Thus the concept of 'ideal' woman has changed throughout history

(CNN) - Hidden in the halls of the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York there are historical textiles and glamorous garments, many of which keep secrets of past times.

However, it does not matter how aesthetically unique or historically important it is a particular piece of fashion.Most museum visitors usually ask the same question, said Emma McClendon, a museum's costume curator.

"People come and always want to know what size each piece is," confessed McClendon, organizer of the exhibition "The body: fashion and physical" about the history of the idealized body type in fashion, which will be exhibited until May.

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"Whether contemporary or of the nineteenth century, they want to know what size is or what size would be correlated, or what measure would it be," said the expert."We, as a culture, as a society, are obsessed with size.It is part of our identity as people, "he said.

The three thanks, by Pablo Rubens (1635).Painting is part of the Prado Museum collection, Madrid.(Credits: Art images/heritage images/getty images)

This obsession feeds social pressures to appear in a certain way and to have a certain type of body, particularly among young women.This derives from a cultural construction of the "ideal" body, which in turn has changed over time.So long ago as before the story existed.

Thousands of years ago, sculptures and works of art portrayed curvilínea and thick silhouettes.More recently, at the end of the 20th century, thin and wide models filled the pages of fashion magazines.Now, large buttocks applaud with "like" on social networks.

To commemorate International Women's Day, we explore how this "ideal" constantly changes, forming a complex story through art and fashion, with harmful impacts for women try.

Prehistoria-1900: an approach to full figures silhouettes

Some of the first known representations of a woman's body are the "Venus figurines", small statues of 23 ago.000 to 25.000 years in Europe.

The figurines, including Willendorf Venus, discovered in 1908 in Willendorf, Austria, show round bodies of pear -shaped women, many of them with large breasts.Experts have long discussed if the figurines symbolize attractiveness or fertility.

The artists continued portraying the "ideal" woman as curvilinear and voluptuous until the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

To achieve this, the corset was a popular inner garment among women in the western world from the late Renaissance until the 20th century.Helped accentuate a woman's curves, holding the waist and bust.

As the social views of the body of a woman changed over time, so did the form and construction of the corset.

In the 18th century, the corset formed a cone -shaped silhouet.

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"He emphasized the lack of structure to shape the body.That also happened on the skirts, "McClendon said.

"Structures were used below the bottom of the body to create a specific volume," he continued."In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the idealized fashion body was much more curvilinear and much more voluptuous," he added.

In the 1890s, the American artist Charles Dana Gibson drew images of high women, of thin wa.

"Then, in the twentieth century, there is a very defined change towards an increasingly young body and increasingly athletic and thin," McClendon said.

It is not yet clear what this change triggered, but the interest in fine bodies would continue to the modern era well into.

From 1920 to 1950: eating disorders and a changing bust relationship to waist

The 1920 'flapper' dress rise reflected this change towards a thinner physicist in the western world.

As more thin women appeared in the magazines, in the mid -1920s, there was an epidemic of eating disorders among young women, according to some studies.

"The highest informed prevalence of eating disorders occurred during the 1920s and 1980Article published in Journal of Communication, in 1997.

"Such findings would constitute an empirical support for the hypothesis that the media play a role in promoting the fashion body attraction among women," the researchers wrote.

Around that time, the bodies of models and actresses such as Marilyn Monroe grew in popularity, and the first issue of Playboy magazine was published in 1953.

1960s-'70s: 'A complete fallacy'

The historical change of a rounded body preference to a thinner contributed to the appearance of the British model Lesley Lawson, known as Twiggy, and other slender models.Simultaneously, the "second wave" of the women's rights movement began.

In 1960, the Food Administration and USA.UU.Approved the contraceptive pill.In 1963, women's rights activist Betty Friedan published her book The Feminine Mystique.In 1966, the National Women's Organization was founded in the United States.

"People talk about the 60s, even the 70s, as this moment when the woman's body is released," said McClendon."But the notion that women suddenly were completely free in their bodies after that point is a complete fallacy," he added.

Although women no longer got into Corsés, media messages and social pressures to adhere to an "ideal" body continued.That "ideal" was a very young and thin body type.

"The basic garments were replaced by diet and exercise," said McClendon.

The incidence of severe nervous anorexia that required hospital admission increased significantly during the 1960s and 1970s until reaching a constant number, according to a study by Current Psychiatry Reports in 2012 in 2012.

