History of BBWorld Part IV

The early modern era encompassed a significant number of advancements in a short timeframe; the coinciding factors of the development of movable type, the rediscovery of the New World, and the establishment of mercantilism would have drastic effects on global society as well as on the ideals of femininity. Distribution of printed communication along with the greater interconnectedness resulting from imperial conquest and mercantile trade meant that states around the world were gaining a greater understanding of their similarities and differences in values. Between the two topics extensively discussed here, the WHW title would be the first to experience the effects of these advancements.

Given that most states still held on to the idea of having the heaviest figurehead to indicate their superiority in terms of wealth and prosperity, the newly accessible records of the sizes of their fellow states’ noblewomen ignited a competition; WHW had now become a truly globally recognized honor. As states raced to establish empires and generate maximum wealth, so too did their figureheads seek maximum fatness. The first woman generally acknowledged to have crossed the 400-lb mark was Isabella I, spurred on by the establishment of the Spanish Empire in the early days of imperialism; her high-water mark of about 402 lbs, measured in 1504, was quickly contested by Maria of Aragon (wife of Manuel I of Portugal, who had imperial ambitions of his own). The Portugal-Spain rivalry of the 16th century would result in the title of WHW being repeatedly swapped between the two countries, though disputes were commonplace and veracity of claims often questioned; Phillip II’s seizure of the Portuguese crown in 1580 unified the states for 60 years and effectively ended the tit-for-tat, though rising imperial powers England, France, and the Dutch Republic had begun to make their own claims to heaviest figurehead and thus sparked new rivalries.

Simultaneously, the increase in cultural and scientific advancements resulting from the Renaissance and Scientific Revolution meant that an awareness was growing of the nonstandard measuring systems of the various world cultures, which would make it difficult to make a direct comparison for anyone who attempted to make a claim to WHW. In a rare moment of uneasy accord before the greater tumult of the subsequent couple of centuries, the English, Dutch, and Spanish held a 1585 conference in which their foremost scientists sought to develop a standard system of measures to be used across the three empires. The resulting Aragon Accord of 1587 gave rise to the “imperial” system of measurement which continues to be used today in most of the world (though many countries have begun to switch to the “metric” system, introduced in France in the 1790s); though other countries were reluctant or outright opposed to adopting this new system, the entry of France into the Accord in 1589 began a gradual shift towards adoption of the standardized system, in no small part because the four founding empires refused to acknowledge any claims to WHW from states who employed nonstandard measures.

   Following the adoption of the standardized system, all further records were established using pounds as the intrinsic measurement of weight, leading to goalposts based on round numbers in the new system. At the turn of the century, the WHW title belonged to Elizabeth I of England, who in 1600 weighed in at 431 lbs; 450 was the next obvious goal. However, as this number was sought by female rulers and consorts over the course of the next century, a novel issue would arise. Before that is addressed, though, it is worth revisiting the other societal institution of the feminine beauty ideal- the class-based weight tiers- in order to see how this aspect also started to see challenges in the next century.