Two images sell magazines: the thin
celebrity and the fat celebrity. Sometimes they are juxtaposed, visions from
heaven and hell; sometimes, having winched herself into “the right” shape, a
woman is roundly fêted for her discipline and virtue. Over the past two
decades, in the absence of loftier beliefs, those images became our scriptures.
Being thin was a religion, a way of imposing moral restraints on ourselves amid
the material abundance of modern life.
Then something extraordinary happened: a
clutch of famous women started filling out. Desperate Housewives actress Eva
Longoria announced that she had gained five pounds, “and suddenly it’s a
national scandal”; Christina Hendricks, star of the hit US television series
Mad Men, committed virtual blasphemy by flaunting her size-12 physique on
screen; and Kate Winslet, without apparent shame, has been parading her soft
outlines around the world, not in Evans, the high-street label for the larger
woman, but in curve-hugging Herve Leger, Balmain, Narciso Rodriguez and, at
last night’s Baftas, in fish-tailed Zac Posen.
Last week, news of actress Jessica Simpson’s
weight gain provoked reverberations of such global dimensions that even
President Obama became involved. “It’s a little hurtful,” he admitted when told
that he was to be replaced on the front cover of US Weekly by the newly
corpulent blonde. “A weight battle, apparently. Yeah. Oh well.”
Confounded, stylemakers attempted to calm
the madding crowds: “It’s OK,” they said through gritted teeth, “these are
'real’ women. Lets applaud them for their bravery!”
Applause may be de trop, but be
warned: recession curves, say the experts, are on their way, cushioning us from
hard times ahead, projecting an influx of luscious women on to our barren
landscapes.
“In times of plenty there’s a contrarian
chic to having an austere shape,” says design guru Stephen Bayley, author of
the forthcoming Woman as Design. “Equally, in times of want, there is an
opposing taste for a voluptuous one. What the female body illuminates is that
ever-present conflict between acceptance of the real and pursuit of the ideal.”
That pursuit of an ideal, zen-like physical
state of extreme slimness may have been more frenetic than ever of late, but it
is far from new.
In the 1700s, when the corset was invented,
the trend-setting Madame de Pompadour, (just over five feet and eight stone)
declared herself “skeletally thin”, hoping that, rather like the sweetmeats she
was so fond of, this would be swallowed whole. Moderation as a concept, and not
for reasons of vanity, began to be promoted in the 1800s, when abstinence
became a sign of refinement. In 1864 the concept of “a diet” was introduced
when William Banting published his famous Letter on Corpulence, but it was not
until a century later that the psychoanalyst Hilde Bruch assigned a
psychological link to overeating. “The blubbery patient belongs not in the
gym,” he wrote, “but in the psychiatrist’s office.”
Throughout the centuries, however, Bayley’s
“contrarian chic” has remained in evidence: women tended to be skinny during
booms and fuller-figured in hard times, something Susie Orbach, author of Fat
is a Feminist Issue and the new Bodies, predicts is starting to
happen now.
“Paradoxically, lean times allow a lessening
of the strictures with which women have so corseted their eating and their
bodies,” she says. “With the fear of what might be happening in the economy
there is a new mood of concern and care and, in the personal realm, a
permission to be less controlled and more forgiving. Curves also soften blows
or perhaps give people a sense that they don’t need to be so angular and cut
and thrust.”
“Curve maintenance” is certainly cheaper
than lollipop chic (the £15 sashimi lunch box can now be swapped for a £2.50
jacket potato), but, unlike men, women have never allowed finances to govern
their rationale. What matters is that our idols (Nigella’s Venus-like charms
have been so exhaustively cited that even she’s bored of talking about them)
have become less rigid in their self-discipline.
“I think it all started with Mad Men’s
Christina Hendricks,” says Glamour editor Jo Elvin. “Both men and women are
really crushing on her at the moment. Who doesn’t wish they filled a sweater
and skirt like that girl?” An ever-decreasing band of women, apparently. Even
uber-stylist Katie Grand, who is shortly to launch a twice-yearly fashion and
style magazine for Condé Nast called Love, has allegedly banned size-zero
models from its pages.
“Thinness has traditionally been based on
the needs of the movie/fashion industry,” explains Bayley. “Thin women tend to
move better than fat ones so were initially preferred in the cinema. For
similar reasons, and because clothes tend to hang better on thin women, catwalk
models tend to be thin. But now that we are interpreting the spurious dynamic
of the fashion industry as wasteful, exploitative and manipulative, this view
of thinness may be altering. I also suspect it is not what women truly want for
themselves. And certainly, if my own tastes are anything to go by, men are not
specially attracted to very thin women: there’s no Darwinian explanation for
the appeal of thinness. Quite the opposite in fact.”
Those new curves may make us more alluring
to the opposite sex, but with the BMIs of the front rows as low as they are on
the catwalks, aren’t they anathema to high fashion? Not necessarily, says Vogue
executive fashion editor Calgary Avansino. “Designers who relish and appreciate
a classically curvy female silhouette may be few and far between, but those who
do – Vivienne Westwood, Dolce and Gabbana, Marchesa, and Donna Karan – know
exactly how to make “rounder” women feel sexy and proud of their physiques.”
Still there are fashion rules to abide by,
says TV stylist and author of The Lazy Goddess Hannah Sandling. “Resist
the temptation to cover up if you put on a few extra pounds,” she advises.
“Celebrate that over-indulgence; God knows there won’t be much of it to be had.
Sculpt your curves like Kate Winslet; don’t drown a voluptuous figure – that’ll
just make it look twice as big. In the office, luscious curves should be
flaunted in structured pencil skirts and sexy shirts with a great pair of court
shoes. The figures on that white-board may be dire, but everyone will have
their eyes on your figure, so who cares. Curves equals sexiness, which equals
confidence. Do your bit towards perking up the confidence of the nation and
positive vibes will snowball.”
“In the end, the female body is the greatest
design of them all,” surmises Bayley, “as much a work of art as of nature. For
centuries, people have been aware of the mother-whore distinction. Thing is,
each one provides comfort and pleasure. And each depends on a generous body to
do so. It’s not so much that curves are back... they never really went away.”
