HSG

Imagine that. As of today, December 12th, this site has been online for 12 years.

In Web terms, that is an eternity. The site's history reaches all the way back to the primeval days of GeoCities and Netscape, CompuServe and AOL Homestead. It remains proud of its Web 1.0 identity in an age when Web 2.0 is standardizing and commercializing the Internet, formatting it into cookie-cutter templates and turning it into an officious, corporatist environment.

Before Twitter, Facebook, or Myspace, before Tumblrs and "blogs" (a poorer neologism than which has seldom been devised), there was the fan site and the personal Web page. We are pleased to remain a link to those long-forgotten days when creating Internet sites meant coding by hand, with no templates, no forms, and no Flash, merely HTML and a bit of imagination.

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We use these annual posts to offer diverse reflections on sundry matters, particularly ones that involve a comprehensive view of cultural aesthetics and the beauty ideal. We commented on the most urgent topic of 2010 a few weeks ago, discussing the fact that the plus-size industry is increasingly being co-opted by straight-size fashion, thus diminishing its subversive power and turning it into an entity that is very nearly as harmful to women's body image as minus-size fashion used to be, since a significant portion of today's plus-size models are nearly as underweight as the straight-size models were two decades ago.

Today, however, we will examine a different phenomenon: the tendency of many non-Western cultures to claim that the promotion of the modern androgynous standard is a form of Occidental cultural imperialism, against which these cultures contrast their own indigenous traditions of fuller-figured femininity.

Such arguments do not trouble us in and of themselves. Whatever talking points are useful in promoting the appreciation of plus-size beauty are fine with us.

However, the claim that the androgynous standard is a "Western" ideal of beauty is colossally false, as we will now discuss.

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First, though, let us consider three random news stories illustrating how various Eastern cultures contrast their own traditional understandings of womanly beauty with the emaciated form that they have imported from America.

One recent piece from the Hindustan Times notes how a number of Indian actresses have put on weight for various film roles. It features the following comment:

Notice that a "voluptuous" female figure is regarded as "typical[ly] Indian."


A different recent article from Fox News announces that "Latinas love their curves":

The article notes how one Hispanic actress has created a performance troupe

Ms. Lopez is brave to offer such a politically incorrect (if indisputable) observation about the nature of the warped aesthetic that her industry mandates. Nevertheless, mark how the article frames the lingering Hispanic preference for a fuller-figured ideal of womanly beauty as an indigenous cultural trope that is distinctive of this ethnic community, in contrast to the artificially narrow standard that characterizes the American media.


Finally, one article from a Kenyan source draws the clearest possible distinction between what it considers to be a Western standard of appearance for women and a natural African love of full-figured beauty:

The article even references the colonial experience, and frames the love of well-fed womanliness as something that is distinctive of native culture:

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The picture that these stories paint is of various indigenous communities being culturally invaded by the West via its androgynous, modern aesthetic. They characterize an appreciation for plus-size beauty as a nobly tribal or nationalist impulse, and present native cultures as being locked in combat with this aesthetic form of foreign imperialism.

We agree with these contentions. Indeed, we applaud such sentiments and hope that they proliferate in these disparate cultures, leading to a greater worldwide shunning of the invasive, unwanted, pro-anorexia push from the American media.

But let us consider, for a moment, if it is fair to label the modern, cadaverous standard a specifically "Western" ideal of beauty.

In truth, it is nothing of the sort.

After all, it certainly does not represent the traditional Irish understanding of beauty. The Celts have always loved "big, soft girls" (to quote a line from the film Circle of Friends). Nor is it a Germanic preference--for the historic German vision of womanly beauty was one of Wagnerian dimensions. It is emphatically not a Slavonic ideal, given that in the various Slavic tongues, the phrase for describing female weight gain translates as "improvement," so when a beautiful girl gains weight, the Slavs literally say of her that "She has improved."

Neither is it an ideal from Southern Europe, which is historically as much a part of the West as are the Nordic countries. The very phrase "Classical beauty," embodied by statues such as the Venus de Medici, originated in Greek culture, and represents a womanly form that is far more generous than anything that the modern media accepts. The Romans adopted this voluptuous Greek aesthetic as definitive, and spread it around their Imperial world. Even to this day, Elena Mirò uses the phrase "Mediterranean Beauty" as its own in-house term for full-figured femininity.

