Article Three

(CNN)Hidden in the halls of the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York are
historic textiles and glamorous garments, many of which hold secrets from years
past.

Yet no matter how aesthetically unique or historically significant a particular piece of

fashion may be, most visitors to the museum typically ask one question, said Emma
McClendon, the museum's associate curator of costume.
"People come and always want to know what size something is," said McClendon,
who organized the exhibition "The Body: Fashion and Physique," about the history of
the idealized body type in fashion, which is on display until May.
"Whether it's contemporary or 19th century, they want to know what size it is or
what size it would correlate to, or what measurement it is," she said. "We as a
culture, as a society, are obsessed with size. It's become connected to our identity as
people."
This obsession fuels societal pressures to appear a certain way and to have a certain
body type, particularly among young women, stemming from a cultural construct of
the "ideal" body, which has in turn changed over time -- as long ago as pre-history.
Thousands of years ago, sculptures and artworks portrayed curvaceous, thickset
silhouettes. More recently, in the late 20th century, thin, waif-like models filled the
pages of fashion magazines. Now, shapely backsides are celebrated with "likes" on
social media.
To mark International Women's Day, we explore how this "ideal" is ever-changing,
forming a complex history throughout art and fashion -- with damaging impacts on
women who try to conform in each era.
Prehistory-1900s: A focus on full-figured silhouettes
Some of the earliest known representations of a woman's body are the "Venus
figurines," small statues from 23,000 to 25,000 years ago in Europe.
The figurines -- including the "Venus of Willendorf," found in 1908 at Willendorf,
Austria -- portray round, pear-shaped women's bodies, many with large breasts.
Experts have long debated whether the figurines symbolize attractiveness or fertility.
In ancient Greece, Aphrodite, the goddess of sexual love and beauty, was often
portrayed with curves.
A statue commonly thought to represent Aphrodite, called the Venus de Milo,
depicts small breasts but is shaped with a twisted figure and elongated body,
characteristic of that time period.
Artists continued to portray the "ideal" woman as curvy and voluptuous all the way
through to the 17th and 18th centuries.
The 17th century Flemish painter Peter Paul Rubens was even the namesake of the
term "rubenesque," meaning plump or rounded, as he often depicted women with
curvy body types.
To achieve this in reality, the corset became a popular undergarment among women
in the Western world from the late Renaissance into the 20th century. It helped
accentuate a woman's curves by holding in her waist and supporting her bosom.
As societal views of a woman's body changed over time, so did the shape and
construction of the corset, also sometimes referred to as stays.
The 18th-century stay mirrored a cone-shaped silhouette, but by the 1790s, shorter
stays emerged, resembling proto-brassieres, which complemented the new fashion
trend of high-waisted dresses.
"There was an emphasis on under-structure to shape the body. That's true for skirts
as well," McClendon said.
"Whether it be hooped or caged or padded, under-structures were worn around the
lower body to create a specific volume," she said. "In the 18th and the 19th
centuries, the idealized fashionable body -- so this is talking specifically about what's
promoted in the fashion industry itself -- was much more curvaceous and much more
voluptuous."
In the 1890s, American artist Charles Dana Gibson drew images of tall, slim-waisted
yet voluptuous women in illustrations for mainstream magazines, and these
depictions of the new feminine ideal were referred to as the "Gibson Girl."
Going into the early 20th century, the portrayal of women's bodies in art was
constantly evolving, as seen in French artist Henri Matisse's oil paintings showing
lithe, flowing bodies and then Spanish artist Pablo Picasso's paintings showing
plump, contorted nude bodies in vivid detail.
"Then, in the 20th century, there's a very defined shift towards an increasingly young
and increasingly kind of athletic and slender body," McClendon said.
It remains somewhat unclear what triggered this shift, but the interest in thin bodies
would continue well into the modern day.
1920s-'50s: Eating disorders -- and a changing bust-to-waist ratio
The rise of the 1920s flapper reflected this shift toward the Western world desiring a
more slim physique.
