Walking around the Renaissance Faire (spelling intentional) today, I couldn't help but notice that beneath many a leather lace up corset and layered flowing skirt-deal, lay a body of rounded, curvaceous, fleshier-than-fleshy proportions. I'll forgive ye for thine confusion, yet allow me my observation; nay, my fascination with this issue.
During times of regular fairs, (spelling intentional) it has been my observation that young women like to look as slim as possible and that, as they are loyal partakers of modern media, their styles and strivings reflect these corporate agendas.
I have never in my life seen as many full-bodied women, so full of confidence, as I saw today. Why, I wondered, did the subculture of youth interested in Renaissance Faire role playing and fantasy imagery not seem as twisted about body image as their more modern-leaning counterparts? I wondered as I wandered, my little boys paying five dollars for their fortunes to be told by a psychic with a white beard and then running off to root for Ivanhoe in the joust (he helps Robin Hood, of course he should win).
The ladies, some 18, some 5, were puffed up and peeking, no, virtually spilling out from atop their leather corsets. Of course some of them were slender and some average - but many, and I don't think I'm wrong - were ample, and proud to show it off.
It was as if I'd walked into a time period when a woman was supposed to eat a lot of good food and grow round. And it's funny to think of that statement as being shocking because, in our current climate, women eating a lot of good food and getting round is aesthetically a hotbed of emotional, social and psychological turmoil.
But today, in the 1300s, all was well with the world. The men rode horses, had unwashed hair and spoke loudly and with good cheer to the young lads. The women grew their hair down to their lower backs and pushed their ample bosoms up, out and over their fitted garments, laughing with one another and tending their duties with apple-cheeked merriment.
Was it because the ladies in the Renaissance hobby didn't watch television? Did they choose this world because of the tolerance of fuller figures, or did they create the tolerance?
My mind was spinning faster than the wooden top my eight-year-old had in his possession and all the mead in the land wouldn't give me complete clarity; but I know this much, as I started the ignition and drove off, I felt I'd just left a happy, peaceful place, a place where breasts and hair and weight and laughter were all all right; where horses were important and people were, too.