One Life Fine Art

Future historians may view health motivated weight-loss as on par with balancing humours. However in the past the reward was often social currency, by demonstrating virtue as the ability to master the body.

Power or Glory uses playground physics to think about weight modification in relation to power dynamics: pairing different masses on a teeter totter results in a power imbalance where the smaller mass, while elevated, is hostage to the larger mass. Agency is inherent in the position of having the greater mass, while the smaller relies on the larger for position. I am curious about who would encourage a condition of dependency as a demonstration of virtue, and why?A wander through art/history brings me to the court of Louis XIV and the demonstration of power known as the grand couvert: courtiers crowd the room to watch as the Sun King dines nightly on a feast of over one-hundred dishes. You stand uncomfortably in formal attire, tired and hungry, as courses of aromatic dishes are paraded past you to the king’s table. Fourteen of his chosen gentleman servants will enjoy the privilege of dining on his leftovers afterward. Later that night you can compete with the public to purchase the king’s leftover leftovers. 

On the other side of the plank, I think about his descendant’s queen, Marie Antoinette. Despite being guaranteed a place at the king’s table, she dined sparingly enough to have maintained a 23” waist, and to have inspired a diet book (Wheeler, 2014). Frequently she would neither remove her glove nor unfold her napkin while seated at the Louis XVI side during the grand couvert. While the French common people could not afford to eat she was publicly refusing to eat. Why would she do this? 

Ultimately though, hunger is a sharp tool.