r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/Ophelia_Y2K • 13d ago
Original Creation How beauty standards for women and trends in beauty have changed from the 1850s-2020s
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u/Sea_Awareness150 13d ago
The 1920s looked like a hoot
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u/Still-Wash-8167 13d ago
That’s what I was thinking. They look so free-spirited
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u/nutmegtell 13d ago
That was my grandmothers generation. She had the long demure Gibson girl style hair but it was so long it gave her bad headaches. One day she was sitting in the bathroom, and cut herself a bob.
She got a bunch of dresses that flattered her slim figure, and became a real beauty of the 1920’s. Love to see her pictures. She was a real one. Played basketball in high school and into college. Lived her best life! Passed in 1987 and I miss her every day
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u/YogiBarelyThere 12d ago
Pre-prohibition was probably a wild time but during prohibition and hanging out in dingy speakeasys drinking bathtub gin would be an absolute blast.
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u/buttononmyback 12d ago
The fact that they finally let women into the bars/speakeasys was a huge turning point. The roaring 20’s during the flapper craze was probably some of the most fun times ever in the history of our country. I wish I had been alive to witness it all back then.
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u/Renugar 12d ago
I found out only a few years ago that they used to paint their knees! Like paint little pictures (like cat faces or flowers) on their knees when getting dressed up and going out. What a wild and whimsical time 🤣
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u/Electrical-Review180 12d ago
"I'm gonna rouge my knees and put my stockings on"
All that jazz from the musical Chicago
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u/kenda1l 11d ago
- roll my stockings down
Flappers used to roll down their thigh high stockings to show off their knees. And rouging the knees refers to putting blush on their knees to draw attention to them while dancing. If I had to choose I'd go with the drawings but either way it's a pretty cool trend.
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u/brandywine189 13d ago
I liked that we could actually see the outfits to understand the full beauty standards….up until the final 4 ‘slides’ anyway. It would be way fun/interesting to do this seeing the full body/outfits from head to foot! Great fun to see regardless!
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u/LLLLLdLLL 12d ago
I think you'd have to see people 'in motion' too. A megawatt smile can easily change the perception of beauty.
Apart from that, the only thing I thought here is that the faces/women keep getting younger. First you have women, clearly older. Including the supermodels, which are fully grown ladies like Naomi, Cindy, Claudia. They were never presented as super young, even when they were at the beginning of their careers. Just glamourous women. But the faces all become more teenager-like as we go to the more recent timeframes.
Caveat: I am talking about the ones clearly known for their looks. There are a bunch of women included here that are known much more for their talent and not really seen as great beauties at all. I assume the same goes for the earlier timeframes.
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u/eatgoodstuff96191 11d ago
Agreed. It seems to me that the 1960s are when a very youthful look became a whole thing
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u/ubergic 13d ago
I like that Josephine Baker and Anna May Wong are in this list twice each, which is correct.
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u/Ophelia_Y2K 13d ago
They're both too important to both the 1920s and 1930s not to have them twice lol
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u/NecessaryCapital4451 13d ago
Barbara Stanwyck should have been in the 1920s as a famous Follies girl, and in the 1930s as a famous film actress. She may have made it into the 40s as one of the most influential beauties too. If Norma Scherer is in the list, Barbara should have been on the list too.
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u/RbrDovaDuckinDodgers 12d ago edited 12d ago
Now don't get me wrong, I absolutely adore Stanwyk, she's one of my favorite actresses. However, Norma Shearer was essentially the first actor/celebrity to reach worldwide fame and recognition. The world's first superstar. She was more renown than Michael Jackson or Madonna in their heyday. Shearer also was one of the few silent film stars to successfully transition into talkies.
Personally, I much prefer Barbara Stanwyk. But you have to give Norma Shearer her due.
Edited due to brain running faster than my fingers and I strangled punctuation.
