Not happy with your body? Then do something about it. That seems to be the credo of our age, with its obsession with perfect bodies. But is the body really so perfectible? And what are the consequences?
Picture perfect
Celebrating a muscular body goes back millennia. Yet there is one major difference between then and now, namely the role of social media. In our hypervisual age, we’re confronted with perfect bodies 24/7. So we end up becoming obsessed with appearance. Young people in particular are strongly influenced by ideals of this kind. More than that, such ideals are becoming the norm.
If I can do it
Women have experienced the pressures of beauty ideals for years. More recently, however, the bar has been set higher and higher for the male body too. It seems that anyone can achieve a body like Arnold Schwarzenegger, provided they are willing to put in the work and have the necessary #selflove. So bodybuilders and fitfluencers share their regimes online. What exercises they do, how intense, how many reps, what they eat, how many hours they sleep and how often they take an ice-bath. The algorithm does the rest, ensuring that any boy who clicks a few times on pictures of a sculpted body will be swamped with photos and videos screaming that ‘you too can achieve this’.
Never enough
Just so long as you train enough, eat these protein powders and power bars, and wear this sports gear. Every victory is worth sharing. So, one more selfie with your shirt off, because likes are addictive. There’s no such thing as good enough – you always have to do even better. It’s a perfect recipe for mental health issues like low self-esteem and sports addiction.
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Passion – Love play
The appearance of sex toys tells us a lot about how people felt about lust and gratification at a particular time. About the taboos that might still attach to them. And about the future of sex and the ideals of designers.
Passion – The kiss
Your first kiss. You never forget it. No matter how sweet, sloppy or bad it was. After that, there’s no stopping you: on average you’ll spend 20,000 minutes of your life kissing.
Passion – The body
The contents of Bouquet romantic novels might still leave something to the imagination, but not so their covers: this is the image of the ‘ideal man’. What does it say about our perceptions?
Passion – Romantic fiction
Seven Nights with the Sheikh, A Kiss in the Moonlight, An Heir for the King: the titles of romantic fiction in the world-famous Bouquet series have always appealed to the imagination. Guilty pleasures full of desire, temptation and happy endings are still extremely popular.
Falling in Love – Making it happen
Butterflies in your stomach, unable to eat a thing, constantly daydreaming and checking your phone every five minutes to see if you’ve received a new message: falling in love is magical.
Bonding – Parenthood
For centuries being a mum or dad was not a choice at all, simply how things were ‘supposed to be’. The way parenthood itself is viewed has also changed over the years.
Bonding – Marriage
Only three things are truly important in a marriage: you, your beloved and your love for each other. All the same, there are a lot more factors at play in the background.
Bonding – Family of choice
In addition to their biological family, many people have one they’ve chosen for themselves: people you’re not related to, people who understand, help and love you.
Bonding – The Couple Look
See them whizzing across the city on their fast bikes: his a men’s model, hers a woman’s. Both wrapped in a puffer jacket and with matching trainers. The dreary ‘ANWB couple’ in trendy jackets.
Love, designed
We’ve all grown up with stories and clichés that have unconsciously influenced our image of love. Love, designed explores these stereotypes and shows how design guides the way we both seek and ‘consume’ love.
