You can now buy the Kardashian's ass!
Generation X lived our youth under the bodily influence of Kate Moss, who imposed an extreme thinness that diluted the curves of the body. Baptized as heroin chic, this new beauty displayed physical emaciation and self-destructive neglect, in tune with the political disaffection of the late millennium. A stereotype that became exhausted at the beginning of the 21st century, when another emerged, the opposite of this squalid one, characterized by the voluptuousness of curves. Kate Moss was definitely replaced by Kim Kardashian. The new canon of beauty was imposed in 2014 with the cover of Paper Magazine, where Kardashian showed off impressively prominent buttocks that could hold a glass of champagne. From there, social media did its work and a new aspirational aesthetic canon was established,slim-thick (thin-thick), with an unrealistically narrow waist and a flat abdomen, in contrast to exaggeratedly voluptuous hips and buttocks.
Pronounced hips have been fashionable throughout many eras, although they have had different meanings at each time. The oldest example is the famous Paleolithic statuette of the Venus of Willendorf, which complements the hips with the prominence of the belly, breasts and pubis, to codify values such as fertility, protection, generational continuity or ritual function. Between the 16th and 18th centuries, swollen hips became popular as a reaction to the elongated medieval silhouette. The new volume was obtained from internal structures such as the girdle, the crinoline or the infantryman which, apart from functioning as a symbol of fertility, displayed wealth and well-being, since that body volume was difficult to obtain in times of food shortage.
At the end of the 19th century, the sinuous S-shaped silhouette dominated, with a very narrow waist due to the effect of a suffocating and highly unhealthy corset. Wherever they went, they had to drag a real textile trailer, not to mention the breathing difficulties of the corset and the excess weight of all the ornaments they wore. In fashion: to remove women from the social sphere.
When Kim Kardashian traded extreme thinness for voluptuousness, many experienced it with relief as the end of the era of anorexia and the beginning of a more real voluptuousness. An aesthetic that now, in addition to diets, required cosmetic surgery (such as BBL: Brazilian butt lift) to achieve those impossible voluptuousness. The latest product launched by the Skims underwear brand, owned by Kim Kardashian, is theUltimate Hip, Compression tights with foam padding that recreate "the perfect hourglass silhouette," with which she can finally show off her Kardashian derriere.
Some sectors have celebrated the fact that, thanks to these girdles, women no longer have to go under the knife to achieve a Kardashian silhouette. Certainly, body modification isn't as aggressive, but the underlying issue is that the conclusion is always that women's bodies are never fine as they are and that, tirelessly, they need to be modified to be valued in society.