The Wolverine by Georg Emanuel Opiz (1804) • WIKIMEDIA COMMONS Overweight, the perception of which has evolved over socio-cultural changes, is today stigmatized in Western societies, which see it as a morbid pathology coupled with an aesthetic inconvenience. However, if obesity has become a global public health problem, disproportionately affecting the poor in rich countries and the rich in poor countries, it has not always had bad press:some eras even saw it as a reason for pride. /P> An image of opulence and sensuality In the Middle Ages, when the specter of hunger hung over the overwhelming majority of the population, a plump body conveyed an image of opulence and sensuality, while a emaciated body denoted disease and inspired aversion. Intended to satisfy the gluttony of the guests, the sumptuous banquets attended by princes and knights offered the opportunity to display its power. "He who eats in abundance dominates the others", summed up a medievalist, hence the long list of monarchs famous for their corpulence:the King of England William the Conqueror, the King of León Sancho I st le Gros, the king of France Louis VI le Gros, or even the king of England Henry VIII, whose obesity was transfigured into a grandiose majesty in the portrait made of him by Hans Holbein. In many literary works, one could read that happiness consisted in feasting and exhibiting a protruding belly, like the clerics:"Cuius implet latera moles et pinguedo / […] qui somnum desiderat et cibum et potum” (“He whose ribs are heavy overweight […] desires to sleep, eat and drink”), we find in the Carmina Burana , a collection of poems from the 13th century century. William Shakespeare portrayed Falstaff, a buffoonish, pot-bellied, drunken antihero who embodied a profoundly hedonistic view of life. Later, François Rabelais humorously revived the fascination for gluttons, like his Gargantua Even modest peasants aspired to a plump figure. In a story from 1553, Giovanni Francesco Straparola imagines a protagonist “so fat that his flesh looks like bacon”. Envied by a neighbor curious to know his secret, this one makes him believe that he was castrated... Haro on skinny girls Among women too, curves were appreciated. Famous French poem from the 13th th century, the Roman of the Rose combines feminine beauty with buxom shapes. Leanness, on the contrary, characterizes the allegories of avarice and sadness, represented in the guise of a “dreadful and dirty woman, [who] hunched over. / This thin and puny image / Was green as a cive, / And this colorless face / Seemed to be exhausted with languor. / Of a dead she had the appearance / Who lived only on abstinence / And on bread made of sour leaven. » A sort of popular treatise on domestic life in the 14th th century, the Menagier of Paris praised with a certain misogyny the "beautiful rains and big buttocks" of horses and women. In the XVI th and in the XVII th century, being overweight was still seen as a status symbol. The French moralist Jean de La Bruyère, for example, inserts in his Caractères the portrait of two diametrically opposed characters:the first, Giton, "has a fresh complexion, a full face and drooping cheeks, a fixed and assured eye, broad shoulders, a high stomach, a firm and deliberate gait", while the second, Phaedo, “has sunken eyes, a heated complexion, a lean body and a thin face. One is rich, the other is poor. To the meat were added condiments with a high energy content, such as sugar, the diffusion of which gradually caused the spices, which had dominated in the Middle Ages, to disappear. These misconceptions stemmed in part from the diet of the upper classes, who ate a lot of meat. In his Discourse on the preference of the nobility , published in 1606, Florentin Thierriat wrote:“We eat more partridges and delicate meats than [commoners] and this gives us a more flexible intelligence and sensitivity. To the meat were added condiments with a high energy content, such as sugar, the diffusion of which gradually caused the spices, which had dominated in the Middle Ages, to disappear. As the gastronomic historian Jean-Louis Flandrin has observed, the men of "the 16th century , XVII th , XVIII th and XIX th centuries have rather praised women with “succulent” flesh, wide hips and lavish breasts. It would be surprising if this had nothing to do with the fact that from the XVI th century, sugar, butter and fatty sauces have replaced sour and spicy seasonings in the diets of social elites. » A symbol of good health, well-being and sexual attraction, female plumpness was glorified by many painters, such as the famous Flemish artist Rubens (1577-1640). In