cultural fashions from other times and places

Ideals of feminine beauty have never been static, instead they have evolved and changed as cultures and fashions have changed. What features or details are considered ideal and the most desirable in a women have always varied from one country, culture, and era to the next.

It is this variability that shows beauty ideals to be more about the fashions and preferences of a socalised majority than about an unshakable truth. As the mainstream media expands however, a more uniform standard of beauty is likely to be imposed across the globe.

16th - 19th century Europe:
Corsets were worn to literally reshape women's waists.


Above left: Narrow waists were achieved by wearing tightly bound corsets day and night from the age of five. The unforgiving fashion item would hinder the development of vital organs, meaning corset wearing women fainted frequently and found it hard carry a child and survive the delivery.

Above right: This picture demonstrates 18th century Gregorian fashion. It was during this century that children were corseted and doctors began to protest. Although corsets are romanticised today, the modern garments cause little of the dicomfort and bodily harm that our ancestors experienced.

In parts of Thailand, brass rings are inserted round women's necks.
Women with rings are recognised by their tribe as women of high status and beauty.

The brass rings around these womens necks do not actually stretch the neck but squash the vertebra and collar bones. The first rings are put in place when a girl is 5 or 6 years old and added gradually. By the time she is an adult, a woman has at least twenty rings around her neck.

Footbinding (below) was practiced in China for more than 1000 years.

The ideal size for a womans foot was 4 inches!

A disability by todays standards, small feet were a status symbol because only the wealthy could afford to keep women unproductive. For more information click on the pictures.

A womans foot - the deformity arising from the practice
of foot binding is clearly evident in this photo.
This slipper is the kind of shoe that was worn by women with bound feet.

Mursi lip plates and facial markings

The Western World
We learn to identify feminine beauty because it is not always obvious - the ideal varies over time. Western culture is informed of the ever-changing 'look' of feminine beauty by the mainstream media.

Femininity in 1910
Femininity in 1920
Femininity Today

Back
next page: an introduction to the key concepts