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1980-90: the rise of supermodels and obesity

Although the images of thin women remained common until well into the 1980s, more emphasis was placed on strong, athletic and toned body types.

"This is where emphasis is placed on classic supermodels such as Cindy Crawford and Naomi Campbell," McClendon recalls.Although there was still an emphasis on a thin body, there was also emphasis on a healthier and shaped body.

Then, in the 90s, that emphasis changed to thinner body types and without style.

"Kate Moss is ESO's epitome.His nickname was 'the abandoned girl'.It became a well -known name from Calvin Klein's ads in the early 1990s, "he recalls.

Anorexia nervosa was associated with the highest mortality rate among all mental disorders during the 1990s, according to the study in Current Psychiatry Reports.

Around that same time, the World Health Organization began to sound the alarm on the growing world obesity epidemic.

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Obesity means that a person has too much body fat and can increase the risk of health problems, such as diabetes, heart disease, brain spills, arthritis and even some cancer.

The prevalence of obesity increased sharply in the 90s.It is estimated that 200 million adults worldwide were obese, and that figure increased to more than 300 million in 2000, according to WHO.

As the images of obesity appeared on the media screens as part of the dissemination efforts of public health, so did the images of the thin models, McClendon said.

"We begin to see a big difference in the way in which the bodies are presented through the media, with extreme thinness held in the fashion images while the largest bodies stand out as 'unhealthy' and bad when informing about theobesity.And we begin to judge our own bodies under the same binary idea, "added the expert.

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2000: loss of self -confidence

Almost a third of children aged 5 to 6 in the United States prefers a thinner ideal body than their real body when they are given the option.Also, in children of 7 years, one in four has practiced some type of diet, according to a medium common sense report in 2015.

The report, based on a review of existing studies on body image and media, also discovered that between 1999 and 2006, hospitalizations for eating disorders in the US.UU.119% increased among children under 12 years.

In the United Kingdom, almost a quarter, 24% of child care professionals have reported having seen signs of trusted problems in the body in children from 3 to 5 years, according to an investigation by the Professional Child Care Association published in 2016.

Another study concluded that the incidence rate of eating disorders in people from 10 to 49 years in the United Kingdom increased from 32.3% by 2000 to 37.2% in 2009.However, the maximum starting age for a diagnosis of eating disorder in women was during adolescence, between 15 and 19, according to that study.

2010: embrace diversity

Since the beginning of the 21st century, there has been a change towards the celebration of various types of bodies in the media and fashion.This trend seems to correlate with the use of social networks, where various types are represented by everyday users online.

Of course, social networks can also give some adolescents a negative body image.A Common Sense Media survey discovered that more than a quarter of adolescents who are active online care about how they look in the published photos.

On the other hand, the increase in social networks has allowed real women to celebrate real bodies types.McClendon even called for social networks a "border for positive body expression".

"In the course of the last 50 years or more, the American ideal has changed Curvy to androgynous to muscular and everything else," said Sierra Filucci, Executive Editor of Content and Distribution for parents of Common Sense Media, a non -end organizationof profit focused on helping children, parents and educators navigate in the world of media and technology.

In 2007, the first episode of "Keeping Up with the Kardashians" was broadcast in the United States.Since then, the bodies of the Kardashian sisters have become a frequent focus of celebrity magazines, giving way to new curvilinear body ideals.

In 2015, Robyn Lawley was the first large size model presented in the Sports Illustrated bathroom edition.

In 2016, fashion designer Christian Siriano presented five large -scale models in his show during New York Fashion Week.That same year, the Mattel toy manufacturing company debuted with a Barbie doll line that represented various types of bodies, including curvilineos.

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Last year, the reality show "Project Runway" included models of all sizes for the first time in its history.

As for the current beauty state, some health experts warn that the dangers of "selfie" and social networks culture influence body image, since the increase in Instagram and YouTube has allowed to idealize the bodies of common peoplenot only the bodies of the supermodels.

However, "when that type of body is different from that of girls and young women, they can be vulnerable to low self -esteem," said Filucci, adding that parents can help boys develop positive body images through models to follow.

"That means refraining from talking about the negative body for both themselves and others and speaking positively about their own bodies, especially emphasizing their body's capacities such as strength, flexibility, adaptation capacity, adaptability...Instead of attractive, "he added.