> "We have a new love relationship each episode -- it keeps the viewer interest." - Denny Crane.
David E Kelley, creator of and often writer for Boston Legal, is an excellent author and loves to play to the cynics in the audience. The character Denny Crane is cast as a bumbling hero who gets away with non-credible acts, but ultimately he is a foil for Alan Shore, the counter-culture near superhero of the show.
> When my friend came back to L.A. from Kansas City and dance school, she was *very* slender, and I said "Lori, you look great", and she said "Dale, I'm anorexic", and I said "Well, you still look really great."
> Ironic how both of the above aren't just photo-related, they live by photography.
Photography and it’s cousin cinematography are the representative tools of preference of our time. Their relationship to helping to idealize the extremely thin is an interesting topic. I’ don’t know if idealizing thin people is related to photography, but the timing is highly suggestive.
Most of the history of western art has shown a demonstrated favoritism for heavier people in art representing women. Think of figurative works, even erotic art dating from Hellenistic Greece to at the works of Jean-Honoré Fragonard in the early 1800s in the West. You have a good point that photography is an enabler of this trend towards idealizing thin women.
Has anyone researched the relationship between idealizing thin and the growth of photography/cinematography? I bet the transition started in the last 100 years or so.