The Fat Acceptance Movement, Marilyn Monroe, and the Fantasy of a Plus-Sized 1950’s

I’ve been inspired to write this article because of some of the memes I’ve seen on tumblr and elsewhere. It made me wonder, was the 1950’s really that different from today as the fat acceptance movement argues? So let’s start with the picture. I’m sure we’ve all seen this meme on tumblr:

I’ve seen a whole lot of pictures like this, and I’m sure you have too. These beauties from the past are used by the fat acceptance movement to argue that today’s ideals are too extreme. Marilyn Monroe in particular has somehow become the poster child for plus-sized beauty. They seem to think that if this beauty icon is labeled plus-size, they will win some sort of moral competition. In addition, the fat acceptance movement has tried to glorify the past by implying that women back then were free to be curvy and large.

So let’s start with their poster-child, Marilyn. It turns out that Marilyn was used as an impossible ideal back in her day as well. People seem to forget that her weight fluctuated throughout her career because of her depression, and that her normal size was a lot smaller than her depressed -state size. Curiously enough, I never see this meme with Marilyn at her natural weight. What were her normal, healthy measurements according to her dressmaker?

Height: 5 feet, 5½ inches, 166.62 (centimeters)

Weight: 118-120 pounds, 53.5 kilograms

Bust: 35-37 inches

Waist: 22-23 inches

Hips: 35-36 inches

Bra size: 36D

Not exactly plus size. Should we make a new meme of “When did this become hotter than this?”

Marilyn’s unusually small waist with larger hips and a larger bust was the perfect impossible ideal for filmmakers to use. In fact, when her clothes were displayed in London they had to make special molds for new mannequins because of her extreme hour-glass shape. Today’s models are 34-24-34, which is close to Marilyn’s normal size, but they are much taller so they look thinner. We also idealize more toned and muscular bodies, so body fat percentages also play a role in making todays models look thinner than the skinny mini Marilyn. To see what I mean, check out this article. She is the same weight, but her muscular body makes her look thinner and lighter.

So Marilyn is out; she was beautiful at any size. What about the average woman in the 1950’s? The fat acceptance movement would have you believe that the 1950’s was a paradise for curvy women.

Today, the average American woman is 5’4″, has a waist size of 34-35 inches and weighs between 140-150 lbs. In the 1950’s, the average woman was 5’3-4″ with a waist size of approximately 24-25″, she weighed about 120 lbs and wore a size 8. But wait!! Size 8! That proves the fat acceptance movement is right! Wrong again.

There was actually a uniform sizing system for women’s clothes until the US Department of Commerce dropped it in 1983 noting that the traditional sizes were no longer reflecting the size and shape of the average consumer. Today, in order to cater to women’s vanity, as women have gotten larger, designers have manipulated sizes so that truly larger sizes are marked as smaller. A size 8 in the 1950′s is now a size 4 or less today. Source here.

Read More!



Did I just blow your mind? The average woman in the 1950’s was a SIZE 4 or LESS. I feel like shooting off fireworks. That means that even back in the “golden years” of the 1950’s, I am closer to the average woman, not a plus-sized woman. The fat acceptance movement has carefully created this myth that the 1950’s was this awesome time for plus-sized women. But the reality is that if an average woman from the 1950’s magically teleported to 2013, she would probably be skinny bashed and thin-shamed for being a proud size 4. How ironic.

So what does this all mean? It means that rather than the ideal woman drastically changing, the average woman has. Between the 1950s and today something about the American lifestyle has changed. In the 1950’s only 9.7% today of people were clinically obese compared to 35.7% today. An additional 33.3% are overweight, so roughly two-thirds of Americans are overweight or obese. I do acknowledge that a very small minority of people have medical conditions that can lead to weight gain, such as hypothyroidism. But it is nowhere near as high as the fat acceptance movement would have you believe. For example, fat acceptance movements often cite hypothyroidism as the cause of America’s obesity epidemic which only 4.6% of the population has. From personal experience, out of all the people I know through friends and family ,and out of all of the shows and documentaries I’ve seen like You Are What You Eat and I Used to be Fat, out of all those overweight people, I know ONE person (family friend) who has a medical condition that caused her weight gain. One. People’s genetics did not just spontaneously start mutating all at once leading to the obesity epidemic that we have today.