Thus, the androgynous standard is clearly not a product of the Old World. It is conclusively not European in origin.

But when one refers to the "West," one means the New World as well as the Old. Perhaps the unfeminine, emaciated standard is therefore categorically American?

No, it is not even that.

In the 19th century, Lillian Russell was specifically heralded as "the American Beauty" (not just "an" American Beauty, but "the" American Beauty). Horticulturists cultivated the American Beauty Rose and named it after her. Lillian represented the summit of American aesthetics, the final flowering of traditional American culture, before the nascent "mass media" metastasized across the cultural landscape.

The traditional culture of the United States was, in many ways, an outgrowth of WASP civilization, but in a heartier, more robust form. The full-figured English beauties of the novels of Charlotte Bronte would acquire their swelling curves though their sinful yet genteel over-indulgence in cakes and pastries; but Lillian would wolf down fourteen-course steak dinners, tearing open her corset to allow herself to gorge as much as she wanted, all the while knowing that her superlative beauty meant that she would be a goddess regardless of her weight gain; indeed, that she would become even more beautiful the softer and fuller she became.

Therefore, if the androgynous, modern standard is not a product of traditional European culture, nor is it a characteristic of historical American culture, then it is not in fact a product of the West at all, and it cannot be classified as a "Western ideal of beauty." Traditional, authentic "Western ideals of beauty" were identical in fullness and dimensions (indeed, in all but skin colour) to Indian and African ideals of female beauty. All of these historical cultures idealized the plus-size womanly form.

But if the modern, unfeminine, starvation standard that is explicitly designed to rob women of their secondary sex characteristics is not a Western innovation, then what is it?

It is something alien.

By this, of course, we do not mean "extraterrestrial." We mean that it is something foreign, and not indigenous to the West.

Whereas the West is historically considered a colonizing culture, it has itself been colonized by this alien aesthetic from an outside, foreign source, as surely as this alien standard is colonizing the Eastern cultures noted above.

The anorexic standard is just as hostile to traditional Teutonic and Slavonic and Celtic ideals of beauty as it is hostile to African and Indian ideals of beauty. It is as anti-WASP as it is anti-Indian, as anti-white as it is anti-black.

And today, just as these Eastern cultures are setting themselves in opposition to the modern media's imposition of this emaciated standard of appearance as a foreign intrusion, so should each of us of European heritage, each of us who is the product of a Western culture, set ourselves against it as well, as an unwanted, alien, colonizing force.

If the renewed appreciation of the curvier female form can reawaken an African or Indian consciousness, so too can a renewed appreciation of the curvier female form reawaken a Germanic or Anglo-Saxon or Greek consciousness.

In essence, the traditional love of soft, feminine beauty is something nationalistic and ethnic and essential, versus the modern media's preference for the toned, underfed look, which is alien and rootless, something monolithically internationalist and soullessly cosmopolitan. The androgynous standard is a parasite, a foreign invader that is corrupting our culture.

The battle of androgynous emaciation against plus-size beauty is not a conflict pitting West again East, but heritage against modernity, traditional values versus media values, ethnic identity versus internationalist rootlessness.

We should slough it off, then, like an infection, like a plague bacillus, after which the culture will regain its health--as will all women who currently suffer from malformed body image. Such a disease analogy is entirely apt, given that the promotion of artificial skinniness leads directly to illnesses both physical and mental (i.e., eating disorders, which harm the body and the mind).

It is time for a worldwide rejection of this New World Order of ugliness, this One World Government of guilt-aesthetics, governed from New York or Los Angeles. It is time for every ethnicity and culture to rediscover its essential, historic preference for unapologetically luscious womanliness and to champion it, even in the face of the modern media onslaught.

It is time for heritage to triumph over homogeneity, nature to best artifice, and for the timeless ideal to be restored. After 12 years, we look forward to this cultural renewal more than ever.

Lillian Russell, who, with her flaxen hair, peaches-and-cream complexion, and full figure, embodies the true "Western ideal of beauty" (so similar in proportion to other traditional ideals of beauty), in contrast to the alien standard that the mass media is imposing around the world.

