Just a reminder that “the ideal body shape” is constantly changing…
Love & love & love,
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Thank you Gala! I needed this perspective today.
You’re the best! lovelovelove- A.
Wow. How neat.
Thin, skinny, AND underweight! Oh no!
Is this real?! That’s incredible!!
awesome. i want to go paste this on the back of all the women’s toilet cubicle doors where i work. how to make girls giggle and boost self-esteem in one easy step ;) xxx
Um..
She’s still thin.
Love!!
Everytime I see this it make me smile :)
I love gorgeous woman with non toothpick legs.
we want a tour of ur place!!!!
rrrad- It’s not about being chubby or thin, it’s about being healthy and happy with yourself.
I know it’s an article telling you to change your size (which I don’t agree with but we can’t avoid it I guess) but it’s still very interesting!
Wow, thank you for this. And she looks frighteningly possessed in the photo on the right, hahaha.
excellent!
What a cool ad! I wish there was more like this.
Wow! Really interesting, especially considering that late 1960s was a time Twiggy.
Oh, thankfully those days are over…I am naturally underweight and I wouldn’t be able to take the disapproval from people. I already get glances of disgust and it’s just the person I am, I eat like a horse.
HAHAHA I love old ads like these!
Both hilarious and painful how the same basic self-doubt takes on so many iterations and guises.
Thank you so much, Gala, for picking this image as today’s Cherry. :3
I absolutely love this!
Thank you so much, Gala
xx :]
Very very cool! We forget that one of the hottest women ever, Marilyn Monroe, was a size 12! Skinny was not IN back then!
Thanks so much :)
She’s curvy, sure, but also suuuuper skinny. I’m not sure I know what to make of an ad for weight gain with a skinny model representing the body women supposedly want.
That’s amazing, glad to know i’m skinny in the good old days! Cheered me up a bit :)
Do you fancy exchanging links by the way? Love your blog oh so much.
iliketweet.blogspot
x
Skinny, curvy… it can all be a distraction from your true worth. Your body is an amazing tool, something that is a gift. It is capable and beautiful. Glorifying only skinny, glorifying only curvy: equally distracting.
I love this.
Oh, you’re simply too fabulous, Gala! Thanks for reminding us!
Thought this was a spoof at first! Such a great find, Gala. Thanks for sharing!!
Oh, it’s the same song though, isn’t it?
“Too skinny due to poor eating habits? Don’t change, just take Wate-On!”
“Too fat due to poor eating habits? Don’t change, just take this diet pill!”
Still like it though, ha. Optimism seems so much more optimistic in the ’60s!
I wish the good old days would come back just like the fashion does.
Yeah, I was going to say…
She looks pretty ideal by even today’s standards, don’t ya think? I mean, just LOOK at that hourglass!
I’d say we’ve gotten more ACCEPTING of the “skinny” crowd, these days. :P
It’s interesting, though, that she had trouble keeping weight on, and our actresses today have problems keeping it off. Just another reminder of how what we think affects what goes on.
/love
hi gala. Im a mum to two girls 18 and 16 and came across your blog about 5 months ago, and i loved its positive vibe and quirkiness, and pretty soon my girls did too,but lately my daughter katie ( who is really slim ) and tries to put on wieght because society/media ,tells her that she doesnt love her self ,or look like a woman ,or shes not a real girl is starting to feel un attractive and unloveable maybe non judgement and acceptance regardless of size or shape would build teenage girls self esteem,anyway keep calm and have a cup cake xx
Is the ideal really changing that much? That’s the actress after “putting on some weight”, after all.
It seems to me that the thing that’s changing is rather our starting point. When people were more active, food was purer and people overate more they were more likely to be skinnier than the ideal. Today when people think taking the stairs is exercise, food is junk and people have constant access to it, people are simply more likely to be fatter than the ideal.
Is there a source for this picture?
And yeh, she’s still pretty slim.
I don’t think this illustrates anything about being healthy or happy with yourself, this just shows that people were still being forced into satisfying an ideal shape back in the 60s. (Im guessing it’s from the 60s, but there isn’t a reference).
