Auguste Renoir once said "There is enough ugliness in the world -- why should we paint ugly pictures?" So, this young lady, the subject of Seated Bather (1883-1884) certainly wasn't what he considered ugly! She fits the lush, rounded style of Renoir's era.It seems I was born too late, dang it.
Gustave Klimt is considered one of the foremost definers of the Art Nouveau movement, which emphasised use of sensuous curving lines and forms. There is nothing "supermodel-like" about his Danae (1907). Her thigh is much more familiar to most of us than the thin, tubelike thighs that are considered attractive now
This painting by Pablo Picasso (one of my favorite artists) always makes me smile, just for the sheer joy and fun of it! Bet you thought that Picasso only painted what looked like bits of people all stuck together the wrong way? That was only one of his artistic periods.Though the perspective and proportions are deliberately skewed, and this is not an attempt at realism, these women are definitely of "heroic" proportions. Don't they look happy? Who says you have to have ribs sticking out to be joyous and attractive? Why wait until you lose weight before you start doing all the things you want to do?
Here are some statistics for you:
*Most fashion models are thinner than 98% of American women
*The average fashion model is 5'9" to 6' tall, weighs 110 - 118 lbs and is seventeen to twenty-six years old & wears a size 6 - 8 dress.
*The average American woman is 5'5" tall, weighs 142 lbs, and is 44 years old.
*Forty percent of women wear a size 14 or above...
*Sales of plus-size clothes in 1996 were more than $20 billion...
*Plus size sales rose to $47 billion in 2005.
*Lillian Russell, the leading sex symbol at the end of the 19th century, weighed over 200 pounds.
*Marilyn Monroe would be considered "overweight" by today's standards. She fluctuated between a size 14 and size 18 dress
3 comments:
I know why, but I don't know why there is a perception that bigger girls aren't pretty.
Not everyone likes em like bones (certainly not me), and we should all be happy that we're individually different.
There can be nothing prettier in this world than the differences we all have. If we all looked the same, we'd be boring.
By the way... I LOVE hourglasses. LOL ;-)
I remember reading an interview of Elizabeth Hurley once calling Marilyn huge, and I so want to smack her too skinny ass for that!
Quite so. Speaking as a painter, it is a dreadful thing to try and paint a bony woman and make her look attractive. Can't be done! Beauty is in a curved line: not an angle.
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