Body Shaming Through Art History: From Venus of Willendorf to Social Media

This article explores the historical and philosophical roots of body shaming, linking ancient aesthetic canons to contemporary online harassment. It traces the concept of beauty from Plato's Symposium and Polykleitos's Canon through Renaissance ideals like Leonardo da Vinci's Vitruvian Man, arguing that art has historically propagated unattainable body standards. The piece highlights the Venus of Willendorf (30,000-25,000 BCE) as a Paleolithic fertility symbol that would today invite body shaming, contrasting it with Botticelli's Venus. It cites Oliviero Toscani's 2007 Nolita campaign featuring anorexic model Isabelle Caro, who died in 2010, as a critique of contemporary thinness ideals. The article discusses the case of Armenian model Armine Harutyunyan, launched by Gucci in 2020, who faced online abuse for her unconventional features. It also references Algerian boxer Imane Khelif, gold medalist at the Paris Olympics, who was subjected to transphobic harassment despite IOC approval, leading to a Paris prosecutor's investigation for cyber harassment. The piece invokes Pierre Bourdieu's 1979 book "La Distinction" to argue that aesthetic judgments are shaped by economic and cultural capital, with dominant classes imposing their taste through symbolic violence. It concludes with a quote from W. Somerset Maugham's 1930 novel "Cakes and Ale" warning that beauty is a dead end.