- The Judgment of Paris

Meredith

This is counter-intuitive, but very true. As paradoxical as it may seem (given that its centres are in Western cities), the modern media has colonized the West as surely as it has colonized the East. The media's origins are alien to all of these traditional, rooted cultures. It's the cultural equivalent of an invasive species.

What Vogue is pushing is as opposite to historic European ideals of beauty as it is opposite to historic African ideals of beauty. Traditional German or Irish or Italian beauty would be closer to traditional African proportions than to what Hollywood enforces.

Usually, colonizing is something that is presented as happening from West to East. But in this case, Old World culture and its American extension is actually the victim of this colonizing force, not the perpetrator.

Tamika

Happy 12th Anniversary to the Judgment of Paris! It's remarkable to think that this site has been online for twelve years.

This is an excellent post. All cultures, whether they be Western, Asian or African, are being affected by the alien ideal of androgyny, and all cultures must fight to restore the timeless ideal of full-figured beauty.

Kaitlynn

No question about it- today's fashion standard is as antithetical to the West and its beauty tradition as it is hostile to the heritage and traditions of other nations and peoples.

In a nutshell: it's Hollywoodism versus traditionalism.


This is a hopeful thought. It reminds me of some of the passages in the Kelsey Olson profile, where Kelsey mentioned her Danish/Germanic ethnicity in Part Two,

http://www.judgmentofparis.com/kelsey/part2.htm

and the discussion in Part Three of how curves are traditional to Nordic peoples.

http://www.judgmentofparis.com/kelsey/part3.htm

In America, media culture has long tried to erase people's Old World identities, and to have them reinvent themselves as rootless parts of a political collective. But if those of us of European descent were to reconnect to our heritage, we would feel better about womanly curves. We would recognize them as something that is in our DNA, something that distinguishes us, something that is part of our own beauty tradition- something that is distinctively ours, in contrast to which the warped media standard of sexless, starved, unfeminine appearance is foreign and imposed, and should be rejected out of hand.

The Kenyan article quoted in the original post identified how Africans are rejecting media values on the basis that their own indigenous aesthetic is very different. We in the West should do the same, likewise liberating ourselves and rediscovering our own ethnic traditions, values, and cultures.

vargas

I'm so glad that this issue has been brought up. When looking at Western art, one understands that the modern aesthetic has nothing to do with any Old World ideals, European or otherwise. The protracted assault on culture really is rather scary, a destructive agenda born from the minds of radical and debased thinkers.

The alien aesthetic was something that proliferated in 20th century. It was born out of discontent with the then-current culture and authority and all that it stood for. It was against royalty and nobility, against the old values that had built civilizations in the past, and against all that is beautiful. The dissolute new elites that created this inhuman aesthetic came to actively hate everything Western culture stood for: its great works of art were slandered as irrelevant or "kitschy," its literature as dominated by "dead white men" who no longer mattered or had anything important to impart to modern culture (whereas nothing could be further from the truth).

Among the casualties of this assault on tradition was the universal aesthetic of feminine beauty. The natural was done away with for the unnatural, for Dadaism, brutalism, and other modern styles that were not based on anything of substance, as the art of the past had been, but manufactured from the minds of people who were looking to re-engineer the culture around them, and to warp everyone else's tastes to resemble their own.

Fashion and women's bodies were also made over. Beginning in the 1920s, women began dressing like men and cutting off all their hair to look boyish. Their bodies were now required to look like men's bodies in order to be "fashionable." Of course this didn't happen overnight, but the slow and steady erosion of older ideals led to the travesty that we see now - ugly art dominating the cultural scene, ugly architecture, horrendous music, and a fashion industry that has nearly destroyed the natural idea that women are supposed to be curvaceous.

We all know what type of men this idea caters to. They have been quite busy for generations destroying Western culture and ideals, and then exporting their degenerate taste around the world to poison everyone else's culture as well.

Thankfully, there are those who have chosen to think for themselves and have rejected this aesthetic. That is why this site is so important. With it, I hope, will follow a new renaissance, not only in fashion and in how women see themselves, but in art and music and architecture as well.