Buh-buh-but muh classical paintings of ever-so-slightly curvy women!
Thanks for bringing together this data. It's pretty obvious to anyone with eyes that widespread obesity is a modern problem but always nice to have solid numbers as well.
No numbers are entirely solid, and Quetelet pretty much invented the art and will have made beginner errors.
If anything I'm a bit concerned that he's not seeing the stoutness in middle-aged women that I see in Victorian photos. But I think the totality of the things I've said on the subject is enough to get 'Mere Availability of Extra Calories is the Cause of Obesity' laughed out of any sane court.
Rubens got his models from somewhere! And they are a bit heavy. A man I knew once got 'Rubenesque' mixed up with 'Pre-Raphaelite', and called a very good looking but strapping young woman 'Rubenesque'. She sucker-punched him straight in the face without warning and gave him a nose bleed.
They're probably the fattest girls he could find who were prepared to take their clothes off for money. He may even have exaggerated a bit. He *is* the man in history most famous for fancying fatties.
But they're not gross, or ill. They're not turning up to the studio on mobility carts. They are, as you say, a bit on the curvy side.
In most other classical paintings and sculptures the girls are gorgeous and firmly in the BMI 21 mode. Which at least tells you where the ideal of beauty always was.
I don't know what happened to the 19 y/o girls. He doesn't say anything about it so presumably it's just a printing error. I imagine everyone found that bit of the book incredibly boring so no one ever noticed until I got an error trying to get the numbers into a dataframe. The crucial values might be in the Paris edition si tu en veux chercher.
Or maybe in the 1739 Belgian Reformed Authorised Bible there's a verse about how numbering the pulchritude of nubile maidens is an abomination or something and that was so obvious to everyone at the time that he didn't think it was worth a footnote.
Buh-buh-but muh classical paintings of ever-so-slightly curvy women!
Thanks for bringing together this data. It's pretty obvious to anyone with eyes that widespread obesity is a modern problem but always nice to have solid numbers as well.
No numbers are entirely solid, and Quetelet pretty much invented the art and will have made beginner errors.
If anything I'm a bit concerned that he's not seeing the stoutness in middle-aged women that I see in Victorian photos. But I think the totality of the things I've said on the subject is enough to get 'Mere Availability of Extra Calories is the Cause of Obesity' laughed out of any sane court.
Rubens got his models from somewhere! And they are a bit heavy. A man I knew once got 'Rubenesque' mixed up with 'Pre-Raphaelite', and called a very good looking but strapping young woman 'Rubenesque'. She sucker-punched him straight in the face without warning and gave him a nose bleed.
They're probably the fattest girls he could find who were prepared to take their clothes off for money. He may even have exaggerated a bit. He *is* the man in history most famous for fancying fatties.
But they're not gross, or ill. They're not turning up to the studio on mobility carts. They are, as you say, a bit on the curvy side.
In most other classical paintings and sculptures the girls are gorgeous and firmly in the BMI 21 mode. Which at least tells you where the ideal of beauty always was.
Funny about the 19 y/o girls. How come he has numbers for 19 y/o boys? Wonder what the story is there, lol.
Is this whole thing before or after the Belgians invented French fries, that ultra-palatable, hyper-processed junk-food?
I don't know what happened to the 19 y/o girls. He doesn't say anything about it so presumably it's just a printing error. I imagine everyone found that bit of the book incredibly boring so no one ever noticed until I got an error trying to get the numbers into a dataframe. The crucial values might be in the Paris edition si tu en veux chercher.
Or maybe in the 1739 Belgian Reformed Authorised Bible there's a verse about how numbering the pulchritude of nubile maidens is an abomination or something and that was so obvious to everyone at the time that he didn't think it was worth a footnote.
I imagine fried potatoes were invented about 15 minutes after the first potato crop was dug up.