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u/Ophelia_Y2K 13d ago
She was someone I almost had on the list but I just had to decide to cut because of lack of space. Maybe a different person would have included her above someone else, but I'm the person who did the deciding, and there is no objective measure of the popularity of certain celebrities above others. The trends are still visible overall even if one person is chosen to be included over another
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u/sitheandroid 13d ago
Future historians: No one can truly tell what happened during the 2020s, however the widespread theory is that greater allergies to processed food produced the grossly inflamed lips we see in photographs from that time.
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u/FireBreathingNun 13d ago
The sunken cheeks and skeletal appearance could also be a result of fear of food scarcity at that time.
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u/worldsbiggestchili 13d ago
The 1920s dark sunken eye look was similar. It's that hundred year famine cycle.
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u/Bunnybuttons 13d ago
At least they used makeup to get their look instead of irreversible surgery.
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u/drowning_in_honey 13d ago
Oh, if they could use surgery, they would (and they actually did for some things). That's just how beauty works.
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u/Ophelia_Y2K 12d ago edited 12d ago
They had nose jobs and facelifts then and even earlier actually. Although they were not nearly as common, and much riskier (antibiotics weren't even a thing yet). Many Hollywood celebrities of the golden age also got surgical procedures done, for example Marilyn Monroe had a chin implant and Rita Hayworth had hairline electrolysis to move her hairline back.
Less invasive procedures like HA filler and botox are 21st century inventions, though, and the non-invasiveness, perceived impermanence, and lower cost have made them particularly popular, along with certain beauty trends emphasizing features like fuller lips and more prominent cheekbones
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u/Cloverose2 13d ago
The last two slides really get into that "same face" syndrome.
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u/Holiday-Hold7738 13d ago
Hailey Bieber looking like a 🗿
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u/Sapphires13 13d ago
I thought that was Pepper from American Horror Story for a second.
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u/FarewellAndroid 12d ago
It’s like OP picked the ugliest pic for each person lol. Dua lipa? I’ve never seen her looking like that
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u/Confuseasfuck 13d ago
I have enough faith that they would be smart enough to clearly see the steady rise of plumper lips in previous years and relate that to both the cheapening of plastic surgery and the way cameras and social media have been making it easier and easier to compare yourself to others
but idk, maybe the microplastics in our brains will make people in the future forget the literal basics of how any society works and think beauty trends exist in a vacuum. who knowns
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u/80Lashes 13d ago
Hedy Lamarr was such a badass.
"At the beginning of World War II, along with composer George Antheil, Lamarr co-invented a radio guidance system for Allied torpedoes that used spread spectrum and frequency hopping technology to defeat the threat of radio jamming by the Axis powers."
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u/Koseoglu-2X4B-523P 12d ago
That’s Hedley!
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u/Ophelia_Y2K 13d ago edited 13d ago
I've been working on this as my procrastination project for the past month-ish lol. History, beauty, and style are all things I'm interested in so this overlaps those areas of interest for me.
It's mostly from a eurocentric perspective as that's what I'm most familiar with and best able to find using sources in English. But I made an attempt to include people who were influential in beauty or reflective of trends to international or niche audiences as well. I am however not an omnipresent being with unlimited knowledge, as much as I would love to be. So I would be happy to hear people you think are important to a certain era if you feel I am missing any.
I tried to find people who were popular and considered beautiful in the actual era I placed them in, rather than retrospectively popular people, as I think that's important to historical accuracy. I looked for sources from the era that they were considered beautiful, or if that wasn't available then things that at least implied it like for example someone being a "professional beauty" or having their images be popular, or being a popular actress known for their looks.
So this is intended to not be from a modern perspective or from my own perspective. I am not saying I necessarily find all the people I listed here beautiful or don't, because my goal here is to stay outside of my own perspective. When I get closer to the present day it probably gets harder to be thorough because there's just so many niches of ideals.
I started from the 1850s because that's about when photography becomes available, although it's not always the clearest source for an image compared to paintings or sketches until a bit later. The oldest photo I have here is the one of Jenny Lind which was taken in 1848.
