There has been an invigorating push to destigmatize fatness in the last twenty years. Within the general ethos of Fat Activism’s call to humanize the heavy, the discourse of “Fat is beautiful” has emerged as one of the most prominent and emotionally-invested rallying cries for contemporary American women. Any recent skim on Jezebel will find impassioned conversations about plus size model Tess Holliday’s #effyourbeautystandards, Dove’s Real Beauty campaign, and the ways social media has reclaimed the large body as beautiful.


One of the most common arguments circulated in these discussions is that our current beauty standards are quite recent. According to this discourse, heavier women were the beauty ideal in the “past,” whether that be Marilyn Monroe of the 1950s or the rounded Victorian in the mid 1800s. Buzzfeed’s inclusion of zaftig models in their video of “Women’s Ideal Body Types Throughout History” has helped the video gain over 30 million hits on Youtube. But no other ideal has been trumpeted as frequently as the voluptuous Rubenesque nudes from the early 1600s.

Yet Leah Sweet, Assistant Professor of Art History at Parsons Design School, warns this discourse is inaccurate and actually damaging to fat women in her article “Fantasy Bodies, Imagined Pasts: A Critical Analysis of the ‘Rubenesque’ Fat Body in Contemporary Culture” published last year in the interdisciplinary academic journal Fat Studies. While she agrees with the need to promote size diversity and fat beauty, she is wary about the appropriation of these historical paintings for twenty-first century ideals.


There are three main parts of Sweet’s argument.

“Rubenesque” Referred to...Rubens

First, Sweet points out the analytic flaws in assuming that the beauties on museum walls are an authorative proof that past centuries privileged fat women. Not only was Rubens still painting bodies based on classical standards (as opposed to living models) but the term “Rubenesque” originally stemmed from the debates on color’s pleasurable sensory realism and was not a reference to the bodies within the frame. Added to this is the mythos of the sexually potent painter, who demonstrates his own creative powers through his sexual relationship with a muse.

In this context, female fat is offered to the viewer for his enjoyment, but its sensual beauty can never be separated from its function as a symbol of Rubens’s painterly prowess (i.e., his ability to create seemingly living, breathing flesh with unconventional painterly means). This insistent visibility and presumed attractiveness of Rubens’s fat nudes may stem from their erotic appeal, but this affirms the unmatchable skill of the painter rather than the beauty and satisfaction of embodied individuals.


In short, Ruben’s soft beauties are not evidence of widespread beauty norm that privileged larger women but circulated back to his own artistic reputation.



The “Rubenesque” Is Regressive

Aside from historical complexities, Sweet argues that the nostagia around the “Rubenesque” is actually regressive because it still relies on the normative, privileged male eye for validation.


As Sweet notes aesthetic beauty becomes equated to sexual desirability according to hegemonic male judgement. Ironically, Ruben’s so-called female-friendly body positivity is grounded in a painting that is actually a depiction of rape.


Furthermore, the fantasy of the Rubenesque and the validation of the Great Western Male Artist remains largely uncritical in its focus on white, gender-conforming, able-bodied women. Sweet writes that this model leave us with

two representational options: conformity to mainstream criteria, or identification with centuries-old nude figures from European painting, all of whom have a balanced distribution of fat in conventionally appropriate places such as breasts, hips, buttocks, and thighs, are white, gender conforming, naked, and, for the most part, supine. The “Rubenesque” comparison excludes a majority of people...along lines of race, gender, and ability.


While accommodating some size variances, “Rubenesque” does not actually differ from mainstream models of beauty. In fact, it propagates many of the same oppressions.

We Need a 21st Century Model

Sweet concludes with a third point: idealizing the past denies the multivalent beauty of present day reality. A more productive avenue of self affirmation might include:

individual and group action, where a fat individual can perform her fatness on a daily basis through self-documentation, dress, and other artistic avenues that highlight anomalism and individualism.


Ultimately, Fat Activism can engage with the “Rubenesque” critically but as a way to create space for more productive representations of fat embodiment in the present tense that respects difference and plurality of identity.