Across history and
cultures, what’s deemed attractive has varied. There are a few
constants. Being rich never scares off potential bed-warmers. To
quote Blackadder, being a ‘thrice-endowed supreme donkey of the
trouser part’ is also not harmful (that said, excessive endowment
can be a problem, and one unlikely to yield much sympathy).
But most things do
change. In the modern world a ‘healthy tan’ is appreciated by
many people. A few centuries back, a tan meant you were a peasant
working the fields, rather than a porcelain-skinned lady who lived in
a lovely house and spent her day contemplating God and doing
needlework.
Change can also occur
very rapidly. Fashion varied wildly from the start to the end of the
Tudor period. More recently, a few decades ago it was the norm for
catwalk models to be unhealthily skinny. They’re hardly fat now,
but the change is stark (a reaction to the rise of anorexia, as well
as common sense).
Although this is
changing, in parts of Africa women being of larger size is/was deemed
attractive. The reason is pretty basic. Large size means plenty of
food, means prosperity and security. Only a few generations ago
“You’ve gained weight” was a compliment in the UK. When the
world you live in has famines, diseases, poor medicine and occasional
massive wars, a surplus of food is not seen as a bad thing.
But today, in the UK,
where famine doesn’t really exist, diseases can be treated,
medicine is much improved and wars tend to be small and overseas
rather than existential and at home/just over the English Channel,
the prism shifts. Excessive weight is seen not as a sign of success,
prosperity and security, but as the symptom of sloth and greed, of
lack of exercise and risking health problems.
And the reverse is also
true. “Impiety has made a feast of thee” Shakespeare wrote in
Measure for Measure (I think). This refers to one character greeting
another who has lost weight. Huzzah, you might think. But in
Elizabethan English, Shakespeare’s one-liner means the first
character is asserting the second is skinnier because he’s been
shagging so many prostitutes he contracted syphilis, which has caused
his weight to drop.
Another old saying is
that someone (this has been aimed at me) is just ‘skin and bone’.
Don’t hear it much nowadays, but it does hark back to a time when
bigger was better and skinniness was to be avoided.
Pox scars could help
you get a job. I forget the precise time/place (I think it was the UK
a century or two ago, during a pox outbreak). The scars only came
after you’d survived, and once you made it through without dying,
you became immune to the pox. So, the scars, whilst ugly, meant you
wouldn’t die and inconvenience your company with paperwork and
finding a replacement.
On a similar note,
another type of disease (smooth-skin leprosy, if memory serves) often
suffered by milk maidens made the skin, er, very smooth. No scars of
disfigurement and probably helped milk maids achieve their fond folk
memory of frolicking delights.
There’s also an
element of, if not choice, elitism in attractiveness. To be
well-rounded centuries ago required wealth. To be in great shape now
requires the time, money or willpower to spend down the gym or
running on the streets. The ‘healthy tan’ requires time to
sunbathe and money to go abroad. Obviously, people are naturally
blessed with glorious fingernails or stunning cheekbones, or cursed
with bad breath or having one eye larger than the other, but the
degree to which we’re attractive is, to a large extent, in our
hands.
If we have the means to
take advantage of it, of course.
Thaddeus
