Monty Python--Back in the Day

Yesterday, I caught an old episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus on IFC. The episode opened up with the camera focusing in on a number of women in bikinis before panning over to John Cleese sprawled out on a desk also wearing a bikini.

Now, I had seen this episode before a number of times, but this time I was struck by the women. Although taped as being the ultimate in desirable women, I don't think a single one of them would make it on camera today. These women all had hips and thighs, and some even had rolls on their tummies. What's more, they didn't have gargantuan breasts. In fact, in relation to the size of their hips and thighs, their breasts were rather small.

I tried to find the clip on Youtube, but all I could find was a similar scene from the movie And Now for Something Completely Different. Apparently in the time period between the filming of the original show and the movie standards had already begun to change. The women in the movie scene were all much thinner than the ones in the old TV show (although none of them had the huge breasts you see today).

Even though they were heavy by today's standards, the girls in the original TV cliplooked real. And, although thinner the girls in the movie still looked real. They didn't look like the distorted women we see today who've been liposuctioned and augmented to the point that they look like cartoons and not real women.