I've been on a bit of a Bond kick lately.

That's Bond as in James Bond, Double-Oh-Seven, licence to kill, and all that rattle. I've been a casual fan since girlhood -- the first post-cartoons drive-in film I remember was You Only Live Twice -- and I've followed, or not followed, the progression of films depending on the actor playing Bond and whether or not I had enough money to go to the cinema.

Comcast's recent lead-up to the November theatrical release of Quantum of Solace, and Encore's continuing OnDemand availability of the first sixteen films (seventeen if you count Never Say Never Again), have afforded me the opportunity to catch up on the cinematic exploits of Ian Fleming's master agent, seducer, and all-around bon vivant. Viewing forty years of stories tweaked and updated to meet contemporary sensibilities has had a bit of an effect beyond that of bristling at Bond's "friendly" slap across a woman's buttocks in 1964's Goldfinger or the stereotypical treatment of African-Americans in 1973's Live and Let Die, or shaking one's head at Tanya Roberts' highly improbable stiletto-heeled escape in View to a Kill. Amidst the shirtless men and underdressed women, one finds a capsule view of our evolving sense of physical aesthetics. And it's here that the story begins.

In Seeing Through Clothes, art historian Anne Hollander develops the premise that all depictions of the human form are filtered through contemporary body aesthetics -- and that conversely, contemporary body aesthetics are shaped by artistic depictions of the human body. In other words, films, paintings, and photographs tell us what was considered beautiful at the time those images were
created, and we all measure our own self-images, the aesthetics of our own physical appearances, against the scale
of that "perfection".

It is in the achievability of that "perfection", and social expectations that we achieve it, that our psychological health is affected.

Too many of us have experienced the prejudice that diabetes is a condition of guilt -- type 2s are "guilty" of overeating, or of not eating healthy foods; type 1s may be "guilty by association", being lumped with type 2s,
"guilty" of the afternoon's stresses overriding the lunchtime shot or bolus, or of "not watching what they eat" because of the weight gains often associated with insulin use. Science shows definite genetic components to both autoimmune and insulin-resistant diabetes. Whether or not those "faulty" genes are expressed may, or may not, be under our individual control.

Suffice it to say that, even ignoring genetics, many of us do not come near to the current version of aesthetic perfection.

What forty years of Bond films reveals is how far those ideals of physical perfection have diverged from the anthropometric average. When in 1962's Dr. No, we see the bikini-clad Ursula Andress rising out from the
sea, she appears to be about a modern size 8 or 10, with an athletic build and well-formed hips. Compare that to 2006 when in Casino Royale, Eva Green would appear to have room to spare in a size 4 tailored suit.
And while in 1960 a size 14 (current size 10-12) would have been close enough to that of the "average" US woman, today that "average" woman is more likely to be a modern size 16.

It's the same thing with men. In 1963's From Russia With Love, barrel-chested strongman "Red Grant" (played by Robert Shaw) has a layer of flesh over his powerful musculature, and I would not be surprised
to learn he wore a 36" waist. Neither Connery nor Moore had the "cut" muscular look that Daniel Craig exhibits; nor does either have the slim "metrosexual" look that is often associated with male physical beauty today.

The bottom line is, while as a society we are getting "fatter", our ideals of physical beauty are getting "skinnier". While some of this is based in medical research (in Eat, Drink, and Be Healthy, Dr. Walter Willett shows a steep growth in the incidence of metabolic-related disease and deterioration starting around BMI 22; a more recent article in The Lancet suggests that the lowest mortality rates occur at a slightly higher BMI -- between 22.5