his piece titled Secret Love, or the Maiden Queen , the British writer John Dryden (1631-1700) had a lady say:"I am determined to put on weight to look young until I am 40, then to leave this world as soon as the first wrinkle. » A capital sin for the Church But not everyone saw being overweight so favorably. The Church considered gluttony a cardinal sin, and it exercised control over the diet of the population. The carnival, which pitted fat against lean in a struggle between the joy of living and the sadness of penance, was followed by Lent, or 40 days of fasting and sexual abstinence, during which this control was exercised more noticeably. Perceived in the collective imagination as a source of vitality and pleasure, excess food, especially meat, was also a sin. In this regard, the accusations of voracity exchanged between Catholics and Protestants in the 16th century century are revealing. For example, after portraying Martin Luther as a young, slender man, Catholics came to portray him as a portly, puffy man. In return, the German reformer addressed this kind of reproach to the Catholic monks:“O monks, you are only idlers, big paunches, real barrels of Bacchus; God be my witness, you are the most dreadful of pestilences. » Medicine at the time also warned against the risks of excessive weight gain, which doctors attributed to excess water, phlegm or gas. To remedy this, they proposed expelling these "bad moods" by performing bloodletting and administering purgative or astringent substances, such as vinegar. A 17 th French physician century, Gui Patin, observed that Parisians “usually [did] little exercise, [drank] and [ate] a lot and [became] very plethoric”, thus exposing themselves to the risk of dying of a sudden apoplexy. Like most physicians of his time, Gui Patin imagined that rising to the brain, blood warmed by excess fat could cause a seizure or fatal illness. If the most drastic remedy was to lower the pressure by practicing frequent and abundant bleeding, it was also recommended to lose weight by following diets or practicing physical activity. It was said, for example, of Queen Catherine de Medici that she “[ate] a lot; but after that she [sought] remedies in the great bodily exercises”. It was also considered that a warmer climate could facilitate the expulsion of humors, while humidity could penetrate the body and lead to weight gain, as illustrated by a letter from the Marquise de Sévigné:"For the air from here, you just have to breathe to be fat. » "To tell the truth, obesity, in comparison, is more becoming to beauty than thinness. »– Jean Liébault, doctor If they proscribed thinness, the canons of beauty of the time nevertheless exalted slender and elegant silhouettes. The fashion was for close-fitting cuts, especially among women, with the spread of belts, corsets and fitted bustiers. We instinctively sought a happy medium to be neither too fat nor too thin. But between these extremes, corpulence prevailed. This was also the opinion of the physician Jean Liébault, expressed in a passage on recipes for "losing too much fat in the body", taken from his treatise of 1572:"We must not judge those to be beautiful, who are thin or too fat […]. If therefore the Damsel is fat all over the body, […] it will be good to seek all the means of slimming her […]. By thinning it I mean reducing it to a moderate corpulence, which is neither too fat nor too thin:for, to tell the truth, obesity, in comparison, is more becoming to beauty than thinness. » Find out more The Metamorphoses of fat. History of obesity , by Georges Vigarello, Dots, 2017. All things considered The oldest precedent for the current habit of weighing oneself can be attributed to Santorio Santorio, whose method is surprising, however:in addition to weighing himself on a daily basis, this Italian doctor from the beginning of the 17 th century also weighed the food he ate and his excrement. Santorio's intention wasn't so much to watch his weight as to balance what he was taking in and what he was taking out. In 1725, however, the authorities rejected the idea of installing scales in Paris:“We know of no need or utility to establish scales to weigh people. » Fat and Grace To paint his Three Graces , Rubens posed his second wife, Hélène Fourment, and her sisters, whose fleshy curves he reproduced with such realism that a recent study allowed a doctor specializing in endocrinology and diabetes to calculate a body mass index overweight, between 26 and 30 – above the normal weight range of 18 to 25. The work also contains hints of other conditions, such as hyperlordosis (exaggerated arching of the lower spine).
