But the question that begs to be asked is: what is our sense of “self” in a world that worships and idolizes thin? To build a sense of self is a difficult process, to say the very least. So much is influenced by society and a significant part of these forces is the media: advertising, movies, television – yes, even the Web! However, if one is a robust individual, what we often find in these venues are images of thinness – emaciated images that equate thin with health, with beauty, with desirability.

Where did this all start? Why is an active, intelligent person of large proportion less of an individual than the size 6 person? Well, let’s take a look at history . . . Yes, I know – history is a dirty word. But I am not talking about the dusty history books we all suffered through in school. What I hope to open up here at PlusStuff is a dialog, a journey of discovery for all of us who live largely.

Picture this — you are in a dark room. You cannot see anything and hence, you are paralyzed because you do not know what surrounds you, what could potentially hurt you. Then, you strike a match and a small flame illuminates the space. You can perceive shapes; you can see the boundaries of the space. You now have a sense of where you are and how you can move about this space. Perhaps you even find a window – and now we have the “aha!” moment. This is what we are seeking here at PlusStuff – windows and thresholds to knowledge, to diversified perceptions of size, of what is beautiful and healthy for each individual. This is what makes PlusStuff unique, and what we hope will bring you back to our site frequently.

Over the ensuing months, I hope to contribute to this journey we all share – with thoughts and observations, perhaps peppered with bits of cultural and social history. Many commentaries will focus on women – mainly because our society fiercely dictates how a female should be, not can be. But I would hope that our male visitors to the site will find pertinent insights, too. We are all in this together. So – where do we begin on this journey of re-envisioning ourselves? Well, let us go back and review where and when the images of thin began to erupt, and how these images created and reinforced a new set of ideals that restricted and ghettoized us.

We have only to look at some of the great masters of art – Rembrandt, Reubens, Caravaggio, Titian – to see that robust women were painted over and over again as ideals of contemporary beauty at that time. Even as recently as Renoir and Picasso, we see women of larger proportions – large expanses of flesh, dimpled and undulating, nary a bone in sight! Over the centuries, a large person with girth and substance was perceived as healthy – afterall, they were surviving times of plague and hunger when thin folks were perceived as poor and underfed. One has only to read Chaucer’s “Canterbury Tales” and his portrayal of the Wife of Bath to realize that there was one bodacious female! Robust babies were considered healthy babies; men of significant girth were considered successful – all apparently surviving harsh times, health-wise and economic-wise. But I emphasize the term “perceived.”

Perception, which is what so much of this is all about – how we perceive ourselves; how others perceive us. For many of us, especially women, we are born and bred to be the “object” perceived, not the subject who perceives. Remember that – it is crucial to how we can understand how we have been manipulated and, most important, how we can begin to de-construct the false and then to re-construct our true selves.

So, after centuries of being the “ideal,” what happened? Along comes the movie industry in the early 20th century. Suddenly, our heroines become waif-like (look at images of Lillian Gish) or the sultry vamp, such as Theda Bera. Fashions changed, too, to meet the times. After World War I, clothing styles changed to emphasize the corset-less female figure – the flapper era began and youth was now idolized. This was a tremendously new concept for our western civilization which, up until then, had revered its elders, the maturity and wisdom of the older generation. But remember that America had undergone a civil war (more young men were killed in the Civil War than in WWI, WWII, Korea and Vietnam combined), the Spanish Civil War and now WWI. Youth was at a premium and to be treasured, to be preserved – to be idolized. And the burgeoning advertising industry did just that – Madison Avenue, radio, the new phenomenon of the motion pictures – all worked toward that ideal: youth, vitality, motion – thin.

Now, along comes the Depression a decade or so later. Hundreds of thousands of people are starving, waiting on bread lines and on street corners looking for a hand-out of pennies. Factories are closed; banks have gone under – America is failing. Take a look at the powerful photographic images of Dorothea Lange to see what I mean. Suddenly, the image of the successful businessman is the villain. Obviously, he is eating (too) well while others starve. The large woman is a comic foil to the likes of the Marx Brothers – poor Margaret Dumont! What are the popular movies of the times? “The Thin Man” and Shirley Temple is now the nation’s idol, the promise of the future. Movie starlets such as Jean Harlow, Katherine Hepburn and Joan Crawford fill the silver screen with images of slimness, youth, vitality and sexuality. Need we go on? With the onslaught of WWII, these images are simply reinforced – every GI’s dream is Betty Grable (36-24-36) and, of course, Scarlett O’Hara has given every American girl the unreal ideal of a waistline of 18 inches! As Dorothy would say, “Toto, I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore!” You bet – we’re in the land of media, and Americans are eating it up.

Comes the 1950s, and America has now swallowed whole the American Ideal – suburbia is growing, families are growing, the economy is growing, and the American sex idol is growing – welcome, Marilyn Monroe, Jayne Russell, and Barbie! Alternately, their counterparts are the waif-like Audrey Hepburn and the ice maiden Grace Kelly. The “New Look” is in, fashion-wise: tiny waists, pointy breasts, all perched on tiny spiked heels, with maybe a tiny apron poised at the tiny waist while the American woman awaits her husband’s arrival from “Work” with the chilled martini in hand. And, within a few years later, the “Revolution” arrives from England – Beatles, Twiggy, Carnaby Street, Rudi Grenich’s topless bathing suits, just to name a few. Again, more youth, more extreme thinness. Even our own beloved Jackie Kennedy seems to feed into this frenzy with her Fifth Avenue svelteness.

So – do we wonder that we are where we are today? This will be a long journey. We will stumble frequently and lose ground. But, ultimately, with that small flicker of knowledge, we will survive – even thrive – as we find those windows and thresholds and move into the light of day. Please come back soon and join us on this journey.

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