I think it is so interesting that when we look at European masterpieces painted in the Renaissance by famous French and Italian artists, we see a different type of idealised beauty in comparison to today’s stereotypical idealised beauty.
Today, girls aim to be Kendall Jenner look a-likes, ready for their unachievable flat stomach, only drank a juice in the past week, bikini Hot Girl Summer pics to be posted on Instagram.
Whereas, prior to the 1800’s, artists found womanhood beautiful. Natural, curvaceous bodies were drawn on goddesses and in particular, Venus, the goddess of love and beauty.
Now, explain this one to me… the literal goddess of love and BEAUTY is allowed to be voluptuous, curvy and thicc yet, women, even me, are out here beating themselves up for having a little pudge of a stomach? Or too much muscle on their legs?
I am confused. How did these unhealthy thoughts and unachievable body goals become so ingrained in us when the old, idealised beauty use to be our pure womanhood and natural beauty?
According to Cindy Joseph, a blogger who is campaigning for all beauty and speechmaking that beauty is a subjective thing, states that a thin silhouette as the beauty standard only came around in the 1960’s! Marilyn Monroe, the beauty queen was literally a size 14…
Again, someone please explain this to me! The sex symbol of the 1950’s, that woman aimed to look like and today, Billie Eilish aims to look like (according to her 2021 Met Gala look) was a natural size that is sometimes frowned upon today…
To be fair, I don’t agree with every part of the old European way of thinking. Like, the way that we can assume these old paintings were the beginning of shaming woman for not being virgins in comparison to men who (in most cases) can sleep around with little shame or judgement. This is because the other ideal beauty standard that was expected of women, was to appear innocent and pure. This was depicted by male artists in their European drawings of women, painting models who were most likely somewhere between 12 and 15 years old. I like to think this is because these artists and men were just hiding their insecurities that they couldn’t pull… so they had to normalise it and put the regularisation of not having sex onto women. You can quote that as factual from me, even though it probably, definitely isn’t.
Also, the ancient Anglo-Saxon view on beauty has ruined the construction of our magazines to this day. With very few multicultural people seen in pre-1800’s paintings and if there was a visual of a person other than an Anglo-Saxon in the painting, they were usually drawn within a negative context. I believe this has led to what we see nowadays, white females dominating our magazines and fewer multicultural models. In 2017, out of 214 covers published by the 19 bestselling glossies, only 20 featured a person of colour.
Whichever way you personally want to view it, pre-1800’s, European artists positively or negatively effecting the way we view ourselves today. I think it is important to share the fact that beauty is subjective and changes over time. Maybe, together, we just have a non-judgement, be who you are type of beauty; instead of putting people in a box. Either way, after writing this, I think I have decided that I will be dressing as Marilyn Monroe for Halloween this year!
That’s my ramble.
Ruby x
Comments