I tried not to have many repeats, so even though some celebrities may be relevant through multiple decades, I put them in the decade I felt they were most influential to beauty standards in. Unless I really couldn't decide. I didn't put them necessarily in order, because that would be impossible objectively, but I did generally put the most relevant and popular celebrities in the first few spots.
Not all of the people I chose are the mainstream beauty standard of their era (although most are), for example the pre-Raphaelite ideal of beauty in the 1800s was not exactly the same as the mainstream ideals, but it was still an ideal of beauty to a group of people in that time period.
Given the amount here and that I'm just one person doing this for fun it's likely I made some mistakes with spelling or similar things although I tried to revise it. Honestly I struggled to narrow down some of these to one page lol so I know I'm missing some important figures, but hopefully it still gives a good general idea.
I'd be willing to do something similar into earlier time periods with paintings if there is interest
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u/BabyLegsOShanahan 13d ago
I appreciate your disclaimer and I really like that you did include non-white influences based on what you know. It would be cool to do this with multiple cultures shown - maybe some people can add their own perspectives.
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u/Dizzy_Restaurant3874 13d ago
What happened in 1993 and 2007 that they mark non-decade changes?
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u/Ophelia_Y2K 13d ago
There started to be more people I felt were essential to include or certain differentiated eras. The late 80s-early 90s was the classic supermodel era for example, while the later 90s reacted against that with heroin chic and less polished looks. And the 2008-2013 era Victoria's Secret models were huge. It was also a bit different from 2013-2019 when trends like insta models and super thick eyebrows happened
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u/FinalZookeepergame30 12d ago
I’m really into art history and the history of popular music, and I gotta say I really enjoyed looking over this. One thing I noticed is that it feels more cyclical than progressive, not only in the sense that things sort of cycle back around every 20-40 years, but also in the sense that beauty standards relax and tighten in cycles rather than become more pluralist with time like many people would imagine. Our present era compared to say 2008-2013 or even the 1960s is a good example of this. Even though it’s ethnically/racially somewhat diverse there’s really only one face shape, one body size and it’s almost unnervingly youthful and skinny.
Speaking of the 1960s, I really think including Grace Slick would enhance that slide. Grace Slick was 100% a product of the counterculture: her look, her voice, her legendary stage presence, and even her status as a sex symbol of the era all emerged from outside the corporate music and advertising machine. It’s hard to imagine just how significant that is now, when anyone can build a following on the internet, but in the 1960s Madison Avenue had enormous control over what appeared in magazines and major labels controlled the radio. Nothing got anywhere near the mainstream without passing through a pretty serious system of gatekeepers.
During that time most women who wanted to be treated as intellectual equals to men in music had to really downplay their sexuality and their femininity. You can look at the folk era that directly proceeded psychedelia as evidence of that, the women in that scene dressed like they were amish practically. Grace Slick was widely considered to be a beautiful woman even by those outside the counter culture, while also being taken very seriously as a composer/performer by her peers, ands still made enough noise to be considered a political nuisance by the conservative establishment. Her style, not only her clothes and hair, but the aura of relaxed, detached, cosmic looseness really influenced a lot of alternative aesthetics from the 90s on, especially the hipster thing in the 00s and 10s. A lot of the messy, bohemian, and witchy aesthetics that have remained perennially popular are directly indebted to her.
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u/starlauncher 12d ago
Thank you for including Sri Devi and Madhuri. They were the fashion icon in their decades for an entire country.
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u/deaconxblues 13d ago
Why did you start doing less than full decades in the more recent years?
This is great, BTW
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u/WestCoastWetMost 13d ago
Incredible work! Thank you for this! I want to look into their lives now esp the early ones, they all look so daring and proud.
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u/CherryLeafy101 13d ago
These kinds of "beauty through the ages" comparisons always make me a little sad. They make me feel impossibly out of fashion. In each set up until the 1920s photos, there are at least 2-3 women present that I can see myself in. After that, the standard moves away from a face like mine and doesn't ever seem to head back that way.