It doesn’t matter what you do, there’s always someone ready to criticize you (if you’re skinny or chubby). So I suppose the answer is to do your best to make yourself happy. But ignoring outside critisism is easier said than done…
I saw this ad when I was going through old LIFE magazines for a school project. Skinny or shapely, I think every girl should feel comfortable in her skin and proud of her shape – don’t let anyone make you feel like you have to go one way or the other to be beautiful!
Put on weight! But only in your boobs, hips and thighs!
Nothing has changed. At least it’s a step up from the ’90s with its heroin chic, but actually being a naturally skinny person in this day and age (like I am, despite my stick limbs being balanced out with a touch of beer belly) is pretty disheartening. Real women have curves, so I must be a man!
seizes male privilege and runs
Very wonderful! I really get this, its not about the litteral message (dont be too skinny), its more abstract. This means that all the ads today saying you have to be really skinny and all the celebrities trying to loose 20 pounds aren’t the honest truth that skinny people are morth worthy and beautiful than we could EVER be, its just a dumb fad as meaningful as wearing skinny jeans. There should be no ‘standard’, especially ‘try to have the body the smallest percentage of the population has’.
I think I have to print this up and hang it somewhere I look at every day. :)
I hate to double-post, but I sent this to my mom, who loves vintage fashion mags, and she responded thusly: “Young ladies’ magazines didn’t talk openly about breasts or breast enlargement, so they referred to these as ‘weight gain supplements.’ This is my generation’s equivalent of your generation’s ‘bust enhancement creams;’ we just weren’t to speak of it.”
Eeeenteresting! (I love my mom!!)
this is complete LOVE! simply a brilliant ad. ___ thanks for finding it.
curves! :D
So true, but still wish I was born in that era…(sigh). Wate on! Oh how easy it is!
I think there needs to be a balance found in the positive self-image messages sent out. While encouraging acceptance of fuller-figured bodies there also seems to be an undertone of denouncing slender body types as unnatural, unhealthy, and not sexually appealing, or unwomanly. I’m naturally tall, slender, small chested, and far from curvaceous or bootylicious. I also don’t have the body of a runway model even with these traits so in the end one can never win. There shouldn’t be an ideal body shape, only an ideal body state, which is a healthy one, whether that leaves you a size 0 or a size 12!
xo
I completely agree with Jacinta and Bliss, and I’m going to repeat one of my comments from an earlier post, because I strongly believe that it’s something which people need to recognise:
I am deeply unhappy that the media, in an effort to curtail their own idolisation of the size zero model, has at times swung too far the other way and started to demonise being skinny.
I wholeheartedly approve of reassuring the larger lady that she is as beautiful as any waif gracing the cover of a magazine, but I object to being told that I’m not a real woman because I don’t have curves, or even being made to feel responsible for the many unhappy young girls in this world who have anorexia.
I can’t help being the small size that I am, and I know that (whatever the media may say) I AM a real woman, but I find it almost impossible to feel good about my curveless body. It is not only the overweight who suffer from social and cultural body ideals – it is the underweight, too.
I wonder is these things come in cycles like fashion does. Maybe soon enough having a curvy figure will be positive again.
i just posted a similar comment on carousel, but i’ll repeat it, because i am a little offended. i can’t appreciate this whatsoever. i’m twig thin and couldn’t gain weight even if i wanted to. i could never have “womanly curves” even if i tried. but you know what? i love my small size anyway. the ideal body shape is changing, but that doesn’t mean it’s okay that there is one. No one should be looked at with disgust whether they’re overweight or underweight.
and also, the model’s body is completely unnattainable to most women, overweight, underweight, or in between and just not ridiculously shapely.
we need to stop promoting one shape of body and start looking at everyone as if they’re beautiful.
that means no hating on fat girls.
that means no hating on tiny girls, either.
if i wasn’t confident in my own size, being underweight, your recent posts would seriously make me feel horrible about myself. positive message being sent, huh?
The same thing is happening like smoking.
Smoking used to be “popular” but now it is not because clubs, apartments, parks, restaurants, hotels, and virtually any public areas are banning smoking.
Yay for society changes (well, healthy ones anyway).
