Exposed Venus
(The bare truth of female attraction)

Yakshi with a bird a coop
Ancient Indian Buddhist statue Yakshi holding a branch
Ancient Indian Buddhist bas-reliefAll the regular women feel necessarily self-conscious in nudity. This is accepted as an intrinsic feature of female psychology.

However, we can see that the Buddhist beauties enjoying their wide hips and full breasts evince not a bit of this unnatural feeling of shame about their own natural appearance in a shocking way.

These latter feel at ease having no real cloth on. Even their fine ornamental girdles are mere decorations like their necklaces and bangles.

But what must such graceful and comely women be ashamed ofh?! It is just the women lacking similar forms who experience certain discomfort and need to shield their bosoms and groins somehow, being naked. Even when the woman is regarded as the Goddess of Beauty!

Nude Aphrodite and Venus in the arts
Medici Aphrodite Capitoline Venus Aphrodite and Eros The Birth of Venus by Botticelli

Usually it looks as if the women screen something sacrosanct from vulgar stares, which can desecrate that. However, the comparison with the Buddhist carvings reveals clearly that they try to conceal the banality of their forms.

Women: 
Sphinxes 
without 
secretsJudgment of Paris
Roman mosaicIn regard to this observation, I would like to remind you the famous myth of the Judgment of Paris. According to the myth three goddesses desiring to win the beauty contest price, tried to get the price (the apple inscribed "for the fairest") by means of bribe. So, Athena Hera promised the judge power over the entire Asia, Athena promised him war glory and wisdom. Finally, Aphrodite, the goddess of beauty  tempted Paris by promise of Helen, the fairest of mortal women. So, the goddesses' real beauty even was not considered.

Death of Actaeon
Artemis killing Actaeon for seeing her nude
Temptation scene
Notre Dame, Paris In contrast to the common notion of female body as the embodiment of perfect beauty, women avoid disclosing their nude bodies. And therefore any little bit of nude female body excites necessarily the men's admiration while, without doubt, this sight was as accessible as daylight for our furthest ancestors.

It's clear that this belief exists just because men's eyes are carefully preserved from blinding splendor of female treasures.

No exception even for beloved men, so "the rites in honor of the Love God" are held at the lights turned out as a rule.

Vintage fashion posterVintage hairstyleMissing their proper forms, women utilize various ruses to disguise instead. So they like to adorn themselves furtively with various fine dresses and accessories, from handbags to underpants. The same about female hairstyles — something, at least, must have round outlines in a woman.

In short words, women palm off trifle in rich wrapping, and dodge unwrapping as far as possible in order to escape the debunking.

Furthermore, women are known to avoid revealing their true ages. An apparent reason is, once again, in their underdeveloped forms that stay teenage lifelong.

Women feel surer and we enjoy them more when they feign round-forms somehow. For example, when they shift their hips, so that one side of the body looks like wide-hipped as in the upper right photo. This pose is named contrapposto in the arts.

Female contrapposto in the arts and life
Venus de Milo Aphrodite of Cnidus Ancient statue Aphrodite Anadyomene
Ancien sculpture Venus
Roman mosaic from Tunisia Hindu sculpture
Khajuraho temple Hindu sculpture Aristide Maillol
Harmonie Angel
Oriental dance Leonardo da Vinci
Leda and the Swan Eros and Psyche
Fragment George William Joy
Truth Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres
Venus Anadyomene Ingres
The Source The Birth of Venus 
by Bougereau
Fragment Walter Crane
Renaissance of Venus

Women as if evade exposure with such movements and give themselves airs and graces. Another artifice to fake proper female forms consists in bearing legs in the shape of letter  Y or  K :

Sculpture of Aphrodite
Cyprus, 1th c. BC Hindu sculpture from
the Khajuraho temple Aristide Maillol
Torse de l'Ete Three Graces
Roman fresco Jean Regnault
Judgement of Paris Luis Ricardo Falero
Fairy Lily
The Woman Eater movie
vintage poster Lady Pink Vintage fashion ads

All those poses seem to be exhibitions of ease. In reality they just give women possibility to relax and to feel free from continuous psychological tension.

This psychological tension of women is specially prominent in contrast to men's attitude in similar situations. For instance, in the image left you can see soldiers having rest in society of a young woman on a beach in a remote country. The soldiers have assumed natural stance of maximal stability and minimal tension, whilst the woman is standing as if on parade. In exchange, she is looking like round-hipped, and so she is feeling more comfortable despite physical tension.

Also women feel more assured when their figures are improved with some special garments, for example, fluid skirts, bras lifting their sagging breasts, and corsets, bodices, girdles and belts  constricting their waists.

Vintage vogue pattern Vintage vogue pattern


Portait of Sarah Eleonora Fairmore
by Vishnyakov Maria Teresa of Spain
by Velázquez  width= In the former times of chivalrous knights and gallant prices that modern women miss so much, ladies wore framework skirts, which made illusion of wide hips or, at least, afforded enough space for male imagination. The illusion grew up with hard and tight corsets constricting women's waists in contrast to the skirts. Some corsets served also for rising female breasts.


Under defense of these garments women felt safe from arrows of men's glances as if under armor, but these garments were also as hard and cumbersome as armor.
Leather 
corset Design 
of a framework skirt Women holding a 
cage crinoline of metal hoops Putting on a 
crinoline skirt

You can check these interesting pages concerning with this subject:

Hoop Skirts of the Civil War Era
The Crinoline Age  

Delacroix.
Liberty Leading the People at the Barricade. (1830) All the same, since the wearing it was rewarded with men's defeated hearts, so the ladies resigned themselves to the discomfort until the emancipation of 19-20th c. released them from the cages of the framework skirts and from the bonds of the corsets.

