Week 4: Medicine and Art

Titian's Venus of Urbino from Gli Uffizi

 The aesthetic of the human body has transcended time and culture. Artists have found inspiration in the conceptual and physical being of a person. Doctors and artists alike created beautiful documentation of the human body. 

Because of each person’s unique background and perspective of the world, it is truly at the eye of the beholder to recount what is deemed beautiful. One of my favorite conversations between painters has been the direct contrasts of Édouard Manet’s Olympia to Titian’s Venus of Urbino

Manet's Olympia from Khan Academy

. Manet mocks the glorified pristine portrayal of the prostitute before us. Titian displays her in a reclined manner with a clean realistic form, while Manet’s prostitute is rendered flat and makes direct eye contact with the now uneasy audience. This highlights the reality of its classical counterpart as a plain erotical visual of a naked woman and the ease at which people look at her. Nonetheless, people never fail to find beauty in the human body.

However, the very ideals of the human body fluctuate with time and culture. This social concept is fluid, which is good. The issue is modern technology has made it possible to permanently alter the human body through plastic surgery. Let it clear I’m not condemning those choosing to get reconstructive or gender reassignment surgery, or even cosmetic surgery for that matter. I am simply emphasizing that the current beauty standards will not always be the standard. In a decade or so, the image of “beauty” will change, so changes to one’s body for the sake of satisfying an arbitrary perception of what a person should look like is misguided. For instance, women today are pressured to be smaller in size: a small waist and flat stomach. Media and the fashion industry have created a narrative in which those that don’t fit this mold are not beautiful. So we try our best to change the core of our being to look a certain way when 100 years ago this was not the same ideal. When the average woman has wide hips and waist because she was biologically made to birth to a child; when the flat stomach is unreachable because our abdomen is created to protect our organs and uterus. So get the plastic surgery, do it not to uphold a random vision someone has, but do it for your happiness. Just remember, no one in the world looks exactly like you, so celebrate flaws and differences that culminated from the millions of years human DNA has evolved to make you uniquely, you.

Women's Ideal Body Types Throughout History from Buzzfeed

References

BuzzFeedVideo, director. Women's Ideal Body Types Throughout History. YouTube, YouTube, 26 Jan. 2015, www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xrp0zJZu0a4&ab_channel=BuzzFeedVideo.

Ingber, D E. “The architecture of life.” Scientific American vol. 278,1 (1998): 48-57. doi:10.1038/scientificamerican0198-48

“Size 6 The Western Womens Harem.” Scheherazade Goes West: Different Cultures, Different Harems, by Fatima Mernissi, Washington Square Press, 2001.

TEDxTalks, director. The Business of Beauty Is Very Ugly​ | Carrie Hammer | Tedxsantabarbara. 21 Sept. 2016, www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9vE4i017q4&ab_channel=TEDxTalks. Accessed 23 Apr. 2021.

Tyson, Peter. “The Hippocratic Oath Today.” PBS, Public Broadcasting Service, 27 Mar. 2001, www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/hippocratic-oath-today/.

Uconlineprogram, director. Medicine pt1. YouTube, YouTube, 21 Apr. 2012, www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ep0M2bOM9Tk&ab_channel=UCOnline.

Uconlineprogram, director. Medicine pt3. YouTube, YouTube, 22 Apr. 2012, www.youtube.com/watch?v=FIX-9mXd3Y4&feature=emb_title&ab_channel=UCOnline.

“Venus of Urbino by Titian: Artworks: Uffizi Galleries.” By Titian | Artworks | Uffizi Galleries, www.uffizi.it/en/artworks/venus-urbino-titian.

“Édouard Manet, Olympia (Article) | Realism.” Khan Academy, Khan Academy, www.khanacademy.org/humanities/becoming-modern/avant-garde-france/realism/a/manet-olympia.