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It was not ever thus. Though a 3rd century A.D. Sicilian mosaic reveals an astonishing modern woman — bikini-clad and sporting a pair of barbells — women rarely exercised to keep themselves in shape or style. Too often they simply mutilated their bodies. For a thousand years Chinese women bound their feet so tightly that a natural "high heel" was formed, and toes were twisted irreversibly under the arch; African women used discs to form platypus lips; in Burma, tribeswomen encircled their necks with so many heavy metal rings that the vertebrae would separate. In the early 19th century, English fashion in female bodies was ethereal, emaciated; a tubercular fragility was considered attractive. Women subsisted on a diet of vinegar and belladonna to achieve the Pre-Raphaelite "fatal slimness." The crowning, confining glory of Victoriana was the whalebone corset, which gave Actress Lillie Langtry her "ideal" 38-18-38 measurements, and which sometimes displaced internal organs. For some women, that was not enough: in pursuit of the hourglass figure they underwent surgical removal of their lower ribs.
A century ago, the present revolution began. Women took up three new sports: bicycling, roller skating and tennis. On the tennis court or the open road, there was a physical liberation of sorts. A few years later, when the movies were born, requiring motion, the images were available for all to see: the energy of the human figure, the equality of male and female movie stars, the athletic heroism of actresses like Pearl White and Annette Kellermann. From the new ideal of bodies in motion came an original 20th century figure: the energized woman, ready to express her potential in physical activity.
For the next 60 years, the movies would shape and reflect the evolving form of this new woman. The smart working-girl heroines of '30s comedy — Carole Lombard, Barbara Stanwyck, Rosalind
Russell, Jean Arthur — did not so much display their bodies as move comfortably in them, telegraphing their belief that they were a match for any man. In the '40s and '50s, the bazooka buxomness of Jane Russell, Marilyn Monroe and Jayne Mansfield marked a reaction against equality; here was the milkmaid as sultry pinup. Now the hourglass is shattered. Says George Hurrell, the portrait photographer who for 60 years has celebrated Hollywood's full-figured stars: "In the '30s everything was round. It gave a body shape and shadow. Today, actresses are rid of hips and thighs and even busts."
In the real world, equally obvious changes were taking hold. The twin demands of feminism and a new imperial economy paroled the American woman from her domestic cage. With the Pill, technology undermined conservative morality. Couples could have only as many children as they wanted, or no children at all. Freedom from the biological imperative has been followed by an economic imperative: earning her way, single or married. More than half of all American women — indeed, more than half the U.S. married mothers — are in the labor force. There a woman must collaborate and compete with men, as other men do, as a peer. She is dressing and shaping her body to fit the new fashion of equality.
With that fashion comes confidence.