Fearing the Black Body by Sabrina Strings;

Author:Sabrina Strings;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: New York University Press

Figure 6.1. Eleanor Waddle, “Side Glances at American Beauty,” Cosmopolitan, June 1890, 193.

Evidently, Bisland was only one of the Cosmopolitan’s contributors to wax poetic about tall, slim Nordic American beauties. It is nevertheless a bit unexpected that Bisland would have inserted herself into this field at all. For though she was of aristocratic English and Scottish blood and had attracted many admirers, the English poet Rudyard Kipling among them, the writing she is remembered for lambastes the focus on feminine beauty.23 A mere four years later, she published an article in the North American Review titled “The Cry of the Women,” in which she suggests that women be allowed to lead the race to greatness. Her focus was not the look of the face or the size of the figure. Rather, it was the “beauty and importance” of women’s intellectual and moral contributions.24

The Cosmopolitan was only one of the many publications to make claims about the beauty of Nordic/Aryan women. In many publications, as with claims of Anglo-Saxon superiority a generation earlier, women of northern and western European descent were said to manifest a peerless grace and a superior svelte figure, making them matchless American Beauties. And, if these connections between race, weight, and beauty had been popularized and disseminated in women’s magazines for decades, by the turn of the twentieth century these ideas were becoming increasingly common in reputable academic and mainstream newspapers. The latest generation of boosters of the thin ideal relied on a new scientific language: eugenics. Prominent intellectuals asserted that the slim Nordic/Aryan Americans were indeed the only group “fit” to reproduce. Their tendency to slimness was seen as an indication of such fitness.

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