so begins the uber-thin ideal...

Being thin doesn't mean you aren't womanly or look like an insect.

Besides, there's more than enough thin hate/fat worshipping going on doncha think?

http://www.formspring.me/LaGamine

The OP made a valid point. If not for Chanel influence in the fashion world, the stereotype of the ultra-skinny supermodel probably would have never become an "ideal" to follow by millions of young women around the world.

I was watching the extras found on the DVD and the filmmakers were exalting Coco Chanel to the skies, like if she were Joan of Arc or Madame Curie. They said that Coco single-handedly managed to "free" the woman from those uncomfortable corsets and "baroque" dresses. That may be true for the rich ladies who could afford to buy one of those dresses. For the average woman, peasants and poor housewifes (In short for the vast majority of women of that period), that kind of dresses were simply too expensive to them. They were "freed" long before for the mere fact of being dirt poor! (Like Coco Chanel herself).

Therefore Chanel "freed" only the richest women. In the other hand she helped to establish as the "ideal" woman, "skeletal models" who have a figure impossible to reach for most women without becoming anorexic or/and bulimic.

The hourglass figure of the early 1900s became less ideal not because "thin was in" but because the emphasis in society switched from the voluptuous, mature woman, to the teenage/young woman. For a great deal of the 19th century, due to societal expectations and gender norm, unmarried girls and young girls were seen as unimportant, and married and mature women were the focus and were permitted relative freedom. By the 1910s, even before WWI, the "youth culture" that we've worshiped 'til this day, took hold, hence why silhouettes slimmed down considerably and the slender, athletic body type was wanted.

But the pendulum has always swung back and forth, as you can seen if you look at art history. The Egyptians tended to be thin and angular. Greeks tended to be more average and perfect proportion was their ideal. Some of the great beauties in the Renaissance were obese.

It is disturbing that so many people now are overweight when the ideal is so thin. What needs to be the ideal is health, whether you're extremely angular, extremely curvy (and by curvy I don't mean fat), or somewhere in the middle. Maybe if we all ask him nicely, David Kibbe will bring out a new edition of "Metamorphosis" and then all types can be in fashion.

...Audrey Tautou has a voluputous, womanly figure and is also too short to be a modern high-fashion model. She is the opposite of what you are describing.

Somehow, I doubt Chanel would have been impressed with what we see today and she probalby would have rebelled against that, too.

What the OP said was exactly what was going through my mind yesterday as I watched this film. Since women no longer depended on corsets to shape them, they themselves had to be in perfect shape to carry off her creations... which I think were mostly meant for people similar to her in shape and size.

She started it all !!

it's a part of history and an important era for 20th century fashion. it's actually nothing to be bothered about. it's not like everyone in those days were anorexic. get over it