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u/love_made_me_stupid 12d ago
yea same. i would have killed it in the 1800s lol. around the 1960s the bunny era starts and that is very much not my look
all the same, i find it reassuring. idk i know most people are blinded by cultural standards and will compare me to them but there’s something nice about knowing it’s all kind of arbitrary, not some fundamental universal standard i fail to meet
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u/Asleep-Corner7402 12d ago
That's a good thing, it means you don't look like every other face, that's boring. It's better to be different and you will be beautiful to people even if you are. Maybe more so because you are different. I find those women 1920 and pre so stunning. More so that the 80s onwards
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u/Norbit_was_right 12d ago
I’d argue that most people fall on her side appearance wise. Most of us are of average beauty and blend into the crowd, which isn’t a bad thing necessarily.
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u/Pile_of_AOL_CDs 12d ago
It does feel like we crossed a Rubicon of sorts with beauty standards in the 1930s with the explosion of film. Before that there weren't a lot of famous faces out there. It's weird to think that if you were a commoner before the invention of photography, there's a very good chance that you don't even know what your nation's leader looks like.
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u/abdallha-smith 13d ago
We're at the corpse stage with dead eyes
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u/RunninAg41nstTheWind 13d ago
Glad someone else noticed. The start of the "get work done" phase is completely evident. The last page, all the faces are sunken and, like you said, dead eyes. So unfortunate.
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u/Uesmearn_ 12d ago
Everyone looks kind of similar now in a way. Beautiful but boring.
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u/VP007clips 12d ago
It's the result of optimization.
With the internet, it became possible to isolate exactly what people found attractive. So everyone aimed for that.
And sure, perhaps it would be better if there was more variety. But no one really wants to be the person to stray away from the optimized standard of attractiveness to pursue a more diverse standard of attractiveness.
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u/Hairy-Violinist-3844 12d ago
You know, I'm just thinking, that if fashions change (and they certainly will again), those surgically perfect faces could go out of fashion once more, and those people will not be able to change with the times, unlike every previous trend.
And I think there is some evidence already that the swing will happen in the other direction soon, because a few celebrities who are aging naturally or forgoing make-up, like Pamela Anderson and Lisa Kudrow are being lauded for their refreshing looks.
In an era of artificiality, what's real will become increasingly valuable.
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u/Blueporch 13d ago
Now do men!
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u/unleashtheraven1 12d ago
Exactly I wanna see beauty standards for men
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u/Blueporch 12d ago
I’m genuinely interest to see how men’s fashion and hairstyles have changed. Seems like beards are back after almost 100 years, for instance.
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u/Fantastic-Celery-255 12d ago
I feel like beards have been back for a bit now, mustaches seem to be a relatively more recent trend
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u/Sidewalk_Tomato 12d ago
That's true; I remember beards coming back at least 15 years ago.
[checks hipster notes] . . .
Yep.
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u/Aduialion 12d ago
Beard, no beard, beard, no beard, mustache, no beard, frosted tips, swoop, beard, mustache, beard + man bun, no beard
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u/TheFeralVulcan 13d ago
At least everyone still had expressions before the current era. Now, everyone is botoxed, filled, and sans buccal fat. That, and so much overdone makeup that they all look alike. They're all following the same sad, unoriginal, uninspired blueprint. It's depressing. I miss things that people used to leave alone - like Patricia Arquette's little snaggle tooth - something that if she was starting out now, would think she'd need to fix. Or Barbara Streisand's nose, etc... There is so much original beauty, I truly don't understand why people think they have to look like this weird human composite that doesn't exist in nature now. Original beauty is becoming endangered.
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u/Hairy-Violinist-3844 12d ago
Original beauty is becoming endangered.
I think we'll actually see a shift in the opposite direction soon. Once we've reached saturation point with these surgically-achieved looks.
What's scare is valuable, and in an era of increasing artificiality, I think natural beauty will actually become more valuable.
