ABSTRACT
In the sixteenth century, women with waists measuring more than 13 inches were barred from the court of Catherine de'Medici. Indeed, throughout history women have been given detailed prescriptions about what their appearance and physical dimension should be in order to achieve social acceptability. Like the lines and contours of a modern car, female lines, contours and curves, or the lack of them, have been marketed as commodities, such that what is socially desirable in one decade is stigmatized in the next. Thus the media images objectifying women, past and present, can illustrate the sociocultural ground upon which the figures of distressed eating and distorted body image stand.
