In a message dated 23/05/97 21:44:22, you write:
<< You might also show them the Williamsdorf Venus (spelling?), the
original "Earth Mother," and point out that through most of human life on
Earth, a fat person would have been a thing of wonder... I know that until
contact and colonization here in Hawaii, the only fat people were the chiefs
and their wives, and fatness was greatly admired. Technological
civilization, and the millenia-long drop in food prices that accompanied
it,
are responsible for making fatness an option for everybody in the developed
world and thus making *thinness* the marker for high status...
>>
I have had the most disconcerting expereince of being in Indonesia /Java,
where they regard people with a tendency to rotundness as an object of
beauty, and expression of wealth and good fortune.. So much so, that at a
social gathering people wanted to sit next to me because it would bring them
good luck.
I shall return to lurking on the list - and by the way my first exposure to
SF was the Narnia Books which inspired me at the age of 10 to write similar
other world expereinces, and spent quite a bit of my pre adolesence checking
the backs of wardrobes and swinging on lamp posts "just in case".
Janet D
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu May 25 2000 - 19:06:16 PDT