There's a version of your body that this decade considers perfect. It's probably not the same version as ten years ago, and it's definitely not the one people admired 100 years ago, or 1,000 years ago.
The "ideal body" is fashion. And like all fashion, it changes.
A quick tour through 3,000 years
Illustrations created for JG Fit, inspired by the history of ideal body types.
In Ancient Egypt, around 1292 BC, beauty was slender: a high waist, narrow shoulders, an elegant braided bob. The tomb paintings of the Ramesside queens, Nefertari among them, show exactly that silhouette.
Roughly eight hundred years later, the Greeks preferred the opposite: full-bodied women with light skin and soft curves. Pale skin was part of the point, since it proved you had never worked outdoors.
The Han Dynasty in China prized delicate frames, large eyes and a famously slim waist. The emperor's consort Zhao Feiyan was remembered in legend as light enough to dance on a palm. Small feet came much later: foot binding began around the 10th century and spread through the elite in the Song Dynasty, roughly a thousand years after the Han.
The Italian Renaissance celebrated a full figure, rounded belly, fair skin and elaborate gowns. Extra weight read as wealth and abundance, and the painters took the brief seriously: the softer bodies of Titian, and later Rubens, are the shape most people still picture when they hear "Renaissance beauty".
Queen Victoria's England cinched waists into corsets so tight that fainting was practically an accessory. That silhouette was engineered rather than earned, and the most extreme lacing was a luxury of women with servants and no expectation of physical exertion.
The 1920s then flattened everything: boyish silhouettes, straight lines, no waist at all. The corset lost the argument, and a fashionable body was suddenly defined by what it did not have.
Hollywood in the 1950s swung back to the hourglass. Post-war prosperity, television and the pin-up all pushed in the same direction, and the curves of Marilyn Monroe became the measure of the decade.
Then the 1960s dropped it for ultra-thin. A London teenager nicknamed Twiggy became the face of 1966 on a frame that looked nothing like the decade before.
The 1980s wanted tall and athletic with shoulder pads. Aerobics went mainstream, and the body became something you were seen to work on, in public, on purpose.
The 1990s went waifish and extremely thin, sold so relentlessly by the fashion industry that the look earned its own nickname, heroin chic, before the backlash arrived.
And today's standard demands curves and visible muscle, the first era in history where the ideal body comes with a gym membership attached.
Eleven different "perfect bodies" in three millennia. Full figured, then thin, then strong, then thin again, then both at once. If the standard itself were the point of health, humans would have found it by now.
Look at what actually moved it: scarcity and status. In centuries when food was scarce and hard won, a fuller body proved you could eat well. Once food became cheap and constant, the signal flipped, and thinness became how the comfortable showed self-control and time. The ideal did not change because we learned something new about health. It changed because the economics of looking successful changed.
Why this matters more than it sounds
The standard you're chasing today has a use-by date. It was set by magazines, then television, and now by an algorithm that profits from your insecurity. Body types go out of fashion, but your biology doesn't move on the same clock. Your bones, your metabolism, your joints all change slowly, over years and decades, and they respond to how you actually live, not to what's trending this season.
That's also why a short-term push is a legitimate way to start. A focused kickstart genuinely works for many people: it builds momentum, proves to you that change is possible, and gives you a reason to keep going. There's nothing wrong with wanting to look good for a wedding, a photoshoot or a holiday.
But a kickstart is exactly that, a start. The snapshot standard keeps moving, so results only stay if something more durable is built underneath. The people who keep their results are the ones who use the kickstart to build momentum and then adopt the right mindset, turning the sprint into habits: training you don't hate, food you still enjoy, sleep that repairs you. Both matter. The push gets you going, the habits keep you there.
There's also a nastier mechanic to watch. If you treat your body as a project that must match a trend, every meal becomes a moral test and every mirror an interrogation. That mindset is one of the main reasons people quit entirely, usually around week six. The fix isn't more willpower, it's aiming at something that doesn't go out of style.
The body that never goes out of style
Strength. Energy. Being able to carry your groceries, play with your kids, travel with your loved ones into your 70s, and get through a demanding work week without running on empty. Blood pressure, blood sugar, sleep quality, a resilient heart. None of that has ever gone out of fashion, in any century, in any culture.
Aesthetics still matter, and that's human. Done well, how you look becomes the byproduct of how you train, eat and sleep, not the goal you chase with punishment and restriction. The habits that work in every era: progressive strength training, protein-anchored meals you actually enjoy, daily movement, sleep that repairs you. It also starts with identity, not appearance: read here why that changes what's possible.
So what do you do with this?
- Unfollow anything that makes you feel like a "before" photo
- If you need a push to start, use it, but pair it with the plan for what comes after
- Pick a goal that's about capability, not appearance: walk 10,000 steps without fatigue, deadlift your bodyweight, climb the stairs to your office without breathing hard
- Train for the body you live in, not the one on your feed
If that's the version of fitness you're after, that's exactly what a good coach helps you build: a strong start, and the habits to keep it. Book a free consultation and start where you are, no shaming, no trends.
Further reading: Exercising for Fitness
