"Slender and moderate, with idle demeanor, like Lady Li of the Han Dynasty."
This is a passage from the Tang Dynasty novelist Chen Hong describing Yang Guifei in the "Biography of the Long Hate Song".
In Chen Hong's pen, Yang Guifei is a well-proportioned beauty who is not fat or thin, not the "fat beauty" that the world thinks. In this regard, some people may scoff at it, after all, Yang Guifei has been "fat" for more than a thousand years, in that era of fat beauty, how can Yang Guifei not be fat!
Speaking of which, if you carefully examine the information about the description of Yang Guifei, you will find some very strange things. For example, in the New Book of Tang and the Old Book of Tang, the description of Yang Guifei never has "obesity" and other related words, but uses words such as "posture crown generation" and "abundant qualifications". Even Bai Juyi, who is mainly realistic, described Yang Guifei in his poems as a delicate and thin beauty who was "weak and weak to be lifted up".
So, in the Tang Dynasty, where fat was beautiful, how fat was Yang Guifei?
In fact, from some historical data, Yang Guifei's elevation is speculated to be about one meter and sixty-five, and her weight is roughly about sixty kilograms. Judging from such figures, it cannot be said that Yang Guifei is a fat beauty, but a temperament beauty who is not fat or thin.
First, Yang Guifei is not "fat"
Although the world thinks that Yang Guifei is a fat beauty, it is not clearly recorded in the main history. From some side descriptions, it can be inferred that Yang Guifei is a fat beauty. For example, during the Middle And Tang Dynasties, a prime minister once made some notes, and the contents of the notes recorded that Tang Xuanzong chose a concubine for the crown prince.
At that time, Tang Xuanzong clearly put forward some criteria for choosing a concubine for the crown prince. For example, when choosing a concubine, you must choose women who are "slender and white". From this word, it can be seen that Tang Xuanzong's aesthetic is the same as that of people today, and it must require a woman's skin to be white and slender.
Since such a high standard has been set for the selection of princess concubines, there is no reason why his favorite Yang Guifei is a fat beauty. Therefore, from this point of view, in any case, it cannot be said that Yang Guifei is an obese beauty. In addition, we can look at Yang Guifei's posture from the perspective of the "enemy".
For example, everyone knows that Du Fu once wrote a poem called "Li Ren Xing" to satirize and criticize Yang Guozhong and Yang Guifei's brothers and sisters. So in du Fu's "hostile" pen, what does Yang Guifei look like? There are two descriptions in the poem, "The texture is delicate and the flesh is even" and "the beads press the waist extremely steadily".
It can be seen from here that although Du Fu satirized Yang Guifei from a critical point of view, when he mentioned her figure, he also said that the other party was a beauty with delicate skin and a well-proportioned body, not a so-called fat beauty. It can be seen from this that it is too biased to say that the Tang Dynasty regarded fat as beauty and that Yang Guifei was a fat beauty.
Some wild history records that Yang Guifei was about one meter sixty-five in height and weighed about sixty kilograms, to some extent, should be relatively reliable. If this is the case, then Yang Guifei can't say that she can't be lighter and thinner than many people!
Since Yang Guifei is not the fat beauty that everyone imagines, how did such a slender or well-proportioned beauty become fat?
In the author's opinion, although the Old Book of Tang does not detail Yang Guifei's appearance and posture, its description is mainly critical. It is precisely because of Zhengshi's criticism of Yang Guifei that almost all the literati and inkers in later generations will choose to attack Yang Guifei. Then, Yang Guifei gradually evolved into a "fat beauty".
Second, Yang Guifei became "fat"
In the Old Book of Tang, it is believed that Yang Guifei was the representative of "disaster to the country and the people", and that Yang Guifei was too favored to cause Tang Xuanzong to neglect the government, so that the Anshi Rebellion broke out and so on. Subsequently, Du Fu further criticized Yang Guifei in "Li Ren Xing", calling her a "red face and bad water".
As we all know, if you want to attack a woman, especially a woman with a beautiful appearance, the easiest thing is to start in terms of body shape. Therefore, Zhou Fang, a Chang'an man who was good at painting all the noble ladies as fat women, blatantly painted Yang Guifei as a fat beauty.