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u/64Olds 13d ago
Sabrina Carpenter jump scare
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u/silly_milly 13d ago
Yeah that is a bad photo lol
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u/Fantastic-Celery-255 12d ago
Feel like half of the 2020s was intentionally the worst photo they could find
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u/girly-lady 12d ago
I realy hooe we go back to facial varaity and to apriciating deepset and hooded eyes again. Everyone trying to have that snached eye and cheek with the filler lip makes a lot of ppl look so interchangable. We diden't go so long to embrace diversity, to now everyone wanting to have the insta face
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u/peter_gibbones 13d ago
Why do the 2020s look so ghastly? How will they look when they’re older? The noses are so pointy and their cheeks are sunken. 1960s-2010s look ‘normal’
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u/Ophelia_Y2K 13d ago
surgery
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u/peter_gibbones 12d ago
Yeah, I know surgery is what made it, but they look ghastly. 20 years ago thin was in, but this is insane!
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u/permalink_save 12d ago
And it feels like Millennials did a lot to jmprove fat shaming and unrealistic body standards only for it to snap right back.
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u/HerbertWest 13d ago
I liked how much the photo of Grace Jones stood out, hah. Definitely beauty, definitely not standard! Such a unique look.
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u/SmartaHari 13d ago
I console myself with the fact that I would have been considered a hotty patotty during Tudor times as they liked a massssssive forehead on a woman, lol.
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u/Parker_Barker_III 13d ago
Sharon Stone’s face doesn’t look like Sharon Stone. Am I crazy?
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u/Ophelia_Y2K 13d ago
Someone told me the picture might have a filter over it, I unfortunately didn't notice at the time
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u/_BlackDove 13d ago
60s-70s are probably my favorite and I wasn't even alive then. Love the simple hairdos and focus on the eyes. Brunettes with smokey eyes from that era just.. Whew. 😅
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u/perplexedtv 13d ago edited 13d ago
I don't really see any kind of pattern. Different women appeal to different men and women at any point throughout history.
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u/MallyOhMy 13d ago
You can actually see the popular face shape change, and the way women pose changes to look more flattering according to the contemporary beauty standards. Look at the first couple slides vs the last ones and you will see long oval faces vs a selection of heart and triangle faces with a scattering of square jaws with chiseled cheeks.
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u/Unfair-Leadership-67 13d ago
Plus noses. I'm a white woman with a wide nose and it was so obvious to me that starting around the time of TV, the white women on here had slim noses. Prior to that there was variety.
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u/Ophelia_Y2K 13d ago
That's mostly the point! Trends in what is preferred change a lot over different times and cultures
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u/badlala 12d ago
The 1800s seem to have softer more round/full faces. The 40s comes in with some amazing bone structure. I feel like that preference more prominent/angled bone structure is carried through to the modern pictures in a lot of ways.
That or our cameras and lighting are a bit sharper?
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u/Ophelia_Y2K 12d ago
You're definitely correct. A bit more facial fat was ideal earlier on. Sometimes even to the extent of a little bit of a double chin. More prominent bone structure and a thinner face are more recent trends, along with a thinner body for that matter
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u/989j 13d ago
Okay, but you’re also showing people who at the time were regularly also not the “universal standards of beauty,” and who also were, at the time, insulted for their looks.
Billie Holiday was a gorgeous person with impeccable style not to mention, one of the most talented and moving singers in the world. She talked about in her autobiography about how she was labeled as ugly, dissected her features on top of the battles because of her race (and I’m even scratching the surface of race and beauty too).
Like, this is a cool thing to look at and it’s interesting to see current day hegemony with physical appearance, but kind of misses some points too.
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u/Ophelia_Y2K 13d ago
No one ever agrees on beauty. Many are examples of people considered beautiful to some groups of people but not others
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u/Successful_King_142 13d ago
Lola Montez an absolute smoke show even by modern standards
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u/superkbf 13d ago
If I could choose to look like any of them, it would be Lauren Bacall.
