Post: #1

This is interesting. Classic art photoshopped to make the women thinner.

http://www.visualnews.com/2012/02/08/cla...treatment/

Quote:“What would have happened if the aesthetic standard of our society had belonged to the collective unconscious of the great artists of the past?” So asks Italian artist Anna Utopia Giordano in her Venus project, which re-imagines classic artistic depictions of Venus with a modern and extreme Photoshop makeover. What begin as mostly Rubenesque beauties are transformed into busty, slim-waisted figures more closely matching the ideals we are bombarded with today.

Feminist undertones aside, this project has some merit. I have a lot of thoughts on this, but I'd like to keep the discussion open ended, before dropping a long post about culture and history.

Curious - which version do you prefer?

Alexandre Cabanel – The Birth of Venus - original

Alexandre Cabanel – The Birth of Venus - photoshop

Post: #2

I prefer the thinner ones. I imagine most other guys would as well.

But I am wondering. Why did the guys think plumper women were more attractive in the past?

I always found that interesting. It is strange to think the things that turn you on could change depending on which century you were born in.

Post: #3

I think perhaps a little extra fat was seen as a sign of fertility when women were literally more valued for the ability to produce more offspring, whereas today they are still valued for fertility, but it's more about how much fun in the sack they look to be, rather than actually having a lot of kids. So being lighter and more athletic becomes more favored. Just a guess.

Post: #4

(11-25-2013 02:08 PM)cardguy Wrote:  I prefer the thinner ones. I imagine most other guys would as well.

But I am wondering. Why did the guys think plumper women were more attractive in the past?

I always found that interesting. It is strange to think the things that turn you on could change depending on which century you were born in.

In older times, weight was a sign of wealth - every bite you had you had to farm yourself. If you were fat, it meant you had so much wealth you could afford to eat more than you actually needed, and pay others to do physical labor for you. Look at the kings and queens in England - all slightly overweight.

Part of our change in cultural standards has to do with what shows status. Now the poor are fat walmart shoppers, and the wealthy have the leisure time to go to the gym and can afford health supplements. So it's also possible that the added weight in these pictures is to show high social status.


Same with pale skin. In older times, pale was hot because it meant you didn't have to farm outside in the sun all day. Now, tan is attractive because it means you have free time to play in the sun rather then dwelling indoors all day in a cubicle.

Post: #5

Is it that simple?

Does a fat chick become hot if she suddenly wins the lottery?

Personally I think it is more complex than that. For instance these social changes have taken place over three to four hundred years. Whereas natural selection tends to take place over much longer periods (tens of thousands of years).

Perhaps there is some switch in the brain which is programmed by evolution - which makes you attracted to whatever is considered 'hot' in that person's society?

But does that mean the fat feminists are correct? In the sense that societies ideal of beauty is subjective and could be changed to be more 'inclusive' of fat people?

I still think this is a complex issue that has yet to be fully answered.

Post: #6

(11-25-2013 02:08 PM)cardguy Wrote:  I prefer the thinner ones. I imagine most other guys would as well.

But I am wondering. Why did the guys think plumper women were more attractive in the past?

I've read multiple theories about fat being considered aspirational as it was a sign of the upper class and noble breeding to have the luxury of excess weight.

Was this actually the standard of beauty of society at the time? Or was the upper-class, then as now, spinning the hamster wheel?

If you're patronised by the rich upper classes, isn't it in your best interest to sell fat as 'beautiful'?

This is where 'Rubenesque' comes from. Feminists assume Rubens was depicting beauty, rather than social standing. They also try to consider their morbid-obesity in the same class as his slightly-overweight women. They also cling to Rubens, ignoring the other Italian Renaissance artists who *didn't* depict hugely overweight women.

It's entirely possible the distended abdominals, (there's very few Gunts in Renaissance art), were due to the malnutrition of the models.

Post: #7

(11-25-2013 02:42 PM)cardguy Wrote:  I still think this is a complex issue that has yet to be fully answered.

