Personally, I never got skinny jeans. Even the most graceful bum looks huge in those pants. Perhaps this is exactly the intention and I am just lagging behind:his slim buttocks are now 'so 2009'. Because if anything is changeable, it is beauty ideals.
Beauty has been associated with good throughout history. Sappho, an ancient Greek poet, once wrote, “What is beautiful is also good.” Conversely, it is also the case that unattractiveness or ugliness symbolized evil. Evil witches, for example, were often depicted with unattractive physical features and unpleasant personalities. Striving for beauty was therefore also striving for the good and striving for the generally applicable norm in society. Because we usually conform to the prevailing role in society, almost all of us strive for these beauty ideals. History teaches us that beauty pays off, in society (preferential treatment) but also in increasing our choice of partner.
Fashion
Just like now, beauty ideals were also propagated by trendsetters in the past; people with influence. In many cases, these were wealthy people who prescribed a valid beauty standard by wearing certain items of clothing and emphasizing certain parts of the body.
The developments that beauty ideals have experienced differ per region. Some ideals never got a foothold in Europe, others were more universal. A common denominator is that beauty ideals have always been closely intertwined with fashion. So let's take a bird's-eye view of the prevailing beauty ideals and the accompanying fashion fads.
Prehistory
We have no written sources from this time, so we're not quite sure what they thought about beauty in prehistoric times. However, many Venus figures have been found from this period that represent women. These women all have big shapes. Sturdy hips, a big bum, and a bust to be jealous of. It is not entirely clear what once the function of these figurines was. They are often associated with a fertility cult, in which the role of the woman as mother was exalted and perhaps treated as an ideal.
Greek and Roman
Beauty for the Greeks was a sign of divinity. Art followed the differing views of philosophical schools in this. The Discus Thrower is a fine example of the Greek ideal of beauty; it is idealized.
The Discus Thrower is athletically muscular, with fine yet strong features and a small penis. Women were often portrayed as youthful and round, with a slender waist, high conical breasts and arched hips. The latter was mainly to express their main mission in society at the time:motherhood.
The Romans knew little of their own art. They mainly copied a lot from the Greeks and therefore also their ideals of beauty. Nevertheless, the Romans also had their own ideals of beauty:for men this was mainly a large and muscular build, with long legs, a good head with hair, a high and broad forehead as a sign of intelligence, pronounced eyebrows, open eyes, a perfectly stylized nose. , a somewhat smaller mouth, and a strong jawline. It is less clear for women, they were mainly required to bear strong children. Women did use makeup to give themselves a pale appearance; a sign that they did not have to do hard labor in the sun. The wealthy ladies also used dye to make their lips red.
The earliest theory of beauty is found in the works of Greek philosophers such as Pythagoras. His supporters saw a connection between beauty and mathematics. More specifically, they saw a connection between objects proportioned to the golden ratio and the degree of beauty. The golden ratio is a mathematical ratio where the height to the width is 1:0.618. Modern science also seems to confirm this theory; people whose faces are symmetrical and proportioned according to the golden ratio are considered more attractive in our (un)conscious choice for a partner.
Middle Ages
Physical beauty was not very important in the early Middle Ages. Life was permeated with faith, with the pursuit of earthly things, such as ideal physical forms, being found unprofitable or even sinful. Earthly life was only temporary after all. They dressed ascetically so as not to distract attention from what really mattered, the afterlife and the spiritual. Of course, the lascivious farmer's daughter was considered attractive, but the elite did not consciously propagate an ideal of beauty.
After Europe got over the shock of the Black Death, more frivolous times dawned. Under the inspiring leadership of the elite, beautiful garments were used to achieve a curious ideal of beauty. They preferred small breasts that were situated a lot higher than normal, narrow drooping shoulders, broad hips with a correspondingly large buttocks, and a curved round belly as if the ladies were constantly pregnant. Finally, the ladies were preferably lily white with blond hair.
In order to achieve this ideal in reality, the torso was constricted to such an extent that the breasts were high on the body. A lot of fabric was used for the skirt and it was slightly wrinkled to create the effect of a big belly. With this, for the first time in history, people deviated from Aristotle's view that the body is a whole, and by means of certain interventions tried to emphasize individual parts of the body.
