Although it is normally imagined that women seek out cosmetic surgery simply to be more beautiful, other effects can be achieved by surgery. And despite the sense many have that cosmetic surgery is frivolous, it can give an appearance of great seriousness. If we look at the Academy Awards nominees … [Read more...]
Beautiful at any Size: Conclusion
Walking through the grocery store, one is visually overwhelmed by images of the female body. Slender, sonsie female bodies, no less, bodies differentiated only by the colors of their gleaming coifs. Month after month, the parade goes on, and even if the identity of the bodies change (which you can … [Read more...]
The Baroque and the Beautiful
Although it is definitely true that narrow hips have a universal appeal, there is a brief period when Western culture became fascinated with really big women, not Marilyn Monroe, Jayne Mansfield, voluptuous pin-up big, but really big women. The most famous artist of the period created the iconic … [Read more...]
The Odalisque
The odalisque was a common subject in paintings of the 19th century. The origin of the term is the Turkish "Odalik," describing a virgin female slave, but in Western usage the term is later used to describe a luxurious concubine or prostitute. The traditional posture of the odalisque in painting is … [Read more...]
The Pinup and Modern Femininity
The pinup is a contested object in cultural circles both for its artistic form and its social content. The pinup may actually be the root of modern women's body image problems. Before the pinup, most representations of the feminine form were contained in either high art or pornography. In either … [Read more...]
Classical Norms
The Greek and Romans gave us so many of our cultural foundations in terms of law, government, philosophy, literature, and architecture that it should not be surprising that they also established many of our norms in terms of our concepts of feminine beauty. It is easy to see the influence of … [Read more...]
So Long, Mistress of Piedras Blancas
I would just like to take a moment to say goodbye to Jeanne Carmen, B-Movie queen, who passed away this week at the age of 77. Although she was not what one would call a screen legend, she is an odd figure of note, as she was probably the first golf pin-up. And, speaking of figures, Carmen was one … [Read more...]
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