Agreed. It's further fouled by the fact we often "flintstonize" the past and assume our society was organized like their way.

I'm not sure that what men are attracted to has changed, as much as what is considered high status has.

This art may not have been intended to turn men on, as much as project the societies ideal. Our society puts a high premium on being "hot" - because we are now mostly non-monogamous or serial-monogamists, we're always "on the market." In earlier times, with the consequence of pregnancy, and a greater need for a male provider, wealth may have been a great social ideal.

Keep in mind, these artists were painting the models available to them - regular women, often prostitutes. Whereas we can go online and see some of the hotest women in the world, they may not have had that kind of access or been creating art with sexual attraction as an ideal.

(11-25-2013 02:47 PM)AnonymousBosch Wrote:  

(11-25-2013 02:08 PM)cardguy Wrote:  I prefer the thinner ones. I imagine most other guys would as well.

But I am wondering. Why did the guys think plumper women were more attractive in the past?

I've read multiple theories about fat being considered aspirational as it was a sign of the upper class and noble breeding to have the luxury of excess weight.

Was this actually the standard of beauty of society at the time? Or was the upper-class, then as now, spinning the hamster wheel?

If you're patronised by the rich upper classes, isn't it in your best interest to sell fat as 'beautiful'?

This is where 'Rubenesque' comes from. Feminists assume Rubens was depicting beauty, rather than social standing. They also try to consider their morbid-obesity in the same class as his slightly-overweight women. They also cling to Rubens, ignoring the other Italian Renaissance artists who *didn't* depict hugely overweight women.

It's entirely possible the distended abdominals, (there's very few Gunts in Renaissance art), were due to the malnutrition of the models.

I hadn't heard that bit about malnutrition before, but it makes sense.

I find the idea that upper class women were hamstering their weight through culture interesting as well. "Courtly love" - the ultimate creation of the hamster - came about a little before this time period, so it's a possibiltiy.

It fits with the idea too that these paintings depict status, not beauty.

Post: #8

I guessed they were done by a woman before I clicked through to the article. Something about the proportions looked off.

I was right, and from the pictures of the artist I found, she brought them close to how she looks... slim boyish hips, with wide shoulders.
https://twitter.com/utopiagiordano/statu...64/photo/1

Masterful trolling!

"I'd hate myself if I had that kind of attitude, if I were that weak." - Arnold

Post: #9

(11-25-2013 05:00 PM)crippler Wrote:  I was right, and from the pictures of the artist I found, she brought them close to how she looks... slim boyish hips, with wide shoulders.

Actually, many renaissance artists used teenage boys as models.

Post: #10

The more I think on this topic, the more I realise this "artist" is making the same assumption feminists make: that idealised depictions in the media of the day truly match the way women look and are what people find sexually attractive, and they misread it as fat slobbery were valued.

Renaissance beauty was still not obese, but not having visible bones like the lower classes, since, in an era of arranged unions, visible affluence attracted more marriage suitors. Also pale skin, twinkling eyes, blushing cheeks and strawberry blonde hair, all considered valuable because they were signs of youth.

If Feminists want to go back to this ideal of beauty, they would need to:

- wear stays and corsets to narrow their hip to waist ratio;

- strip their hair colour with lye and dye it with tumeric to become strawberry-blonde, then sunbleach it by wearing a Venetian hat, which shaded the rest of the skin from the sun whilst exposing the hair;

- regularly drop belladonna in their eyes to make them sparkle, and eventually make them go blind;

- use whitening powder on their faces to look paler? How did they achieve this? The main ingredient was lead.

Women chasing beauty have always done and will always do stupid things.

I've long thought that the majority of renaissance art can't honestly be said to depict accurate bodily-proportions at all. The eye can always tell something is 'off'. This is an extreme example, but is this really an accurate depiction of a sexually-desirable woman of the time? I could also theorise Rubens was really bad with waist vs shoulder ratio. The further down his bodies you go, the more unrealistic they look.

