Hilary Moore: The voluptuous ideal in art (and beauty, too)

Curves are sexy.

That can be true about anything, of course. Anyone who's looked over the stunning Istanbul cityscape as the sun sets will tell you the luxuriant pleasure of the curving domes and swooping archways for the thirsty eye. They'll tell you about the wondrous sweeping curves of the Topkapi Palace and the shimmering blue of the expansively winding Bosphorus.

Anyone who's really thought about it while eating a glistening round plum will tell you the pleasure of piercing the soft, juicy flesh -- feeling the shape of it in your hands as you bite, sweet juice leaking across waiting tongue and lips.

Anyone who has played the cello can tell you how the sensation of the vibrating warm-wooded curves against arms and thighs can spiral you to delirious new heights of music-making, as musical and physical stimulants massage one another into life.

And then there's the woman's body. Nowhere is the curve more perfect, more exhileratingly natural than in the shoulders, the breasts, the back, the belly, the hips, the thighs of a beautiful woman.

But amazingly, it's this very pinnacle of architectural perfection that often goes unappreciated.

The curve is sexy.

And yet, a large proportion of women do their best to eradicate their most sensual attribute, crushing and compressing their softness into cold-hearted lines. Straight lines. Lines like roads, lines like rulers, lines like skyscrapers -- or washboards.

Oh why? Why? Why?

I'm not talking about heart-threatening obesity here. I'm talking about beautiful, slender women who tell me they need to lose weight -- not with some compliment-seeking whine -- but with heartfelt concern that there's too much of their body alive in the world. They need to kill some off.

It's an entirely self-directed critical hatred. They wouldn't say it to me otherwise. I mean, if it were a standard you held universally, then telling someone significantly heavier than you that you were "fat" and needed to lose weight would be the height of insensitivity. These women are not insensitive and there is no implicit criticism of me intended in their comments.

It's their own personal curves they deplore.

And it's not all men's fault.

Women have a choice about what shape they make their bodies. If they are doing it to please men, they're prioritizing the wrong person's needs.

I don't care about indoctrination and the insidious pressure of the "patriarchal society" on the female mind. If we are to claim liberation on the grounds that we're strong minded individuals rather than empty-headed sex toys, then we need to start acting that way.

Women's magazines are the worst offenders. They are packed with photos of skinny females, articles on how to lose weight and advertisements for plastic surgery.

Every few months, they print some self-satisfied, trite article on beauty being from within. Thanks folks, but no thanks.

Beauty's on the outside too. It should be celebrated. It just can't be limited to one body type.

Its worth remembering that in many other cultures larger-built women are considered the epitome of health, beauty and femineity, while Western art itself has often glorified the more full-figured female.

Women can and should be every shape and size they want -- including wafer thin. But it needs to be for themselves, not for some half-arsed mass-produced self-annihilating "standard."

Neither should we blame it all on male desire. I have never met a man who made me feel overweight. I can't count the number of women who have.

Women need to take some of the responsibility for the perpetuation of their own images. By clinging to such a rigid interpretation of physical beauty we do nothing but limit our own development.

Many of us need to start loving the bodies we are naturally given. Because curves -- whether on women or on donuts -- can be very, very beautiful.

Just relax, take another look and drink it in. Hilary Moore is a third-year Ethnomusicology graduate student from Perth, Scotland.

You might just find your taste buds tingling.

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