Asks Carolyn Day in "Consumptive Chic: A History of Beauty, Fashion, and Disease," reviewed by Allison Meier in "How Tuberculosis Symptoms Became Ideals of Beauty in the 19th Century/In Consumptive Chic: A History of Beauty, Fashion, and Disease, Carolyn A. Day investigates how the fatal symptoms of tuberculosis became entwined with feminine ideals in the late 18th and early 19th centuries" (Hypoallergenic).
It helped that the wasting away of tuberculosis sufferers aligned with existing ideas of attractiveness. The thinness, the ghostly pallor that brought out the veins, the rosy cheeks, sparkling eyes, and red lips (really signs of a constant low-grade fever), were both the ideals of beauty for a proper lady, and the appearance of a consumptive on their deathbed. If you didn’t have the disease, you could use makeup to get the pale skin and crimson lips, and wear a dress that slumped your posture....
The perception of a medical problem as beautiful is not an isolated quirk of the Victorian age. We do it today. Look around.
I'll just quote an old post of mine, from 2004, my first year of blogging:
[O]n that subject of [John] Kerry's getting overtanned for debate purposes: Kerry, like Gore before him, seems to think it's good to be tan for a debate, a belief can be traced to Kennedy's appearance in the 1960 debate. But we know now that Kennedy's tan appearance was in fact a symptom of his Addison's Disease.
The subject of disease perceived as health is an interesting one. Here are three other examples:
1. I remember reading an essay some years ago written by a woman who had been suffering from cancer, who heard many people tell her how great she looked. They were only seeing that she had lost a lot of weight....
2. There is a terrific essay by Oliver Sacks in "The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat" (one of my favorite books), about a 90-year-old woman with syphillis, which she called Cupid's Disease, who enjoyed the lively, tipsy way it made her feel and did not want to be cured: "I know it's an illness but it's made me feel well."
3. In the Tennessee Williams play "The Glass Menagerie," the character Amanda makes having malaria sound fun: "I had malaria fever all that Spring ... just enough to make me restless and giddy."
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28 comments:
"My God, that's awful. You LOOK great."
Yep.
There was a woman who ran one of those Texas highkick dance lines in the mid 20th century at some junior college who drilled the girls until they were pouring blood out of their boots. Her signature line was that "beauty knows no pain."
I'm no beauty, but I do know pain. If I looked better maybe it wouldn't have hurt so much.
Right... Sure...
Corporate Diversity blabber and product ads insistently inform us that obesity among women is actually healthy and beautiful.
Being proudly fat is breaking boundaries!
"It helped that the wasting away of tuberculosis sufferers aligned with existing ideas of attractiveness. The thinness, the ghostly pallor that brought out the veins, the rosy cheeks, sparkling eyes, and red lips (really signs of a constant low-grade fever), were both the ideals of beauty for a proper lady, and the appearance of a consumptive on their deathbed. If you didn’t have the disease, you could use makeup to get the pale skin and crimson lips, and wear a dress that slumped your posture...."
Sometimes there are coincidences in life. Two core predictors of how people rate beauty are: (1) an averageness, where none of the features stand out as odd or abnormal, and (2) youthfulness, to include clean, unblemished skin, large childlike eyes, etc. "Sparkly" eyes indicates alertness and suggests attention and intelligence -- hardly disease indicators. Finally, red lips are sometimes considered a direct suggestion / mimicry of a woman's fertility and reproductive status. Lips up here...lips down there...mature and ready...
Women from ancient Greece and historical Japan to medieval Europe favored whitish, pale skin. This is an apparent norm across Eurasia and likely has nothing to do with disease-chic. It probably follows from the leisure and wealthy classes not needing to work all day in the sun (e.g., farming or gathering), and thereby show higher status per minimal skin darkening or wear-and-tear. Tan skin chic is a 20th century invention following from white women vacationing in the Mediterranean, Caribbean, Florida, Hawaii, etc. Wealthy leisure class standards.
Slumping posture could possibly reflect disease, but also just a random trend or alternation. Long skirts. Mini skirts. Corsets. Bare midriffs. Women's square shoulder pads (e.g., 1940s and 1980s) versus rounded, bare, and vulnerable shoulders (e.g., 1950s and 1960s).
Disease is a possible reference but certainly not absolute.
"that obesity among women is actually healthy and beautiful"
Excessive thinness is also presented as beautiful — in fashion photography and other ads.
I was just seeing an ad for Dior perfume and thinking how beautiful the model was, then realizing that the human was probably quite hungry and that what pushed her over the line into delicate, ethereal beauty was actively damaging to her body.
This is the Dior perfume ad I was looking at.
I looked up to see who the model is. It's the famous actress Natalie Portman. I don't know why I found it hard to recognize her. Too idealized? Photoshopped into a state beyond healthy perfection?
of course what's REALLY unhealthy (and currently considered "beautiful") are mastectomies for teens
At some point, Covid-chic will be a thing.