Post: #11

In general I like the originals better. There is a better play between the opposing curves when there is more weight. This is called an S curve. In general they are exaggerated which is visually more exciting to me as well. The real thing is often more bland in comparison. Westal Richard looks better shopped but that's about it. Line and curve are extremely important in painting and these painting were designed specifically with this in mind. If they were designed with a thinner model the composition would have accounted for that. That one of the big reasons why these look odd to me.

Post: #12

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:MG-Par..._Milos.jpg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Cnidus...nv8619.jpg
Would smash. Even if her old man shoots me with lightening bolts afterwards.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/co..._Slave.jpg
Would ABSOLUTELY smash WITH the handcuffs still on.

Post: #13

(11-25-2013 05:46 PM)germanico Wrote:  

(11-25-2013 05:00 PM)crippler Wrote:  I was right, and from the pictures of the artist I found, she brought them close to how she looks... slim boyish hips, with wide shoulders.

Actually, many renaissance artists used teenage boys as models.

Yeah, but it's plain old narcissism from the girl - "look how terrible it is, people nowadays only find women who look like this attractive" - "curse these beauty standards that make me hot"

"I'd hate myself if I had that kind of attitude, if I were that weak." - Arnold

Post: #14

IF today's women looked like classical paintings then my balls would never have the time to refill.

Feminists like to reference the depictions of these painters and say how off current beauty standards are. Thing is that modern women in the western world (American in this example) look nothing like the women Rafael, Leonardo, Zorn, Klimt and Poynter desired, they are not the full-figured but proportional women that was a past beauty standard. This is simple obfuscation to shame men for desiring attractive women.

Post: #15

The reason a lot of these paintings had women who were fat was probably because aristocratic people were, as a norm, relatively fatter.
They were also the target market --- a lot of these paintings were commissioned by the aristocrats...

Making fatness "desirable", so to speak, might have been precisely because these fat women were threatened. Kinda like the anti-fat shaming that's happening these days. Not as a coherent group entity, perhaps, but in their own individual ways influencing what the artist painted.
Women are inherently competitive, and most aristocratic women would have refused to buy paintings that depicted thin, sexy, in-shape models.

Conquerors had easy access to pussy anyway and allowing their fat wives to buy whatever art they wanted to was perhaps a way of maintaining the peace in the household...a lot of these were alliances to bind different royal houses anyway.

Also, given the massive undernourished, illiterate and sickly masses, the absence of the internet,the many problems inherent in daily life, near continuous warfare, huge travel times, and harsh penalties for going against the rule of the land, influencing culture would have been mostly the prerogative of the people in power---the aristocracy and the leaders of the common man(during revolts/revolutions) etc.

Over the course of a couple of generations, these artistic templates wouldve been solidified, like the massively beta culture in civilised society today, thereby solidifying the "plump is in" unnatural ideal.

Post: #16

Alot of intelligent contributions here.

Good example of why I enjoy this forum.

Post: #17

(11-25-2013 02:08 PM)cardguy Wrote:  I prefer the thinner ones. I imagine most other guys would as well.

But I am wondering. Why did the guys think plumper women were more attractive in the past?

They probably didn't. More likely that they simply didn't have much choice in the matter, and artists were either not inclined, not permitted or didn't have the source material to render ideal body shapes. (Many of those images clearly seem to be going for anatomical accuracy of an average-build woman)

Our modern perceptions are far more skewed by the fact that we can see thousands of real, non-photoshopped girls in their teens and early 20s posting semi-nude pictures of themselves online (or simply walking down the street, if you live in an area with a thriving chick population), than they are by photoshopped images in media.

Post: #18

Yeah - it is a good point. If you took a hot chick from today - I am sure she wouldn't have trouble getting laid centuries ago.

Post: #19

I prefer the originals. They aren't fat but curvy. The thin look for women began with the model "Twiggy" in 1970. Until then, the women in those paintings were the preferred type. Just look at any Playboy from the pre-Twiggy era, i.e, the 1950s or 1960s. American men born after this time have been conditioned to prefer androgynous skinny women.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twiggy#Mode...80.9370.29