The American lifestyle has simply changed. For example, our portions are huge! If you go into an antique store and look at the dinner plates, they are a little bit larger than the salad plates we use today. Plates in the 1950’s were 8-10 inches across, today they are close to twelve inches. If someone has a large plate, they feel the need to fill it up, leading to overeating. One restaurant with ridiculous portions is the Cheesecake Factory. I love the Cheesecake Factory, but your food practically comes out in a trough. There is so much food it almost makes me sick looking at it. No human being should be able to eat that much food at one sitting, and yet I see people do it!

Another cause is the actual food that we eat. People no longer eat enough real food, as in it came straight out of the ground. The amount of processed food in the American diet has no nutrition, so the body becomes malnourished, but it is tricked into feeling full. Our diet is so bad that when other countries copy it, their populations begin to get sick and die.

The list of causes of obesity goes on and on. I think it’s great that women can learn how to love their bodies and be confident at their size. But don’t try to rewrite history in an effort to lend credence to your movement. The 1950’s was not your plus-sized paradise, and if you lived back then you would face even MORE discrimination because the obesity rate was so much lower.

The more I see articles about “thin privilege” (yes, I’m thinking primarily of This Is Thin Privilege),the more I see very physically sick, bitter, and angry people (women) trying to deny their very real illnesses. Because obesity is, indeed, an illness. Anyone who writes that thin people have the “privilege” of being raped and abused or that obesity is a normal, healthy state has some serious, serious issues. I honestly don’t get angry; I feel really sad for these women who will continue to suffer because they either won’t or can’t get help for their disease. How can I stay angry at a physically and mentally sick person?

They are the product of a society that values profits over public health and instant gratification instead of slow and steady hard work. Health isn’t a pill, it’s a lifestyle. It means you have to change everything and that can be daunting. I’ve never met or seen a single person exercise consistently and eat healthily (by this I mean, not setting unrealistically low calorie goals) and not lose weight. What I have seen are plenty of people try a fad diet for a month (basically just cutting calories and starving themselves), exercise sporadically, and then give up. Where is this overweight or obese person with a healthy lifestyle that thin privilege blogs keep referring to? I’m sure the medical world would like to know. Like any illness, it takes time and dedication to heal obesity. And unfortunately the illness might be mental instead of simply physical. Weight gain can also simply be the manifestation of depression or other mental illnesses. So when I see these angry thin privilege posts, I just see a lot of hurt and dissatisfaction.

Do I expect everyone to be models? No. Women come in different shapes and sizes and those should be better represented in the media. But I do not like the fact that the fat acceptance movement is trying to make people accept a disease as physically safe, or even worse, normal. Being curvy and being obese is not the same thing. I also don’t like the fact that they call themselves oppressed and compare it to the oppression of black people or gay people. Discrimination is not the same as oppressed. As part of their path towards approval and relevance, they have hijacked the 1950’s and made it into something it never was. They have created a fantasy so that they can continue to deny the harm that they are doing to their bodies, and it seems like plenty of people prefer the fantasy.

Sources I used:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/nadiaarumugam/2012/01/26/how-size-and-color-of-plates-and-tablecloths-trick-us-into-eating-too-much/

http://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/adult.html#Common

http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/overwt.htm

http://jezebel.com/5299793/for-the-last-time-what-size-was-marilyn-monroe

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/from-a-size-12-to-a-16-how-women-have-changed-shape-6162531.html

http://www.webmd.com/diet/medical-reasons-obesity

http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2012/04/marilyn-monroe-was-not-even-close-to-a-size-12-16

http://blogs.webmd.com/pamela-peeke-md/2010/01/just-what-is-an-average-womans-size-anymore.html