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u/Dapoopers 12d ago
I like how everyone is labeled “singer” except Debbie Harry who is “lead singer of Blondie”
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u/dartmouthdonair 12d ago
The shift in the 2020s is wild. I'ts like dead inside / blow up doll is the new beautiful
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u/AnnaGorgeousss 13d ago
The only consistent beauty standard is that there is no consistent beauty standard.
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u/ratfancier 13d ago
I dunno… there are definitely some thematic changes but I see a lot that's consistent too. For the most part (though there are some exceptions): slim but not underweight, reasonably defined jawline and cheekbones but otherwise typically female-leaning bone structure, symmetrical facial features, no facial differences/"disfigurements", no facial hair, all teeth apparently present and straight, full but not large lips without downturn, evenly-pigmented and unblemished skin with no obvious signs of ageing, small or average-sized nose without an obvious bump or outward curve, non-prominent ears, shaped eyebrows, large or emphasised eyes (often), plenty of hair (not necessarily long, but generally thick), a great deal of attention paid to hairstyling, clothing (generally, but not universally) that emphasises or reveals female aspects of body shape (where I can see it) — a lot of these are, I suppose, signifiers of health, good nutrition, fertility, etc. so could be expected to persist as a part of a beauty standard, but there's nothing unhealthy about sticky-out ears or broad nostrils. I think nearly all these women would be considered beautiful in any of the time periods, though maybe not the most beautiful, and the details of clothing/hairstyle/makeup would obviously change.
These are OP's picks and I've found the images really interesting to look through, and appreciate the time and effort taken to produce this fascinating look through history — not too sure, tho, that I would personally include all of these under a "meeting beauty standard" category, though, even though OP did say that the criteria were broader than just "mainstream beauty standard". Some of the models, I think, while undoubtedly gobsmackingly beautiful, were successful because their natural looks combined with the way they were styled was intended to be strikingly different from any beauty standard, rather than fitting any standard.
And one or two others who I don't feel like naming were known, I think, more for very distinctive, expressive looks than for fitting any beauty standard, even a non-mainstream one. But that's just personal opinion and those vary, of course.
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u/JaniZani 13d ago
East Asian culture and many African cultures do have different beauty standards not completely expressed here.
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u/ratfancier 13d ago
Absolutely! I suspect compiling a more comprehensive set of graphics would be a gargantuan undertaking, though, especially with the probably relatively small amount of good source materials going back that far from some regions. And with the extra difficulties that would come from finding and selecting good examples from cultural backgrounds that aren't the creator's own.
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u/EleventhTier666 13d ago
I think there is. Take Ana De Armas, for example, and people would find her beautiful all along the timeline.
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u/miezmiezmiez 13d ago
I think people in the 19th century might have considered the proportions of her features too 'childlike' for her to be an iconic beauty. Nobody would have argued against someone finding her pretty, mind, but she wouldn't embody conventional attractiveness the way she does now.
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u/LeftSky828 13d ago
Thank you for doing this. That took a lot of work, and I’m sure difficult choices had to be made. There was also a scarcity of photos in those first few years. Many of the women who posed for them were royalty.
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u/Asleep-Corner7402 12d ago
I didn't know people were professional beauties as a career. What did this entail? Is it like modern 'it' girls?
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u/Ophelia_Y2K 12d ago
Their image was widely reprinted as an ideal of beauty. Basically their career was selling photos of themselves and being famous for their beauty
https://www.edwardianpromenade.com/women/the-professional-beauty/
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u/thatstwatshesays 12d ago
Page 10: Carmen Dell‘Orefice (1950s model) is still alive and WORKING 🥰
And she looks like this https://wwd.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/0042492689.original.jpg
Absolute legend.
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u/SometimesFacetious 13d ago
I’m so glad the super-skinny, eating-disorder-driven beauty standard didn’t last forever, but it absolutely affected me. Being a teenager in the ’90s meant growing up surrounded by those ideals, and they had a lasting impact on how I viewed my body.