After the Song Dynasty, because the literati and inkers described Yang Guifei's "fatness" in large quantities, the cognitive concept that Yang Guifei was a fat beauty was fixed. For example, Su Rui once wrote the sentence "Thin FeiYan Fei Yu Huan" in "Zhou Fang Painting Beauty Figure", directly comparing Yang Guifei with Zhao Feiyan, and later there was a saying of "Huan Fei Yan Thin".
This vicious attack between literati and inkers was later expanded into a legendary novel with a plot story. For example, the legendary novel of the Song Dynasty, "The Outer Biography of Yang Taizhen". Among them, there is a fictional scene: after Li Longji read "Zhao Feiyan's Outer Biography", he lamented that Feiyan's body was light and often afraid of being blown away by the wind, and then joked to Yang Guifei, saying that Yang Guifei "if ru is allowed to blow as much as he wants."
This kind of malicious speculation actually added Li Longji to it, and also borrowed the other party's mouth to laugh at Yang Guifei's fat body, which was really shameful. But think about it, how is this possible? Yang Guifei was Li Longji's favorite concubine, and for her Li Longji's sake, even the government was abandoned, so how could he use blunt language to satirize Aifei?
Therefore, the reason why Yang Guifei has gradually changed from a delicate and well-proportioned beauty to a fat beauty is really because of a deliberate "change" under the demonization of the ancient literati inkers. Today, after more than a thousand years of propaganda, in the era of the Tang Dynasty, where fat was beautiful, Yang Guifei became a representative of "fat" beauty.
However, since Yang Guifei was not a "fat" beauty, would the Tang Dynasty really be "fat as beautiful" as mentioned above?
At this point, looking at the ancient literature, the results may not be what people expected. Perhaps, "fat is beautiful" has a strict "bottom line".
3. "Fat is Beautiful"
In fact, putting aside the historical Chinese the description of Yang Guifei's posture by the inkers, let's say that another favorite concubine of Tang Xuanzong Li Longji, Concubine Mei, has the relevant description of her posture as follows: "Qingli is beautiful and thin as a plum." Judging from the degree of favor of Princess Mei, people's aesthetics at that time were unlikely to be "fat for beauty".
In addition, as mentioned above, when Emperor Xuanzong of Tang ordered Gao Lishi to choose a concubine for the crown prince, he ordered him to be a human woman "five slender and white, in order to give the prince" to the prince. Since the standard of the imperial palace beauty pageant is tall and slender, there is no reason why the entire Tang Dynasty will "take fat as beauty".
What's more, looking at all the sentences of Tang Ren's writings about women, there are almost no words describing women's obesity. For example, Yuan Shu's Cui Yingying is a posture of "skin moisturizing jade muscle abundance", but it is only slightly plump and not obese. On the other hand, the poems that chant the delicate beauty of women are innumerable.
Verses such as Li He's "Willing to Be Light with a Thin Waist" and Bai Juyi's "Swing Thin Waist Woman" and other poems can be seen that the favorite of those literati and inkers is still the posture of "shoulders are cut, waist is like Yosu", rather than the so-called "fat beauty".
As for why the world would think that the Tang Dynasty would be fat as beautiful, in the author's opinion, most of the world misunderstood it. Judging from some ancient books, people in the Tang Dynasty may indeed like some slightly "plump" women, so posterity will equate "plump" and "fat", which means that the Tang Dynasty will "take fat as beauty".
In fact, "slightly plump" beauties are believed to be liked in any dynasty, but if they are really "fat", they are unlikely to be admired.
epilogue:
All in all, the "fat beauty" Yang Guifei referred to by the world is almost certainly not the image of Yang Guifei herself, but a kind of character image displayed by posterity after artistic processing. This image change may be mixed with factors of aesthetic changes in the world, but to a greater extent, it may be mixed with political factors.
For example, in Japan, South Korea, countries that do not have the argument that "women harm the country and the people", the legends and stories of Yang Guifei are very beautiful. All the descriptions of Yang Guifei do not have such a statement as "fat beauty". It can be seen that in the perception of everyone, the statement that Yang Guifei is a "fat beauty" is debatable. Of course, as for being able to completely overturn such an argument, it also needs to be examined.
References: New Book of Tang, Old Book of Tang, Biography of Yang Taizhen
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