The other day on Twitter, I stumbled into an argument about how a well-known female sex symbol was actually not curvy and was just thin, if a bit unremarkable and basic-looking. Want to guess who it was?
You’re wrong: it was Marilyn Monroe.
This was not an isolated incident. I’ve seen multiple sex symbols once known for their curves revised as “average.” Two others who come to mind: Jennifer Lopez and Halle Berry. Once curvy hourglasses, today according to the denizens of the Internet: “meh, she looks great, but that’s what any woman would look like if she took care of herself.”
The problem here is that society (especially online society) has developed Instagram Goggles, or to put it another way, BBL blindness—and because it’s unrelated to dangerous eating patterns, many people ignore it as an unrealistic standard, or even cheer it on. Our understanding of the typical waist-hip ratio (the degree of curvature between waist and hips) in a healthy-weight young woman has gotten wildly out of whack based on what we see online. Allow me to illustrate, and please refer back to this image when you’re confused about the numbers I’m about to benchmark. The lower the waist-hip ratio, the curvier the shape of the woman, irrelevant to overall size (although obesity can increase waist-hip ratio.)
Now, is a lower waist-hip ratio more conventionally attractive? Yes, much in the way tall men with broad shoulders are attractive. But you would also be deluded to think your average man, or even your slightly above average man, is 6’3” with the shoulders of Dwight Howard. But today, people think your average healthy-weight woman has the body of Halle Berry in the nineties—or Marilyn Monroe in the fifties for that matter. We have come to see a 0.7 waist-hip ratio (what used to be considered the ultimate desirable ratio) as the “meh” default for a slim woman, and a 0.6 (or lower) waist-hip ratio (see: Kardashians) as the new ideal.
But your average woman (yes, even your average woman of color—I’ll get to that in a minute) does not have anything near a 0.6 waist-hip ratio. You might be surprised to learn she probably doesn’t even have a 0.7 ratio. Yes, even if she’s healthy. Yes, even if she is at an ideal weight. Overexposure to doctored Instagram photos and plastic surgery has completely distorted the shape we think most women are capable of attaining just by being “healthy.” You might be surprised to learn how your average young, slim, healthy woman is actually shaped.
BTW: I’m running a 30% off sale on annual subscriptions for the next week! (Even at my regular prices, I have some of the lowest $-for-article volume pricing on Substack, but a summer sale can’t hurt.)
