"People always bring up the "good old days" of body image, and talk about curvy Vargas girls and how Marilyn Monroe was a size whatever-it-was -- but the Left-wing idea of how healthy those days were is just as much a revisionist pipe-dream as the Right-wing idea of how moral they were.

First of all, the fact that the ideal was different doesn’t mean that there wasn’t an ideal at all. Yes, a very small percentage of women have the body of Calista Flockhart, but was the percentage with the body of Jayne Mansfield really any greater? It seems like roughly the same percentage of women are going to feel bad about their bodies at any given time, no matter which of the various competing ideals is having its turn in the spotlight.

[...]

Monroe’s curves may have been a positive from a feminist perspective, but what about the other ingredients in the recipe -- the affected voice, the expression of perpetual surprise, the fact that she had to act dumb, even though she wasn’t? Taken all together, the curves plus the other stuff paint a picture of Monroeism as the ideal of the girl-woman; of virgin chic, with the stuff that curves are made of seeming less like "real-woman" fat than baby fat. The curves of the mid-century pinup girl were there to make her seem like a naïve teenager -- trickable, conquerable, rapeable."

-- The1585, in The Body-Image Essay to End All Body-Image Essays, on the1585.com

I didn't agree with everything in the article, but this is still one of the best pieces I've ever read on the usually abysmal topic of "body image."