If you want historical context, look at ancient Greek and Roman statues of women.
Big women have never been considered the ideal of beauty. Classical beauty usually involves youth, symmetry and health, which by its very nature implies a relatively athletic body (in other words, not fat). The ancients were very big on your proportions being right (not the other way around) to be considered physically perfect. Their ideal of beauty would have been the nymph, in other words a pubescent girl.
Until relatively recently women have tended to lead relatively sedentary lifestyles and their bodies were almost entirely covered all the time. Consequently the concept of beauty for practical purposes focussed on things like the face and hair (which could be seen) as opposed to bodies (which couldn't be seen, beyond general estimates of weight).
Women like Marilyn Monroe could get away with it because (A) she was pretty cute, and (B) men in general were pretty clueless about the possibilities of what a female form should look like. Instead, they were attracted by naked, or implied nakedness alone, rather than making an objective judgement. Basically they just didn't have enough information to be informed on the subject.
Nowdays (A) is still true, but (B) most certainly is not, and men are extremely well educated on that count, so a body like Marilyn's would not cut it.
Today when all is on display we are back at the ancient view of the nymph as the pinnacle of beauty, and women strive to achieve that even though it becomes increasingly difficult as they get older (we live much longer than populations that existed prior to 1900). So, not much has really changed, other than that we live far longer than the ancients.
Big women have never been considered the ideal of beauty. Classical beauty usually involves youth, symmetry and health, which by its very nature implies a relatively athletic body (in other words, not fat). The ancients were very big on your proportions being right (not the other way around) to be considered physically perfect. Their ideal of beauty would have been the nymph, in other words a pubescent girl.
Until relatively recently women have tended to lead relatively sedentary lifestyles and their bodies were almost entirely covered all the time. Consequently the concept of beauty for practical purposes focussed on things like the face and hair (which could be seen) as opposed to bodies (which couldn't be seen, beyond general estimates of weight).
Women like Marilyn Monroe could get away with it because (A) she was pretty cute, and (B) men in general were pretty clueless about the possibilities of what a female form should look like. Instead, they were attracted by naked, or implied nakedness alone, rather than making an objective judgement. Basically they just didn't have enough information to be informed on the subject.
Nowdays (A) is still true, but (B) most certainly is not, and men are extremely well educated on that count, so a body like Marilyn's would not cut it.
Today when all is on display we are back at the ancient view of the nymph as the pinnacle of beauty, and women strive to achieve that even though it becomes increasingly difficult as they get older (we live much longer than populations that existed prior to 1900). So, not much has really changed, other than that we live far longer than the ancients.
