This week: Body Beautiful

In Victorian England corpulence was the thing. The rounded belly and the swollen haunch implied prosperity and good health. Today fashion models starve themselves in order to maintain greyhound thin figures. For them, slim is beautiful. Other women submit their bodies to the cosmetic surgeon in order to have their buttocks rounded and their breasts enlarged. For them, buxom is beautiful.
There's nothing new in physical vanity; what is new is the power for change. Today, if you don' like your body you can change it: by scientifically controlled dieting, by violent body-building, by surgical sculpturing, and by subtle disguise - which is where fashion comes in. Body Beautiful considers the human figure, male and female, slender and muscular, skinny and obese, elegant and ridiculous, from classical times to the present day, from Venus de Milo to Fred Emney. Michael Dean and Harold Williamson ask what ever happened to the divinity that shaped our ends? And is physical vanity the new road to good health? Among those Bill Gibb , one of Britain's top fashion designers; Anthony Smith, author of The Body; and Miss Universe Bikini.