fandomsandfeminism:

sofiama:

cr1mson5thestranger:

rosietheamazon:

deadhoneybadger:

Yeah that’s why they all died at 30 because they were so unhealthy but cool

Pretty sure it was the plague not heart disease.

Pretty sure it was the Plague, childbirth, food spoiling, maltreated infections, smallpox, pneumonia, and/or generally unsanitary living conditions (such as dumping sewage and waste in the streets) and not health conditions caused by excess body fat.

Not to mention that the Renaissance standard of female beauty being plumpness and full-figured forms came from the fact that it was a status symbol. Plump, pale, full-figured women were wealthy women who didn’t have to spend their days in hard labor or raising children (or both) and stood a better chance of bearing healthy babies than commoner women did.

Cultural “Oh Snap”
I hate it so much when people pull out the “unhealthy” excuse for having a reason to body shame a person.

“Women died young in the 1700s because they were fat” is an amazingly ignorant statement

Also, when you hear “average life expectancy in the past was around 40 years”, that actually doesn’t mean most people died at age 40. It meant there was insanely high infant mortality due to a lot of the stuff other people mentioned (illness, starvation, etc.). Plenty of people in the Renaissance lived into their sixties and seventies, especially the nobility because a) they had enough to eat and b) they had the resources to flee plague-stricken areas. The average between “died before their fifth birthday” and “died of some accident in adulthood” and “died of old age”, weighted by probability, is what gets you life expectancy.

TLDR- in the Renaissance, if you made it to 5 you were likely to make it to 50.