I think people are reading into this too much. I don’t think Gala is telling people to change their body shape, even though this ad is. The ideal body shape is always changing for sure, but everyone needs to learn to love their bodies! I’m naturally very very petite, I’m athletic and eat a large amount to keep up with my workouts and plus, I love food. I can’t ever gain a lot of weight or ever look like that girl in the ad, but I can’t see how it would offend someone. I think she looks healthy, she’s not skinny, but she’s not overweight.
Plus like another commenter said above, if its true, this is just a subtle way to sell a boob/hip enhancement, that probably didn’t work. Love who you are, be healthy, and happy! “Real women” aren’t about curves or lack of curves!
www.alreadypretty.com/2009/06/...
to quote Sally from Already Pretty, “Never let anyone tell you that you are not a real woman. NEVER. Not even another woman who seems wiser or more worldly or prouder or louder or prettier or sexier or stronger than you. No one can take your realness from you.”
no one’s hating on anyone =] its just a silly, funny, overdone vintage ad!
I can totally picture this in the back of an old magazine. Kind of funny/horrifying that companies are always trying to make money on peoples’ insecurites. “You shouldn’t be fat!”, “You shouldnt be skinny!”, “Buy our shit and you will be the most popular girl in town!” The media hasn’t evolved much.
My point in posting this was to show — as I said — that the “ideal body shape” is always changing. Which just goes to show how ridiculous it is. IT DOESN’T MATTER WHAT SIZE YOU ARE. What does matter is how you feel about yourself.
Oh dear, people are taking this a little personally! The way I see this post is that it’s not about telling skinny girls to be bigger or big girls to be slimmer – it’s about showing that there is no one “perfect” shape and whatever body image the media are championing as desirable today will be replaced by a completely different image tomorrow, and that people need to embrace the beautiful bodies they have, instead of trying to make themselves resemble whatever shape the powers that be have decided is in vogue this week. It’s all adoring yourself completely, regardless of size and shape :)
Hmm. This kind of makes me wonder. If THIS was considered “shapely,” at the time, what was considered skinny? It seems like someone who would be skinny on that scale would be close to death so I’m finding myself agreeing with the article posted.
These days, the photo of Linda Peck is considered skinny, because I believe that modern day standards’ fill figured woman is larger than Linda Peck shown here. In today’s weight loss ads much like the weight gain ad here, they’re still aiming at pretty much the same figure, albeit these days the commercial model are more tones, tan and blond….
I think it’s an interesting change in perceptions and perception scales.
I stumbled across this ad a while ago and it really made me smile; it’s interesting how things change, and I can only hope that we start heading back to that sort of mentality!
Healthy girls all the way!
I really like this ad! It made me smile. Someone up above said they’d like to post them on cubicle doors- me too! It made me feel really good about my curvy shape. Thanks Gala!
Hey Gala, How very cool this is to show, I always remember watching old movies and them talking about skinny in a negative way and now we talk about fat in a negative way. My roommate is a good 200 or pounds and she is glorious I tell you, I have seen men just go nuts for this girl. And I’m not saying that in a way that I’m shocked I’m not again she’s glorious!
The fact of the matter is, is that no matter what you look like you are SOMEONE’S ideal of beauty.
Love and Excelsior!
Leia
I can’t believe how many people here are complaining ‘but she’s still skinny’!!! She is slim, but not underweight in the way that is trendy today. Does a model have to be disgustingly obese for people here to be happy? Since when did massively overweight become a ‘real’ woman?! A ‘real woman’ looks after herself and is the best and most healthiest she can be. I’m not saying overweight people can’t be fit and healthy, but really, noone is ever happy.
I agree throroughly with Leia re: old movies and men going nuts for all sorts.
And thanks gala for the old advert, it’s a beautiful thing for you to have posted. :)
Marilyn Monroe was a size `12 in vintage sizing in modern day sizing Marilyn would wear a size 2-4
I know this because i fit a size 10 in vintage clothing and a size 0 in modern sizing
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Gala! Aside from TiLT, could you please give us some more Radical Self Love activities and assignments? My RSL Bible is a bit stagnant. Help a lady out!