The New York Times provided a fun little exercise of guessing type of olympic sport associated with certain body shapes some days back. For some reason the link does not like to be posted, so you are on your own finding it in the NYT archives…

However, it made me think of body shapes in general and the eternal question why women try to conform to any particular era’s expectations of looks. The link below gives you a recap of the shifts occurring only during the last 100 years – often with funny comments attached. http://greatist.com/grow/100-years-womens-body-image  I particularly liked the quote from Tina Fey in Bossypants: “Now every girl is expected to have Caucasian blue eyes, full Spanish lips, a classic button nose, hairless Asian skin with a California tan, a Jamaican dance hall ass, long Swedish legs, small Japanese feet, the abs of a lesbian gym owner, the hips of a nine-year-old boy, the arms of Michelle Obama, and doll tits.”

All of this would be, of course, just another nutty social convention, if it weren’t for the psychological and sometimes physiological cost attached to it for those who cannot escape the pressure to conform. Eating disorders have skyrocketed during times when extremes of thins were in fashion (for girls and boys, both – see report on gender, comorbidity and mortality rates (scary!) here: https://www.nationaleatingdisorders.org/prevalence-and-correlates-eating-disorders-adolescents) and culturally defined ideals have excluded minorities, whose shapes of course never ruled the day.

If you google female body shapes you get mostly porn or self help tips for, and I quote, “beauty and eternal sexiness.” Here is a slightly more scientific account: http://theconversation.com/is-there-really-a-single-ideal-body-shape-for-women-38432

Let’s hope the olympic sports men and women provide some different focus!