Meet me at the well.....

So, I just typed in the google search bar, "I am fat and...." to see what it would fill in and here is what came up:

*ugly
*need to lose weight
*depressed
*want to lose weight
*lazy
*disgusting
*I want to die
*pregnant
*unhappy
*miserable

Of course, I was really annoyed by this. Why is it that there are only negatives about being fat? Not one thing came up about being fat and beautiful. So, I guess that you cannot be beautiful if you are fat? Are you kidding me! Now, here comes the rant......

In almost all ancient civilizations, big was beautiful. Women with big hips, pillow like bellies and abundant bosoms were idolized, by the Romans, the Grecians, and even the Paleolithic Europeans. More flesh at the right places meant fertility. Fertility was surely important at a time when people mostly died of war, food shortages and pestilence, and average life expectancy maxed out at forty years. Even till a few hundred years ago, artists like Peter Paul Rubens liked their women well endowed. Women in real life till the end of the 1800s liked to exaggerate their assets through their gowns, nipping in only the waist.

And then there was a turn around. After the whole Coco Chanel thing and the flapper girls in the 20s, looking emaciated was hip. Designers followed this trend of course. These designers wanted fashion and clothing to have an otherworldly grace, and the ideal figure of thinness got superimposed on the existing concept of beauty. Despite a revival of curvaceous-ness in the 1930's and then again in the 1950's with Marilyn Monroe, the ideal female figure remained slim, and in the nineties became epitomized in the pre-pubescent (and gross) looks of the likes of Kate Moss.

Most women in the twentieth century fell for this image that denies a woman her earthy femininity, and makes her a twig. This image was fed by the fad diet and beauty industry worth billions, and women and even girls barely in their teens bought into it. In an age where life expectancy spiraled into the 90's a woman's fertility and hence her girth was no longer considered a priority.

What is more, it is the rich in the Western world that had access to diets, to organically grown food, to health spas, trainers and gymnasiums. The poor, brought up on ho-ho's and no home gym, usually could not afford to be as thin.

At this point it is probably useful to mention that most of the aristocratic women in Peter Paul Rubens's time were rather large, and so large was the norm for beauty. The "less privileged" women portrayed in the paintings of Vermeer were not so well-fleshed: slim meant poor at the time. And sometimes in other countries, it is the same.

But in the end of the 20th century, it was the rich and powerful that could be thin and chiseled (mmmm.... the word chiseled makes me lust a little), so slim became the accepted standard of female beauty: slim meant rich. And women stepped with this baggage into the 21st century.

Interestingly, throughout these ups and downs in the world of fashion through the last century, where thin was more in fashion than out, curvy women have remained the constant theme of men's fantasies. Look at Playboy, and there has never been a stick-thin, skin-and-bones woman in sight. It is true that you don't see a size 18 woman often, but it is less often that you see a size 4.

Thin has been fashionable, but rarely has it been sexy. Men still prefer their women curved at all the right places. And what men rarely accept in public is that a lot of them are not averse to much, much more than curves.The 'hourglass' shape is always a plus.

A lot of men found Renée Zellwegger in her part as the plump Bridget Jones much more attractive than her skinny figure in Jerry Maguire. Moreover, this year there has been a turnaround in the world of fashion, with runways in Brazil and Italy refusing to admit underweight models. Curves are back in. Women like Manuela Arcuri and Valeria Marini are increasing becoming mainstream in terms of ideal body types.

Big women beauty pageants have begun to come up, and big women have begun to prove that spaghetti strapped tops and low cut jeans are not for the extra-slim alone. Jean-Paul Gaultier put a woman Italian size 50 on the ramp for his thirtieth anniversary celebration last October. Even in Italy where the fashion world usually shies away from bigger sizes on their clothes racks, there is a new acceptance of women who are not ashamed of earthy, well-rounded shapes.

The stick-thin models that are featured on magazines form about 1% of the population and people have begun to realize that it is time we celebrated the real women. The real women are not found in fashion magazines. We see them all around us, in their natural form without any artificial additions or subtractions, in all sorts of shapes and sizes on streets, in trains and restaurants. And most of them cut a bella figura, they are some of the most beautiful women in the world. They are also mostly women of substance, their beauty cannot be measured on the weighing scale.

_{Queen Latifah, Spokesperson for Plus Size models}

I am accepting curves. I am so tired people telling me that I cannot be beautiful because I have huge hips, a big bottom, and curves. Screw that. So many women are going against the norm and being seen as beautiful. Queen Latifah, Nikki Blonsky, America Ferrera. So, what? I am a size 18 and. I do not feel the need to eat a diet of lettuce until I have whittled down to the size of a stick. Besides, if you had 2 presents, one tiny and whimpy and the other one nice and big, which would you pick?