You are talking about the Baroque Period of art, one best typified by Peter Paul Reubens and to some degree Titian, in which the elite class favored that over-sized style — it was not, however, reflected in all art of the time. Moreover, look at Reubens earlier works, for example, “Exchange of the Princesses” from the Medici Cycle and your argument is fairly countered.

When you talk about hair and body parts, you are speaking of style. Those change with the winds, or as it is in many cases, credit availability on the Visa card.

Speaking to now, look at the difference between a typical womens’ fashion magazine and one like Maxim. In the womens magazine, you will see stick figure thin models that are actually unhealthy looking…and in my photographer days experience, WERE unhealthy. A diet of cocaine and cigarettes is not the way to maintain your body, and that’s basically what a lot of Ford models lived on.

Maxim, on the other hand, tends to have more fully developed and athletic appearing models that look like they actually eat and work out. The clothes sizes from the shoots were incredibly different as well. Most of the thin models were 5’10" or taller, and wore Size 0 or smaller. I remember well one young lady insisting she was fat because she had grown to a size 0 — which essentially means she outgrew children’s clothes. The glamour models I worked with tended to start around Size 4 and their height was usually somewhat shorter. They most certainly came closer to the “ideal” of 36C-24-36 than the fashion variety.

I’ll quote my mother (who wrote a lovely paper on this subject once upon a time) “In general, men have a preference for women with low waist-to-hip ratios (WHRs), that is, more adipose is deposited on the hips and buttocks than on the waist. Research shows that women with high WHRs (whose bodies are more tube-shaped) are more likely to suffer from health maladies, including infertility and diabetes.”

For more information, read:

Moller, A.P. and R. Thornhill. Bilateral symmetry and sexual selection: a meta-analysis. American Naturalist. 1998(151): 174-192.

Perrett, David et al. Symmetry and human facial attractiveness. Evolution & Human Behavior. 1999 (20): 295-307.