Word: idealisms
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Though the fitness craze is still mostly a middle-and upper-middle-class phenomenon, the fit look has nothing elitist about it. It represents an attainable ideal for all ages, races, walks of life. It requires little more than the will to work at them. Argues Body Builder Rachel McLish: "You have a simple choice of what to put on your bones: fat or muscle. Working out is a positive addiction." It may also be the means to that elusive, seductive goal: a prolonged, vital youth. "The fitness business," suggests Novelist-Critic Wilfrid Sheed, "is about sex and immortality...
...building their bodies just to look good. Is that enough? Does beauty stop at the skin line? For this kind of woman, it does. She will be sitting alone, in an empty room, with her perfect body." Calvin Trillin, The New Yorker journalist and humorist, wonders whether this new ideal woman is only a media spin-off from the popularity of Jane Fonda and her bestselling Workout Book (see box page 75). "For the public good," Trillin says, "the more people who can lift the end of a car off the ground in case of trouble, the better...
...Observes Eileen Ford, who runs her own top agency in New York City: "Models used to look fragile, plucking their eyebrows and wearing pancake makeup. God, they looked terrible! Now I get girls in here who are so fit they've got legs like Muhammad Ah'. That's not ideal either, but it's part of the '80s look: a firm body, healthy hair and skin, and a look of serene determination in the eyes. Today, health is beauty. You can't have one without the other...
...early 19th century, English fashion in female bodies was ethereal, emaciated; a tubercular fragility was considered attractive. Women subsisted on a diet of vinegar and belladonna to achieve the Pre-Raphaelite "fatal slimness." The crowning, confining glory of Victoriana was the whalebone corset, which gave Actress Lillie Langtry her "ideal" 38-18-38 measurements, and which sometimes displaced internal organs. For some women, that was not enough: in pursuit of the hourglass figure they underwent surgical removal of their lower ribs...
...blacks complained that Jackson had targeted the wrong company: 18% of Anheuser-Busch employees are minorities and the company purchases $40 million annually from black businesses. Said William Douthit, the black president of the St. Louis Urban League: "We have always pointed to Anheuser-Busch as an example of ideal corporate social responsibility...