Girl measuring her waist
Present-day girdle
Nevertheless modern women have not become free from troubles about their figures. Only the ways of shaping an attractive figure have become more "natural" in present.

So for the same aim of constricting their waists present-day ladies go on severe diets and take exercises in hope to free from stomach fat thought to be superfluous. Excessive aspiration of this kind has resulted in some extreme cases of fatal anorexia. Feminists blame these cases of women's madness on men's lust for thin female bodies. Even so, it is also true that sometimes men like plump women, certainly for the same illusion of broad pelvis that the fat makes.

Besides that in present the stomach fat may be excised, sometimes along with lower ribs, which hinder some women rich in bones to feel attractive.

Also surgeons can fill a woman's lean breasts with silicone and her heart with pride upon her affected bosoms.

 It's clear that all these camouflages and tricks make female figure alike that innate paragon, and more attractive as a result.

Yakshi With a Mirror
Ancient Indian Buddhist bas-reliefAt that note that, unlike those faultfinding and demanding pretenders around us, the genuine shamefree women represented by those stone carvings were Buddhist ascetics. So, according to Ancient Indian literature, wore simple bark-dresses, which did not adorn their bodies but concealed their own beauty instead:

Her bark-dress conceals the splendid orbs
Of her breasts, and reveals not their beauty
And brilliance; it seems that a sallow leaf
Has barely imprisoned a bud in the morning.

Kalidasa, The Recognition of Sakuntala

Hindu miniatureSo the Buddhist beauties needed no garment with affected hips, unlike women of later Hindu epoch who wore such dress as represented in miniature right. They also needed to bear their hips and legs neither in the contrapposto pose nor in the shape of letter   Y or  K . Their hairstyles were plain and utilitarian. 

Even their decorative girdles surrounding their hips only, served neither for constricting their waists nor for adorning their bodies. Those girdles were quite functional. According to the poem Cloud Messenger by  Kalidasa their girdles jingling to their footsteps. In other words, their girdles as well as their bangles served as rattles at dancing.

 



Some people have tried explaining the phenomenon of attractiveness of curvy female figure and narrow waist, called hour glass form or wasp waist. One of such theories tells that wide waist is a sign of pregnancy, and therefore it is not attractive for men, but in reality a pregnancy affects primarily stomach.

Furthermore, other people consider narrow-waisted ideal to be invented and based on a vogue only. We should assent, but for the Buddhist carvings. Besides, the vogue of constricted waists and affected hips appears to be too old, namely it is as old as the Minoan statuettes and fresco below (a good millennium before the Classical Greece)

Females with affected hips in Minoan art
So-called shake goddess
Creta So-called Lady Of Auxerre

Women with constricted waists in Minoan art
So-called Ladies in Blue
Fresco from Knoss Palace, Creta

Even the growing thin is not an invention of this age as it may seem. Some Old Indian and Ceylonian images which cannot be numbered among evidences of existence of women with real wide hips, prove that.
Sculpture from Ellora
India Fresco from Sigiria
Sri Lanka Fresco from Sigiria
Sri Lanka Fresco from Sigiria
Sri Lanka

In fact, these attempts show us doubtlessly that those ideals stem from truly natural ideal of female figure endowed with wide hips and normal waist. Wasp waist ideal originate from ordinary women's aspiration to look similar to the ideal in accessible ways. As a matter of fact, those trials to expose narrow-waisted ideals only confirm absolute absence of women endowed with proper forms in modern reality.

Below I adduce two examples of such attempts.

Some facts give in the Women: Body Politic page make think that curvy outlines female figure has got considered normal because the anatomists of 18th century learned female skeleton on remains of  women whose rib cages were really narrowed down due to continual wearing tight corsets in life. As a matter of fact "wasp-waisted" vogue reflects aspiration to the steady hereditary ideal of wide hips. And the former women's rib cages show just the power of the subconscious archetype.

In another case (see the ABC News report) two bold scientists have found that men from the remote partly-westernized village in Peru prefer "normal" female figure to curvy narrow-hipped that are so much appreciated by men worldwide. They consider figures of the latter sort to be a consequence of a disease like diarrhea. It sounds amusing. But as to me, something else is amusing a little more here. Notice that all the female figures of various body types depicted in the test picture bear the same pose — legs like the letter  K ! It is like an instinct to portray women in this pose truly habitual for them. Otherwise something is missing in female figure, specially in one with normal, not constricted waist.

Concerning the Peruvian men's preferences, I think it is a bad idea in general to search the answers to how we should live or what female figure is better among primitive tribes. They do live in the nature, but certainly not in proper human environment where our species were formed, and where we would feel most comfortable without any artificial thing. Also their lifestyle is doubtlessly not proper human one. For instance, in the past the most of savage tribes performed human sacrifices or even were cannibals until European Christian missioners dissuaded them from such practices. So, maybe we should acknowledge such social relations and diet as human natural? Should we copy these examples too?

On the other hand, Western civilization resists instinctively the hostile natural environment, and changes it in order to meet human demands. Of course, very many mistakes are made in this way owing to our ignorance of the biological homeland of humanity.


Woman looking at herself in the glass
Kathleen Barton's Sketch Book Thus, we see now that women feel subconsciously their bodily imperfection, suffer for this reason, and feign genuine femininity as far as possible.

Female bodily charm that is so much cared by women, and regarded by them as a sign of women's superiority over men, as something for what men are ready to obey women unconditionally, turns out now to be sham and fake. Their preoccupation with their semblance just refutes what they attempt to prove by its means. And all this just removes the last doubt that something is seriously wrong with our women.

Now welcome to the

Anatomy Of Female Psyche