Women have been in corsets, bound their feet, and even removed ribs to follow trends and attract an partner throughout history. Thankfully we are slowly making progress today and women are not subjected to as many horrible and painful fashion trends.
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00:00Women throughout history have been subjected to both beguiling and bewildering ideals of
00:04beauty, and taking a look at some of the things that were considered beautiful through the
00:08ages proves just how arbitrary beauty standards truly are.
00:12Frida Kahlo might have sported a now-iconic unibrow in the 20th century, but her fashion
00:16statement went against the grain of modern beauty standards.
00:19While many people thought she was flouting more modern ideals of beauty, she was actually
00:23embracing a centuries-old tradition.
00:25To the ancient Greeks, nothing was more attractive than a woman with just one eyebrow.
00:29Like Kahlo, ancient Greek women did not just let their unibrows grow freely, but would
00:33also take extra measures to make them even more prominent.
00:36While unibrows aren't typically considered attractive in modern times, thicker brows
00:40are making a bit of a comeback.
00:42Model and actress Cara Delevingne, for example, doesn't sport a unibrow, but her thick and
00:46full eyebrows helped to spark a modern trend for a bushier brow.
00:50Those familiar with the tale of the Trojan War know that Helen, the Spartan queen whose
00:53affair with the Trojan prince Paris led to bloody war between their two kingdoms, was
00:58famed for her beauty.
00:59Mexico was considered to be a land of beautiful women, but the beauty standards were far different
01:03back then from what you might expect today.
01:05As a queen, the historical Helen, who would have lived roughly 3,500 years ago during
01:10the Bronze Age, would have had tattoos of red suns on her chin and cheeks.
01:14Her hair would have also been shaved when she was in her teens, and when it grew back,
01:17would have been arranged to look like snakes.
01:19In classical Greece, which began in the 5th century B.C., Spartan beauty standards had
01:23changed a bit.
01:24Men kept their hair long and styled it, but women were expected to cut their hair off
01:28upon marriage and to keep it short for the rest of their lives.
01:31In ancient Ireland, a woman's worth often came down to what her hands looked like.
01:35While light skin and golden hair were also prized, it was a woman's hands that revealed
01:39whether or not she came from a good family.
01:41The ideal hands were well-formed with slender, tapering fingers, according to historians,
01:46and women of the upper class were expected to have rounded, well-kept nails.
01:49Even among the men in ancient Ireland, nail grooming was considered mandatory, and it
01:53was considered to be shameful for upper-class men to have unkempt nails.
01:57Although many of us today associate the color green with Ireland thanks to St. Patrick's
02:01Day, red was actually much more popular in ancient Ireland, and crimson-colored fingernails
02:05were all the rage.
02:07Who needs spray tans when you're a Renaissance woman?
02:10Women during the Renaissance were all about pale skin.
02:12Light skin was considered to be beautiful not necessarily for the aesthetic quality,
02:16but because paleness served as an indicator of status.
02:19A light complexion meant that you were wealthy enough to not have to work outdoors.
02:22In Elizabethan times, the more translucent your skin was, the better.
02:26In fact, this obsession with light skin was so great that even Queen Elizabeth I herself
02:30would apply a powder made of lead to her face.
02:33This had the effect of lightening the skin, but also slowly poisoned the wearer.
02:37You win some, and you lose some.
02:39The Western ideal of beauty has trended towards slimness for more than a century, but for
02:43a stretch of time, full-figured women were in vogue.
02:46Renaissance painters such as the 17th-century Flemish artist Peter Paul Rubens painted beautiful
02:51women with ample flesh on their bones, and his works are still celebrated in modern times.
02:55Today, the word Rubenesque is still used to refer to voluptuous women.
02:59While many modern women desire to have a flat stomach, the Rubenesque ideal favored a thicker
03:04midsection and rounded stomachs were considered the height of femininity.
03:07During the Renaissance, larger women were considered particularly beautiful.
03:12Voluptuous curves were viewed as a sign of wealth, and in Italy were also thought to
03:15be a sign that a woman would bear healthy sons.
03:18While we often think of corsets primarily as a way to achieve a thinner waist, they
03:22were also used to accentuate the bosom and the hips, and to give less-endowed women the
03:26appearance of substantial curves.
03:28In the 1920s, the feminine ideal of beauty was a woman who looked like she was on the
03:32verge of passing out at any moment.
03:34Linda Lynn, a psychologist at Boston's Emanuel College, explained to The Daily Burn that
03:39femininity was tied to frailness, weakness, and vulnerability a century ago, saying,
03:44"'Power, strength, and muscularity' were thought of as masculine traits, and gyms were for
03:48bodybuilders and athletes."
03:50Even as recently as the 1960s, strenuous exercise was viewed as something that could damage
03:54a woman's health.
03:55It wasn't until the 1990s that the idea of a toned, strong, muscular woman began to be
03:59considered not only acceptable, but also attractive.
04:03While being toned in modern times is considered aesthetically appealing, the new standard
04:07isn't necessarily an improvement over the old one.
04:09As Linda Lynn explains,
04:10"'The culture's defining what's attractive, and it's not more accepting.
04:13Now women can feel bad if they don't have the right muscle tone.'"