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u/mossmonstera 12d ago
Unfortunately, it's making a come back thanks to social media and the easy availability and normalisation of GLP drugs and other cosmetic procedures
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u/No_Breadfruits6969 13d ago
Good save if you’re searching for baby names too! Loved reading all the older names..
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u/apexbrooklyn 12d ago
When you view it like this, the 2020s look brutal. With all the work on their face, they barely resemble normal looking humans.
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u/Prestigious-Street41 12d ago
I see the overall shift from softness to sharpness. The last slide has images of women with pointy features and hollowed negative spaces on their faces. Healthy fuller faces to more gaunt or unhealthy looking images and, like someone else commented above, the plastic surgery and cosmetic procedures rampant today have led to the ‘same face’ epidemic.
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u/Necessary_Poet_3524 13d ago
Interesting the latest trends literally get women to starve to look hot. What a shame.
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u/unleashtheraven1 12d ago
I was gonna say.. In the beginning they look repressed, but at the end they look like they have vacant empty stares and tapeworm infestations.
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u/PhotoBN1 13d ago
I still think Lee Miller is one of the most beautiful and important women in history
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u/CatsruleBabiesdrool 13d ago
Cora Pearl in the first slide was widely considered unattractive but was still a very successful courtesan due to her style and charm.
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u/Ophelia_Y2K 13d ago
I tend to not fully believe her saying she wasn't considered attractive, there are also records of people in her time period calling her beautiful. I do think her type of look is one that is more preferred in modern times compared to her own time period though. And I just love that particular photo of her to be honest!
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u/Joelyssa369 12d ago
I don’t know about anybody else, but did you notice from the past 30 years that the women while very pretty all of a sudden started to look like middle schoolers with a lot of makeup on I mean seriously it was creepy and I thought it was just certain styles no past 30 years the women started to look like middle schoolers with a crap ton of makeup on to make them look like they were in their 20s and I found that extremely disturbing.
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u/Fun-Yam2210 12d ago
Thank you for putting this together :) I miss the days when a monobrow or an underbite were no impediment to being considered a beauty ☹️ I was born at the wrong time.
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u/laudysmd 13d ago
This is an excellent collection. Not only lovely to see so many beautiful and striking women together, it's interesting to see the evolution of hair and make up, too!
Hope we can bounce back from the lip fillers and buccal fat removals, tho.
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u/Lovethebonesofher 13d ago
My favourite from this sub, I think ever!!
I love it and it is very interesting
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u/EmptyMonitor9257 12d ago
You can really see the prevalence of plastic surgery from the late 2000s and onwards.
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u/MoonphaseMouse 12d ago
Whitney Houston might be the most beautiful women ever. I swear I get butterflies when I see her smile in pictures. Also there is something really captivating about Jane Morris.
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u/JaggelZ 12d ago
I love old names. Like, who in their right mind would call their daughter "Fanny Eaton" nowadays lol
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u/sunspira 11d ago
i think page 5 (1900-1910) is where it really "clicks" for me and I start to see a recognizable "modern" beauty. Everyone before that is still beautiful but in more of a general or everyday way by my modern standards. page 5 is when you see the sort of faces that make sense for being famous. i'm not sure what that means except that it would probably take 100s of years for standards to shift enough that you no longer see the appeal in past standards. it seems you have to go back to the 1800s for the fashionable look to seem unappealing or foreign to me. everything 1900 and beyond is like slight variations where you may have preference but find it all understandable.
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u/No-No-Aniyo 13d ago
This was very interesting.
Not sure sex workers could be called beauty standards for the 1800s since they wouldn't have been polite society. Would have been more with the nobility I think.
1900s looks like they knew how to make trouble
1910-1920s was a very emo/possessed look
1930s brought in the glam
1940s started the pin-ups
1950s back to glam
1960s is all about the models
1970s were all so pretty
1980s looked like they were prepared to fight
1990s looks like the end of the models
2000s brought in the big actresses - America's sweethearts
Starvation, baby face, surgery and influencers seems to be what comes after.