As slender women's bodies started to appear in magazines In the mid-1920s, an
epidemic of eating disorders also occurred among young women, according to some
studies.
"The highest reported prevalence of disordered eating occurred during the 1920s
and 1980s, the two periods during which the 'ideal woman' was thinnest in US
history," researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison wrote in a paper in the
Journal of Communication in 1997.
The bust-to-waist ratios among women featured in the magazines Vogue and Ladies
Home Journal dwindled by about 60% between 1901 and 1925, according to an
analysis in a study published in the journal Sex Roles in 1986.
"Such findings would constitute empirical support for the hypothesis that the mass
media play a role in promoting the slim standard of bodily attractiveness fashionable
among women," the researchers wrote. "Through this standard perhaps the eating
disorders that have become increasingly common."
By the late 1940s, that ratio climbed back, increasing by about one-third in both
magazines, the study found.
Around that time, the fuller body types of pinup models and actresses like Marilyn
Monroe grew in popularity, and the first issue of Playboy magazine was published in
1953.
The ratio then dropped again.
By the late 1960s, the ratio had returned to approximately the same level it was in
the 1920s, the study found.
1960s-'70s: 'A complete fallacy' revealed
The historical shift from a rounded to a thinner body preference led to the rise of
British fashion model Lesley Lawson, known as Twiggy, and other slender models.
They seemed to symbolize a shift away from the corsets and pinup girls of years past.
Simultaneously, the "second wave" of the women's rights movement began.
In 1960, the US Food and Drug Administration approved the birth control pill. In
1963, women's rights activist Betty Friedan published her book "The Feminine
Mystique." In 1966, the National Organization for Women in the US was founded.
"People talk about the '60s, even the '70s, as this moment when the woman's body
is freed," McClendon said. "But that notion that women were all of a sudden
completely free in their bodies after that point is a complete fallacy."
Although women were no longer squeezing themselves into corsets, the media
messaging and societal pressures to adhere to an "ideal" body still continued. That
"ideal" was instead a very young and thin body type.
"Foundation garments were replaced by diet and exercise," McClendon said.
What remained was the "notion that in order for your body to be truly fashionable,
you had to probably change it some way," she said. "You had to maintain it in some
way."
The incidence of severe anorexia nervosa requiring hospital admission rose
significant during the 1960s and '70s to reach a plateau, according to a study in the
journal Current Psychiatry Reports in 2012.
1980s-'90s: The rise of the supermodels -- and obesity
Though images of thin women continued to be mainstream well into the 1980s,
there became more of an emphasis on strong, athletic and toned body types.
"We do see an interest in a fit, toned, strong body -- still lean but athletic. So this is
where you get the emphasis on those classic supermodels like Cindy Crawford and
Naomi Campbell," McClendon said.
Though there still was an emphasis on a thin body, there was also emphasis on a
healthier and fitter body.
Then, by the '90s, that emphasis shifted back to more skinny, waif-like body types.
"The term that gets so much associated with that decade is the '90s is the moment of
the waif," McClendon said. "Kate Moss is the epitome of that. Her nickname was 'the
waif.' She became a household name from Calvin Klein ads in the early 1990s."
Anorexia nervosa was associated with the highest rate of mortality among all mental
disorders during the 1990s, according to the study in Current Psychiatry Reports.
Around that same time, the World Health Organization began sounding the alarm
about the growing global obesity epidemic.
Obesity means a person has too much body fat, and it can increase the risk of health
problems including diabetes, heart disease, stroke, arthritis and even some cancers.
The prevalence of obesity sharply increased in the '90s. An estimated 200 million
adults worldwide were obese, and that number rose to more than 300 million by
2000, according to the WHO.
As images of obesity flashed across media screens as a part of public health outreach
efforts, in contrast so did images of skinny models, McClendon said.
"We begin to see a stark divide in the way bodies are presented across the media,
with extreme thinness celebrated in fashion imagery while larger bodies are
highlighted as 'unhealthy' and bad in reporting on obesity. And we begin to judge our
own bodies through the same binary lens," she said.
