ARTS

On Trend or Cake

CJ FletCher

Setting New Year’s resolutions and hitting the reset button always ends with promises of exercising, cutting back on treats, starting new diets, and reinventing your look. However, this year, I think it’s time those resolutions had a refresh.

If the year 2020 hasn’t taught you that there are more important things than your appearance and how you appeal to society’s newest body trend, then this is your wakeup call. Understanding how society makes us feel about our own bodies, allows us to avoid giving power to social anxieties and ego, and give more energy to appreciating our health and spending time with loved ones.

This New Year let’s make sure hitting the refresh button and setting new goals includes educating ourselves about how our society treats female body types as a trend. To do this, let’s examine the changing representations of women’s bodies in art.

Body Trends Throughout History:

Between 1400 and 1700, during the Renaissance period, women were often depicted with large breasts, cellulite, round stomachs, and wide hips. This is evident in the art piece The Three Graces by Peter Paul Ruben, which exposes three naked women with curvy plump figures, surrounded by nature.

Moving on to the Victorian era between 1800 and 1900, Franz Xaver Winterhalter’s portrait of Queen Victoria displays a prominent body trend of the period. This painting presents a female with large breasts, a plump frame, and cinched waist, wearing a laced-up corset in line with fashion trends of the time.

Then, a more drastic change occurs in the roaring 20s, where the latest fashion included flapper dresses that were tight against the figure. This is featured in Russel Patterson’s work, Where there’s smoke there’s fire, which displays a woman with a boyish, petite figure, flat chest and flat stomach.

These trends have continued to develop through to the modern day.

The new trend is having a flat stomach, big bum and breasts, tanned skin, a thigh gap, and hairless body from the neck down. This, of course, does not preclude shaping your eyebrows, having perfect skin and conforming to the ‘no-makeup’ makeup look. PROSH is Pelican with less syllables/brain cells

Modern day art/social media:

Of course, in today’s society, the expression of art has changed vastly from painting, tending more towards photography which can be widely spread via different social media platforms. We can view the ‘ideal’ body type, an hourglass skinny figure, anytime and anywhere on all our mobile devices. How exciting!

Refreshing:

I’m not sure why we treat our bodies like they are trends that constantly go in and out of fashion. The expectations to wear a bra, shave your legs, and exercise in accordance to the latest workout can start to feel like a neverending source of exhaustion. If you’re over being on-trend, exploring the art of Florence Given might be the breath of fresh air you’re looking for.

The illustrations in her book, Women Don’t Owe You Pretty, explore different styles that are considered to challenge the societal norm. The artwork shows women with hairy arms, hairy legs, and naked bodies. We see racial difference, bodies of all shapes and sizes, with only one thing in common: every single one of these drawings depicts a badass woman who looks powerful, bold, and desirable. The artworks feature traditionally feminine colours, along with quotes of female empowerment.

When I compare these pieces to real women and then to the beautiful realist paintings of the past, I notice that they capture the true visual of females; they don’t exclude a shape, size, or style, instead including all female forms.

So, for this year’s resolutions, I don’t want to be on-trend.

I want to eat cake, dress comfily and not wear a bra. Ultimately, it’s about choice. Whether you shave, what you eat, and how you exercise are your decisions only. So, instead of allowing trends to dictate these decisions, let’s refresh the new year with the art of being inspired by those who simply don’t give a fuck about what’s on trend.