these healthy, women, with not a fat roll or bulge among them, BBW (Big Beautiful Women), and plus-sized. When did having a little meat on your bones become plus sized?!

The photoshopped versions are much leaner (to the point of impossibility in some spots), but of course still have the boobs. The boobs that looked smallish on the originals, end up looking large/fake on the skinny versions. I mean, you just don't see many size -1 women with D cup boobs that are real, 9 times out of ten, they had a boob job.

The interesting part for me, is that I find the photoshopped versions look sickly. The original women look enticing, in my eye. The photoshopped women look too skinny, and frighteningly frail. They put me in the mind of starved, dead, Plague victims.

The other thing is, I've had skinny friends, so I know for a fact, when women are that skinny, you can count their ribs, since they show up in high relief in many of the poses. Of course the artist didn't photoshop them in. Making the photoshopped versions, basically impossible to replicate in real life, that is, without having the model surgically remove ribs. Ick.

For me, the bigger picture, or perhaps, more resounding worry/message is:

If the (delightful -IMHO) Renaissance women are fat, Big Beautiful Women, and plus-sized, then what the hell am I ?!?!?!?

I mean, I'm actually plus sized. My honest to god, goal in weight loss right now, is just to get back to the size I was when I met my husband, when I was still morbidly obese, but was about 4 sizes smaller. I'll never be a size 12 or 14. I'd be ecstatic to maintain size 18-20, for fucks sake.

Perhaps this explains some of my other issues lately (like doctors ignoring me or telling me outright they can't help me) -- I'm so fat, so far beyond the "norm" that people don't know what 'box/category' I belong in, and like most things our brain doesn't understand, they just ignore the data, and therefore me.

I'm the hulking invisible fat woman!

Sigh.

2 comments:

Wenchtastic said...

no wonder that commenting on the article has been disabled. I also feel that the originals are much lovelier than the photoshopped monstrosities.

chanthan.com said...

I read your rant ... :) LOL .. I skinny and need more meat!!! :D