So, it seems, the psychological impacts from that included impacts on body image.
2000s: Loss of self-confidence
Nearly a third of children aged 5 to 6 in the US select an ideal body size that is
thinner than their current perceived size when given the option, and by age 7, one in
four children has engaged in some kind of dieting behavior, according to a Common
Sense Media report published in 2015.
The report, based on a review of existing studies on body image and media, also
found that between 1999 and 2006, hospitalizations for eating disorders in the US
spiked 119% among children under age 12.
In the United Kingdom, nearly a quarter, 24%, of child care professionals have
reported seeing signs of body confidence issues in children aged 3 to 5, according to
research from the Professional Association for Childcare and Early Years published in
2016.
Another study found that the incidence rate of eating disorders for people aged 10 to
49 in the UK rose from 32.3 per 100,000 in 2000 to 37.2 per 100,000 in 2009. Yet the
peak age of onset for an eating disorder diagnosis in women was during adolescence,
between 15 and 19, according to that study.
"When kids are entering adolescence, they're developing their own identity and
trying to figure out what's socially acceptable so when they're inundated with images
of a particular body type in appealing scenarios, they're more apt to absorb the idea
that that particular body type is ideal," said Sierra Filucci, executive editor of
parenting content and distribution for Common Sense Media, a nonprofit
organization focused on helping children, parents and educators navigate the world
of media and technology.
Among a sample of 6,411 South Africans 15 and older, 45.3% reported being
generally dissatisfied about their body size, according to a study published in the
journal BMC Public Health in 2015.
Overweight and obese study participants underestimated their body size and desired
to be thinner, whereas normal and underweight participants overestimated their
body size and desired to be fatter, according to the study. Only 12% and 10.1% of
participants attempted to lose or gain weight, respectively, that study found.
2010s: Embracing diversity
Since the start of the 21st century, there has been a shift toward celebrating diverse
body types in the media and fashion. That trend appears to correlate with the use of
social media, where diverse types are represented by everyday users online.
Of course, social media can also give some teens a negative body image. A Common
Sense Media survey found that more than a quarter of teens who are active online
stress about how they look in posted photos.
On the other hand, the rise of social media has allowed for real women to celebrate
real body types. McClendon even called social media a "frontier for body-positive
expression."
"Over the course of the last 50-plus years, the American ideal has shifted from curvy
to androgynous to muscular and everything in between," Filucci said.
"As these ideals change, they are reflected and reinforced in the culture through
media -- whether it's fine art or advertising billboards or music videos," she said,
adding that however those ideals are presented, they can still influence the body
image of young women and even children.
In 2007, the first episode of "Keeping Up With the Kardashians" aired in the US, and
ever since, the Kardashian sisters' bodies have become a frequent focus of celebrity
weekly magazines, ushering in new curvaceous body ideals.
In 2015, Robyn Lawley was the first plus-size model featured in Sports Illustrated's
swimsuit issue.
In 2016, fashion designer Christian Siriano featured five plus-size models in his show
during New York Fashion Week. That same year, toy manufacturing company Mattel
debuted a line of Barbie dolls depicting diverse body types, including curvy shapes.
Last year, reality show Project Runway, included models ranging from size 0 to 22 for
the first time in its history.
As for the current state of beauty, some health experts are warning of the dangers of
the "selfie" and social media culture as influencing body image, as the rise of
Instagram and YouTube has allowed for the bodies of everyday people to be
idealized, not just the bodies of supermodels.
Yet "when that body type is different from the one girls and young women have, they
can be vulnerable to low self-esteem," Filucci said, adding that parents can help
children develop positive body images through role modeling.
"That means refraining from negative body talk both for themselves and others and
speaking positively about their own bodies -- especially emphasizing their body's
abilities like strength, flexibility, resilience, adaptability ... rather than attractiveness,"
she said. "Parents can also look for media that reinforces positive body images and
avoids gender stereotypes."