Bellies, Wellies and Tellies... but not necessarily all of them...

Now, the Beard has often spoken about women... occasionally to their faces... but I digress.... despite all this, the Beard's face has remained remarkably unslapped, mainly as most women seem to fear the touch of facial hair... but one woman in particular has come to the attention of the hirsute one recently... apart from the beautiful Mrs Beard of course...

That woman is a young lady called Nancy Upton, who in a fit of pique entered an American Apparel competition for so called plus size models, and did so with tongue firmly in cheek... Nancy is what our American cousins term a size 12, which to us Brits means she's about a 14 or 16... the average size fro an American woman, and to the Beard's mind about the right size for a woman... and yet the world of fashion somehow sees this as large... Having encountered such sizeism personally, and being disgusted by how a size 14 (UK) is for some reason termed XXL, the Beard got to wondering how this all started....

Now, many many years ago, when the Beard was not even an eye in his father's twinkle, artists would portray female beauty as curvy... what would pass today as fat... look at Botticelli's Venus (ooh err missus...).... she has a belly... and rounded buttocks... now, for some reason, today these are seen as unattractive traits... but why??

Well, one thing the Beard has noticed, and so, hopefully, should you... and that is this... that there have been several times in history when thin became the thing to be... and each time, the underlying reason was the same... oh yes, dear reader, it's time for yet another of the BBeard's cock-eyed conspiracies....

Back in the sixties a young lady known as Jean Shrimpton was allowed by the fashion world to take said world by storm... here was someone very different to the Mae Wests, Greta Garbos and Deborah Kerrs of the world... gone were curves, and in was thin... then came Twiggy (who looks quite hot nowadays, despite being on the thin side... but that's a story for elsewhen...) Now, Twiggy was even thinner, and the excuse used by the fashion people was that they wanted a woman who was more like a clothes hanger, so that people could see the clothes rather than the model... so far so sort of reasonable... but with it came a whole industry based on convincing women that they were fat, and that suddenly only thin women would be able to get boyfriends...

Most men, of course thought that the old, curvier type woman was far sexier... but such was the pressure from the fashion and media that eventually men stopped saying this, for fear that they would seem wierd... in much the same way that, after paying to see a boring movie, most people when interviewed will say that they enjoyed it.. especially if they are told that said film has had good reviews... but of that, more later....and so women started believing that they had to be thin... etc, etc...

But, says the Beard, this is not totally a modern phenomenon... it has happened at least twice in British history before hand, and the reason has been the same each time... Think about what else was happening around the Twiggy years... and while you're at it, think what was happening in the mid to late 1800s, and the late 1500s..

The answer of course is the threat of the emancipation of women... at the time of Queen Elizabeth the first, someone was so scared of having a strong female role model, and was so scared that women would emulate the Queen and want to run their own affairs without a man, that rather than this being an age when girl power came to the fore, it was an age of restrictive dress and lead based make up that made women weak and ill...

Fast forward to Victorian times, and we have a strong female leader... and women convinced to wear corsets that stopped them breathing, and being hidden away when pregnant...

In the sixties we had the rise and rise of women's lib... and a queen on the throne again... and as it became obvioud that she was here for a while, the whole thing got more and more subtle... now, women were actually being told to become strong and independent, to have a job and raise the kiddies, so that they too could become tired, insecure and grab for themselves their own poor self image... talk about empowerment....

And so we come to the era of Thatcher, when a very powerful woman governed, and it really went to pot... now women were told to conquer all, and break the glass ceiling, and were actively encouraged to become, well, grabbing and greedy... now women could be looked down on for even wanting to be a stay at home mother... how dare they not want a career... and so on to the present day, when women's own magazines sabotage the female populace's chances of happiness by selling them such role models as the odious Cheryl Cole...

Let there be no doubt... it is the women's mags that are mainly to blame, with their airbrushing and tweaking, and promoting certai expensive ranges of clothes as "sexy," when any honest man would tell the reader that they're not... the idea being that, when wearing said garments, if ones boyfriend is not immediately turned on, then it must be the woman who is staggeringly unattractive... because the clothes are definitely sexy.. the mag said so...

Mens (or lad's) mags are to blame only by following the trend... lets be honest... men don't really care if the models are airbrushed or not... or what size they are... or even what they look like, as long as they're in a corset and stockings... hey, at least the Beard is honest!!

Personally, the Beard would like to see less of it all... what's wrong with the natural look? Ok, possibly a bit of lippy and a nice dress, but evening out ski tones on a photo just leads to disappointment all round, both for women who feel they have to emulate the look, and for men who don't get what was on the label... it's bad for everyone... so the Beard says lets all just be happy with what we've got, lets be happy with what everyone else has got, and let's ignore those who wish us to hate ourselves for their own greed... And let's support Girl Guiding in their attempts to promote good self image among not just girls, but everyone...

But it grows late, and midnight beckons... so it remains to say that until we all love ourselves and each other, Wisebeard Salutes you.....