From: joe@spdcc.com (Joseph Francis)
Subject: Re: Changing standards of female beauty (was Re: Ageism)
Organization: S.P. Dyer Computer Consulting, Cambridge MA
Date: Thu, 24 Dec 1992 11:35:33 GMT

In article <1haug6INN9tj@mizar.usc.edu> adolphso@mizar.usc.edu (adolphson) writes:
>In article <mattm-231292130250@mcmelmon.apple.com> 
>mattm@apple.com (Matthew Melmon) writes:
>> In article <1992Dec23.194112.15834@spdcc.com>, joe@spdcc.com (Joseph
>> Francis) wrote:
>>
>> > grow fierce moustaches again, and everthing was bush until about the
>> > 30's, when everything just went straight downhill until the 60's.
>
>Note that Jojo was talking about standards of male beauty.

Of which, a moustache is an essential design element.

>> One of my design instructors complained along much the same lines.
>> His argument - partly humorous and partly serious - was that 
>> sexually frustrated gay fashion editors began "doing everything they
>> could to make the adult woman into a thirteen year old boy."
>
>Oh yes those "sexually frustrated gay fashion editors" like 
>Carmel Snow and Diana Vreeland.

I always knew Diana Vreeland was gay. Those crystal obelisks on the
dining table were a dead giveaway.

>> If - after the screams of *homophobia* die down - one looks at
>> the transformation of 'beauty' through this period, one can see
>> certain elements of truth in what he said.  The slender, gangly,
>> bobbish, androgynous female beauty icons *do* resemble thirteen-
>> year old boys.
>
>We're talking about the '30s through the '60s, right?  So I 
>suppose you mean to draw our attention to such "slender, gangly,
>bobbish [bobbish?], androgynous female beauty icons" as Jean
>Harlow, Joan Crawford, Rita Hayworth, Marilyn Monroe, Sophia 
>Loren, Gina Lollabrigida, Carmen, Kim Novak, and Lisa Fonssagrives?

Lets go back a little more, and forward a little more: '20s to the
'70s. Theda Bara was not by any stretch of the imagination
13-year-old-boyish, by today's standards she was dumpy. She was a sex
bombshell too. There are two standards operating: fashion, or the
atmosphere which allows for a concrete realization of fantasy however
brief, and 'hollywood'. Flappers were skinny: prohibition. The vamp.
This derives from what I mentioned, the pre-Raphaelite 'souls' of the
turn-of-the-century. There were also bombshells. The 40's and 50's had
some of the plumpest and most curvaceous hyper-females in history:
Jayne Mansfield (and the male version, Mickey Hartigay; I won't even
go into male screen idols, or hyper-figures, Steeve Reeves)... and the
rest of Arne's list. The 'ideal' 36-24-36 evolved over this period,
and lasted well into the '70s. There were several factors working on
the Hollywood version of sexually appealing, aong them, the way people
look on screen. Tall slender women don't work well, and are rare on
screen: Marlene Dietrich (who was also distinctively plump in the 50's
and 60's) a model of 'androgyny', Katherine Hepburn ("box office
poisin"). 60's and 70's androgyny I think evolved from a rarely seen
film, "Breathless" (Bout de souffle), which invented, in many ways,
the pixie haircut, and slender French androgyny. It also comes from a
convergence of fashion and cinema (via Warhol, among others). In
fashion, tall women photograph well. Height accentuates that they are
'slender'. In many ways, it can be thought to be an optical
'illusion'. Most androgyny is the result of hair styling. The same
period which produced Twiggy produced Russ Meyers, so it is difficult
for me to see a 'standard'. It takes looking at the material, over
time. Annette Funichello movies do not have skinny women. I'll admit,
however, that 1968, 1969 clearly produced skinny women in advertising
- Edie Sedgwick among others. These were also the years when speed was
tremendously popular. Male looks were clear.  Aside from Bruce Dern in
"The Trip", where he sports an absolutely huge brown beard and looks
devestating, I remember very, very few beards from this period
("Barbarella" has a sequence in the beginning with a head-to-toe
covered hairy man having sex with her which is nice: but this derives
from the French comic books, and the French in this period always
seemed to have a few bearded men. However, French cinema from this
period is as clean shaven as ever, underground and aboveground: that
is not to say that anyone ever looked like a 13-year-old-boy.) Even
Fred Astaire dons a fake beard in "Funny Face" when confronting the
empathaticalist as a florida gospel singer.

I think "The Beauty Myth" would go over wonderfully, but Barthe's
unreadable "The Fashion System" wouldn't at all.
-- 
US Jojo; damp, slighly soiled, but tasty nonetheless.
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