Reminds me of Kate Moss and “heroin chic”. Also, where do tattoos fit in here? Some of them look like hideous skin diseases.
Ann Althouse said...Excessive thinness is also presented as beautiful — in fashion photography and other ads.
I was just seeing an ad for Dior perfume and thinking how beautiful the model
The explanation I heard for the excessive thinness of fashion models is that clothes hang better off excessively thin bodies--these women are basically walking clothes hangers. Which helps explain an old conundrum of beauty mags--the women in men's magazines are heavier and curvier than the women in women's magazines. Why would women push themselves to be so thin when that's not what most men want? Turns out it's what clothing designers want.
I'll never forget the second stage syphilitic beaver shot they showed us in boot camp when the DI says how'd ya like to chow down on that, privates.
Lips up here...lips down there...mature and ready...
Now that's cringe...
Even though it is decidedly politically incorrect, the current craze of trying to pass off obesity as beauty follows the same trend. Same thing for the skinny model craze that has been the standard for the catwalk for years. If I can see your hip bones, you are too thin. If you have rolls of fat, you are too thick. And it is unhealthy to be at either extreme.
Photoshopped into a state beyond healthy perfection?
Makeup? I saw Portman out and about a few times- she's one of those celebs you might not recognize in person, like Kate Hudson. Hudson, now she's a shapeshifter. I worked out next to her for two months before I caught on and then someone had to tell me...
“I looked up to see you who the model is. It's the famous actress Natalie Portman. I don't know why I found it hard to recognize her. Too idealized? Photoshopped into a state beyond healthy perfection?”
Thanks. Every time I see the ad, I wondered who she was. She looked familiar, but…
Kate Moss is downright gorgeous nowadays...
Amputation fetish posts will hopefully not follow this one.
When I think of consumption chic, I think of John Keats, who was male. It's just a form of boy-band appeal.
For the British in the early industrial period, it was also a class distinction: "My family is wealthy enough that I can afford to be unhealthy." It's like when women in wealthy Chinese families would bind the feet of their daughters.
Why would women push themselves to be so thin when that's not what most men want?
The secret is that to the extent they're trying to look beautiful for someone, women are primarily dressing and making themselves up to meet the judgment of other women, not to please men.
Kate Moss famously made money partly by having the "heroin addict look," especially after she was busted for drugs. I've already commented on Good/Evil/Addams Family, but I can't resist adding: in Addams Family Values, they are all horrified when their baby loses his deathlike grey pallor, and goes all pink and blond like the Gerber baby. There may still be smiling and laughing--it runs in the family--but it's not Andy of Mayberry. Maybe the family takes life too seriously to do a lot of smiling and laughing.
Why would women push themselves to be so thin when that's not what most men want? Turns out it's what clothing designers want.
Nope
Because women dress for other women.
I heard that someplace 20-30years ago. I find it explains the fassion thing almost all the time. There are hundreds of things about women that make no sense...to me. But this explanation holds true almost 100% of the time.
'The perception of a medical problem as beautiful is not an isolated quirk of the Victorian age. We do it today. Look around.'
400lb. women modeling Nike athletic wear?
Heroin chic?
Goth chicks who look like corpses?
Chix with dix?
'Excessive thinness is also presented as beautiful — in fashion photography and other ads.'
Before Twiggy (or someone) started the celebrity model craze we have to this day, skinny girls were used to make the clothes look good.
And so that the designer wouldn't have to produce a bunch of different sizes for fashion shows.
That's what I heard, anyway...
$148 for 3.4 ounces of perfume? That must be some remarkable stinkum.
Much of that in Thomas Mann, from Death in Venice through The Black Swan. Disease also features in Buddenbrooks, The Magic Mountain and Doctor Faustus. Ordinary human life hides truths and realities from us that are revealed in illness or freakishness. You could trace it back to romanticism or further back through medieval Christianity.
You could make a thesis -- or at least a parlor game -- out of naming writers and artists who expressed that idea in one form or another. That suggests, though, that maybe 19th century perceptions weren't naive or straightforward but were seen through the prism of art and literature (as our our own efforts to recapture what people thought at the time).
$148 for 3.4 ounces of perfume? That must be some remarkable stinkum.
How many pages can 3.4 oz. print? Because that stuff is expensive.
Portman recently co-starred in "Thor Love and Thunder". She herself was very thin, and her character was dying from cancer.
I don't get the concern over the Dior ad.
Casual clothing covers her body.
She does look Northern European in terms of melanin.
Maybe that's being framed as unhealthy.
Aunty Althouse says "Eat!!!"
Lurker21,
Seriously, look at the 19th-c. operatic TB craze. People (always women, of course; have you ever heard of a male operatic character dying of TB?) dropping like flies. All while (of course) singing their guts out to the last.
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