Work of Art
Look at yourself
through a painter’s eyes.
Look at yourself
through a sculptor’s hands.
Look at yourself
through a poet’s words.
You are an incredible woman!
from More to Love, © Elizabeth Patch, all rights reserved
This illustration & story comes from my experience as a high school art teacher.
Imagine a room full of teenage girls.
These girls live in a land filled with images of beautiful women.
These beautiful women are all extremely tall and extremely thin, and never appear to be older than age 20.
Sometimes these beautiful women have surgically enlarged breasts.
Sometimes these women have been digitally altered to have longer legs or smaller hips, or skin as smooth and sleek as a doll.
Tell these girls about the beautiful daughters of Zeus,
Euphrosyne, Aglaea and Thalia, who represent the feminine Graces of Beauty, Charm and Joy. They presided over banquets to entertain and delight the guests of the Gods.
Tell them about the painter Peter Paul Rubens and the Baroque period of art,
with its emphasis on curving forms, luscious colors and details, rich mythological meanings, swirling movement, dramatic composition.
Now imagine showing the following painting by Reubens to these teenagers:
The Three Graces, by Peter Paul Rubens, 1636-1638 Museo del Prado
See the Wikipedia entry for this painting
I bet you can guess their reaction!
THESE are the beautiful daughters of Zeus??!!?
Eeeuu! Fat!
Soft & squishy arms!
Cellulite! Butt dimples!
Belly rolls! Gross! Ugly!
But their reaction is really no different from the kind of fault-finding that most of us participate in every single day when we look in the mirror…
The term “Rubenesque” refers to a “plump, fleshy woman” according to my dictionary.
To modern eyes, trained to admire the Perfect Thin Beauty, Ruben’s women seem too fleshy, and beyond plump; they’re just plain disgusting!
In fact, they are neither fat nor abnormally fleshy; they are fairly accurate representations of normal female (Caucasian) adult bodies.
Let’s put some (extremely tight) clothes on these Graces.
While they may not be on the cover of Vogue, I don’t think that our gal pals Euphrosyne, Aglaea and Thalia deserve such a strongly negative reaction, do you?
These “painted ladies” are no more “real” that the photographs in a magazine.
Artists, Rubens included, often change things around to meet an ideal.
But they show us that feminine beauty has NOT always been associated with angular, lanky and bony figures. That in fact, the normal curves, dimples, rolls and bulges that we all have (sooner or later!) can be a thing of beauty, value, pride, desire.
They show us that even Goddesses have cellulite.
Self-esteem Homework:
Go to an art museum and walk through any century except the 20th.
Study the women.
And then try to “look at yourself through a painter’s eyes…”
PS: if you are nowhere near a museum, these two sites will keep you busy for hours!
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Louvre
Yay!!! How very very true. It’s such a shame that less than 5% of the female population try to represent the rest of us when it comes to how to look, dress, and act. I’m quite happy not being an anorexic model, thank you very much!
Very cool contrast.
I think you offer a wonderful perspective on the way perceptions of desirable aesthetics in terms size and beauty have changed over the last 2 centuries. Indeed health and wealth were both measured in part by voluptuousness most of the 16th-19th c.
I have a wall of beauty – it has a framed print of the mona lisa, an image of my grandmother in a tutu at age 3, and a painting of a young Mary Mackillop (a young Australian teacher and nun who is to be made a catholic saint in October). All of these women are beautiful to me!
–from SITS!–
Can’t tell you how much I love this and how much I just plain old love your work. As the mother of a little girl, I am constantly shielding her from ads, etc. in fear of her developing her self image based on what she sees in the media. I love this – what a great point. I will file it away for when we hit the preteen years…
Love this
Such an educational post – I wish I was more versed in art history!
Fantastic word AND picture illustration! Well done! Congrats on your SITS day!
What a great way to illustrate what a normal and beautiful woman looks like! Stopping by from SITS.
Happy SITS day! Wow! Everything you have written really hits home. Thank you so much for showing us all that there is beauty to be found, even if there is more of us to love!
This is an amazing post. I do believe I will complete this “homework.” These are what real women look like. I wish society still appreciated the REAL woman like the greeks did.
Great point, thanks for sharing it.
Wow, great post. It also amazes me that all it would take to change this is for women to stop buying the Fashion Mags, but we’re so deeply brainwashed, we don’t stop.
Young girls need to see other role models like in your paintings.
Wow. I am totally in love with your illustrations and your blog. So glad you were the SITSta today!!
What a killer message. What you are doing is crazy important lady!
I came across your blog while I was looking at Rubenesque artwork to boost my feelings about my figure, and what a perfect site for it! I just love your artwork, it is beautiful! It is difficult in this country where so many think it is ok to make comments about “fat” people. There are some parts of the world where full, curvy figures are still popular, hopefully some of that thinking will make it over here! I don’t want my son to grow up thinking that too thin is beautiful, as much of the standards of beauty come from male perspectives, they are a large part of the problem.
Thank you so much for all of your support!
I am just one of many people who are bringing another viewpoint to this thin-centric culture. Check out some of the links on my sidebar if you would like to explore the topics of body image, self-acceptance and eating disorders.
If you like my art/message, send over a friend or two who could use a smile!
I enjoyed your website. I am a man who finds “rubenesque” as a standard of beauty. Only since the advent of television has the rubenesque figure fallen out of favor. Unfortunately most men (and people in general) are sheep and have blindly followed the media’s version of a female figure. Kudos to bringing awareness to true beauty of the rubenesque woman!
wouldn’t if be wonderful if the media supported an appreciation of the wonderful variety of women’s figures, instead of “training” us to admire only the thin, young waifs that have been the fashion since the mid-20th Century…