Ideals of beauty for men, as propagated by the Greeks and Romans, laid the foundation for the current male ideal of beauty. It is remarkable that this ideal of beauty has remained virtually unchanged today; Over the centuries, women have had to do a lot of tinkering with their bodies and faces to meet the prevailing beauty standard. A man now considered attractive is suspiciously similar to the Roman ideal of beauty. The reason for the changing ideal of beauty for women may be partly due to their changing role in history, where we see over the centuries that women have become more and more equal to men, and the primary role of motherhood has flattened out. /P>
Renaissance
The Renaissance embroiders on the beauty ideals of the full Middle Ages. The well-to-do ladies still wore their breasts constricted. However, the bulging tummy disappeared and gave way to a graceful waist, which was emphasized by a tight bodice cut in a V-shape. To make the waist look extra slim, but also make the hips nice and wide, the ladies wore sumptuous skirts made of meters and meters of fabric.
In this period the neck was considered very beautiful. The cut of the collar was therefore cut in such a way that it appeared as long as possible. Under the influence of Queen Elizabeth, a high forehead was also found to be very charming. Ladies who were not blessed with a high forehead epilate their hairline to move it optically backwards.
Just like in the Middle Ages, blond was the hair color par excellence. If a lady did not naturally have this, it often happened that she dyed the blonde with dubious remedies. A white look was also still popular. This could be obtained by smearing the face with ceruse, a liniment based on lead, which was not always good for health.
Baroque and Rococo
Although Peter Paul Rubens takes the cake with his paintings of fat people, we also see in other painters in the Baroque that people are portrayed rather plump. Being fat was definitely a sign of prosperity, and was considered very beautiful. The role (and size) of the breasts, on the other hand, has decreased. When we look at Eva on the right, we see that the ratio between her body weight and the size of her breasts does not quite match. Pale skin also remained very trendy, sometimes with veins lined with blue make-up to emphasize the good descent (“Blue blood”))
Although a plump face was valued during the Rococo, the physical ideal shifted to 'petite'. To achieve this effect, the ladies were mercilessly constricted. Corsets made of whale bone had to constrict the ladies' waists in such a way that respiratory complaints were frequent. That was the charm of it. Fainting was considered very graceful by the opposite sex. The constricted waist was considered the proof of virtue, discipline, and refinement.
Fin du Siècle
From the 19 e century, the succession of beauty ideals went fast. Several periods can be distinguished in this century:approximately between 1790 and 1820, the ideal of beauty is a very high waist. Just below the breasts, the body was constricted, causing the breasts to rise again promptly. The derrière played a subordinate role in this period, because the high waist gave dresses the shape of a kind of tube.
During the Romantic era (1820-1850) the ladies still constricted their waists, only it shifted back to its natural position. During this time it became fashionable to have a voluminous skirt; a cage construction (the crinoline) that the skirts could fall over increased the size of the skirts without making their weight unbearable.
At the end of this century, the crinoline was abandoned and replaced by the 'tournure'. This was a construction that especially emphasized the skirt at the back. In addition to the emphasis on the buttocks, the breasts were also allowed to be there. By emphasizing both body parts, a beloved S-line was created.
Roaring Twenties until now
Start 20 e century, the ladies seem to fanatically oppose previously preferred ideals of beauty. The woman was no longer inferior to the man in society, and this was reflected in a certain form of imitation. A boyish figure was the new ideal. In The Roaring Twenties, the ladies wore shorter skirts and dresses, wide and not fitted. The hair was worn short and up. To achieve this boyish look, some women even tucked in their breasts to look sporty, young and slender.
And then suddenly it goes fast. The full femininity of Marilyn Monroe had only just been set a few years in the 1950s when top model Twiggy became the new ideal in the 1960s. Her slender body expressed a new ideal; women's ability and discipline to say "no" to unattractive fringes of fat.
This ideal evolved further in the 1970s and 1980s with actresses such as Farah Fawcett. The fitness craze that emerged dictated that women should not only be slim, but also toned. To this day, sporty and slim (sometimes even skinny) is the ideal we expect from women.
Role of the elite
In fashion and beauty ideals, it has always been the elite that have come before us. It used to be the princes and the nobles, now they are movie stars and musicians. Why her? The exclusivity of beauty ideals lies primarily in the amount of time and effort required to realize those ideals, and the degree of prosperity required to achieve them. Pale skin used to be a beauty ideal that the elite could indulge in, because they didn't have to work hard outside in the blazing sun. Nowadays, movie stars like Keira Knightley are so slim because they simply have time to train 5 hours a day in the gym, and can pay for a private trainer.
Yet beauty ideals have become accessible to more and more people thanks to increased prosperity. These ideals differ slightly from the ideals of the 'elite'; they have become relatively attainable ideals within our understanding of wealth and time. For the real fashion junkies, however, it is still an expensive hobby. They will undoubtedly run straight to the store for their skinny jeans. So I leave them hanging when I see them in the store.