Body Shape in the 20th Century

The unimaginatively named dieting blog "The Diet Blog" has posted up a fantastic look at the BMI and measurements of each decade's seminal model for the last hundred years.

Although BMI is a terrible way to gauge someone's health, it's no surprise that the BMI has gone down for fashion models over the last forty years, flesh dropping off of models' bones precipitously when compared to their curvier forerunners:

I thought this was an interesting observation...

The 1920s and 1960s both bucked the trend of the curvaceous woman. Ann Bolin, an anthropologist at Elon College suggests that "during periods of liberation, like the 1920s, when women had just gotten the vote, and the 1960s, when the Pill became available, the ideal shape for women deemphasized their reproductive characteristics--the nourishing breasts, the wide, childbearing hips."

They cherry-picked some of their models to make their points, and unfortunately the post ends with the shrill anti-ectopmorph Nazism typical of some dieting blogs, which I personally find a little hypocritical when complaining about body type prejudice. Why can't we just accept that health has very little to do with BMI, and there are beautiful specimens of womanhood in all shapes and sizes?

Female Body Shape in the 20th Century [Diet Blog]