Jennifer Lawrence has called for a ‘new normal’ in body standards for women, as people have become too used to seeing underweight film stars. Scientifically, she may have a point, as none of our perceptions are absolute - we don’t see in centimetres, just in terms of ‘larger’ or ‘smaller’.
In the brain, visual detectors often come in pairs, such as clockwise and anticlockwise motion. When one of these receptors is ‘saturated’, our perception can be distorted. For example, if you look at a waterfall for a minute, the cells in your eye that detect downwards motion get tired and your vision adapts. When you look away, everything appears to move upwards.
This is a short-term illusion and studies are still ongoing into the effect of cultural phenomena and images in the media on our long-term perception. But Rubens wasn’t known for painting ‘fat’ women, so at least biological perception can change over history.
For now, there’s a lot to work on. As Lawrence said: ‘We’ve gotten so used to underweight that when you are a normal weight it’s like, “Oh, my God, she’s curvy.” Which is crazy.’
Dr Daniel Glaser is director of Science Gallery at King’s College London
