Emily

One of the more interesting threads that appeared on the forum late last year was this discussion about the conflict between the rootless, alien media and traditional culture. The post noted how the media pushes a utilitarian, androgynous, skinny image of "modern" women that is antithetical to the fleshy, feminine ideal that abounds in the heritage of so many of the world's cultures -- especially Western civilization, although this is often denied.

I recently came across a pair of articles that include the Arabian cultures in this conflict, describing how the nations of the Near East have a historic preference for plus-size beauty which is being undermined by Hollywoodism:

http://www.gulfweeklyworldwide.com/...1&Article=23816

The pertinent text:


Another article from an Arabian source draws a similar conclusion:

http://www.thenational.ae/news/uae-...rise-in-dieting

The facts:


There it is again -- the reference to the "Western media." As last year's forum post indicated, this emaciated standard is the opposite of traditional Western ideals of beauty, which are full-figured. Hollywood and Madison Avenue may geographically be located in "the West" (i.e., in America), but their artificial, underweight standards are actually anti-Western.

Yet the myth that skinniness is "Western" persists. I note a passage in this article about an Indian designer:

http://www.dailypioneer.com/299710/...ool-happen.html

He observes:


It's wonderful to find him positively referencing historical Indian artworks as celebrating full-figured beauty; however, that comment also indicates how wrong he is to call media-mandated skinniness a "Caucasian look." It is nothing of the sort!

A "Caucasian look" is Lillian Russell, or Rubens's wife Helen Fourment, or any goddess depicted in Classical or Renaissance or Baroque art. A "Caucasian look" is traditionally full-figured. A "Caucasian look" is historically plus-size. Whatever ethnicity the media's narrow, elongated, underweight standard reflects, it is certainly not a "Caucasian look."

It's wonderful that these world cultures can look back on their own heritage of celebrating full-figured beauty and favourably contrast it with the modern-media standards that they rightly deplore. I only wish that we in the West could do likewise. If more European-Americans learned what Classical or Nordic or Celtic beauty traditionally looked like (i.e., full-figured), we too could unshackle ourselves from the alien aesthetic that the parasitic media has imposed on us.