Women and girls feel more pressure than ever to have unrealistically perfect bodies. From a young age, girls are confronted with millions of mixed messages about how they’re supposed to look, which is clearly unhealthy on so many levels. Fortunately, certain brands have committed to participating in body-positive campaigns. We have a long way to go, but that’s a start.
But what’s strange about this contemporary pressure to be skinny is that the physical ideal was totally different just a few decades ago. It’s obviously never okay to dictate how someone should look in any sense, but it’s still interesting to look at how body image issues have changed over the years. You’ll see what I mean when you check out these vintage advertisements.
1. Being skinny was decidedly not in style back in the day.
2. Back then, people viewed extreme thinness as a hindrance.
3. It’s absolutely insane how the script has flipped on this issue in the advertising world.
4. Oh, and dudes? You’re not immune. Grab some weights!
5. The word “skinny” was seen as an insult.
6. Well, this is aggressive.
(via Huffington Post / Jezebel)
Isn’t that weird? I wonder what sparked the change from this to the idealization of insanely thin bodies. More important than that, however, is that we all learn to understand that dictating how women “should” or “shouldn’t” look is never okay, no matter what body type happens to be in style for the moment. Just do you, ladies!
