Credit Where Credit Is Due
Since it's rare that I write to agree with anything at Crescat Sententia or Amber Taylor, it's worth noting when we're in perfect concord. In this case, she's got it right.
How to help stem the tide of unrealistic imagery? How to teach young people what women look like?The answer may be more field trips.
Museums provide a multitude of images of women: the models used by artists of previous generations had no access to aerobics classes, weigh lifting machines, breast implants, or diet pills. If they were poor enough that they were willing to pose nude, any visible protruding bones could be attributed to hunger, not fashion. However, portrait after portrait places real women in the poses of goddesses, nymphs, personifications of emotion and virtue. While modern models could be mistaken for Kouros boys, albeit with perfect hemispherical breasts eternally lifted, the women you find in an art gallery are endowed with soft, undulating curves of hip and thigh, full buttocks that put J. Lo to shame, and breasts that have a distinctly fleshy heft.
Of course, a cynic might say I'm willing to agree so vociferously only because (a) it allows me to point out that Amber neglects statuary as a source of knowledge, to the exclusion of painting, and (b) that this means she has little call to use the magnificent word "callipygian." (The word, although now given broader usage, was so far as I know used mostly to refer to statuary, particularly the Callipygian Venus. Sorry, I couldn't find a link to the original, which seems to be in Naples.)
I just like the word, and wish it would see a resurgence.
Comments
I ran across a list of under used words, and sent it on the family. We all agreed callipygian is the best word of all time.
Posted by: lucia | August 24, 2004 08:42 AM