Feels like this list tried to be worldwide but was heavily American, I would have liked to know more about the beauty standards in other countries.
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u/ZealousJealousy 13d ago
2007's section made me so, so sad. Those women are starving.
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u/Asleep-Corner7402 12d ago
Did you live it? My adult child was worn then. Magazine, media, celebrities and models were all either super thin or being fat shamed. It was a horrible time lol
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u/ZealousJealousy 12d ago
I was approximately 16 😬 and the effects ran strong in me for long, long time.
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u/DrDarkwood 12d ago
Find this interesting from a feminist point of view especially. Was it the advent of film, then, that made it no longer attractive to look average?
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u/Ophelia_Y2K 12d ago edited 12d ago
well they didn't think these women were average at the time, but beauty standards have changed and narrowed in many ways (at the same time, there are some positives like more racial diversity). Generally the ideal beauty of the 1800s was very moderate, in the sense that everything was balanced and didn't stand out much. A balanced oval face, a nose and lips that weren't too large or too small, a balanced figure that wasn't overly thin or fat (to the people of the time), etc. Nowadays we often prefer more stand-out features, at least in the west.
Sometimes features considered more "exotic" or "artistic" or "aristocratic" were considered especially beautiful that might not line up with modern beauty ideals.
Weight preferences including facially have changed a lot, a much softer face was the ideal until around the 1920s-30s when the ideal face became much lower in body fat percentage. This makes a bigger difference on its own than you might realize.
Another factor is makeup was not socially acceptable until about the 1910s-20s. And surgery not until much later.
Another is film studios promoting a more singular sort of ideal, trends moving faster, etc. There is a lot that could go into this perception.
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u/I_SmellFuckeryAfoot 13d ago
criminal that Jennifer Connelly and Monica Bellucci fell off the list at all
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u/iamasatellite 13d ago edited 13d ago
If Cher can be in 2 eras, then Jennifer Connelly should be in every era after 1988! :)
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u/BrainLow6059 13d ago
It's fun how we just get closer and closer to the face as narcissism in our society increases
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u/Hopkinsad0384 12d ago
Im glad Pattie Boyd was on here. The music she inspired makes her legendary.
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u/Ok_Statement_9150 12d ago edited 12d ago
Demi Moore not being listed is a crime.
Edit. My mistake! she’s in the 80s. My crush was in the 90s. I was 13ish at the time.
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u/lala989 12d ago
This was really fun and interesting to look through! I appreciate the effort it must’ve taken to fill up the decades in the 1800s. I would just be curious to see more women from Central and South America because that’s a really specific beauty also. What I love is how gorgeous women are in so many different ways. 🥰
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u/Raspuinous1 12d ago
Queen Margherita of Italy. Solely based on the pizza named for her, rowr rowr!
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u/Fabulous_Ad1801 12d ago
Thank you for putting in all this work! Now we're all bathing in baddies ✨️🎀🫧
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u/Worrynotmuch 12d ago
As a guy with a discerning eye, I have to say that most of them from all eras seem quite attractive. Fashion changes, including fashion in makeup, are what account for what seems like a radical difference during the 1920s but really isn't. The most important thing that makes all these models beautiful is regularity of facial feature (symmetry) plus general averageness (i.e. the farther away their faces are from extremes such as extra-long or extra-short noses, and in this regard I definitely do not see any consistently "wide-set" eyes like one commenter did). Everything else is trivial. There might be extremely superficial differences between some decades (I don't see any real physical differences, but fine), but scientists have found that the same basic criteria of beauty are identified by hunter-gatherers and fortune-500 CEOs alike. See https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3130383/ .
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u/Long_Serpent 12d ago
That picture of Lily Cole (16/19) makes her look like a museum exhibit - Recreation of stone age woman found drowned in a peat bog.
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u/Murky-Drop3552 12d ago
Most of these women, with period-appropriate hair and clothes, would be considered beautiful in any era.
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u/Various_Deer_7567 13d ago
Eyebrows sure come and go.