Beauty Ideal In The Victorian Era

Even during modern times, it appears that having a healthy mind and body, as well as having the ideal looking anatomy means you have better chances of prospering in society. Modern day media is constantly portraying the "ideal body" look to people all around the world. This uninterrupted projection of the optimal body image causes many pressures to be placed on the people who are observing them. This made me wonder if this pressure was also present during the 16th, 17th or 18th centuries. Although there is a lack of technology such as television, newspapers and movies, the burden of looking a specific way was still on the shoulders of people in the Early Modern World.

What most people do not realize is that beauty is an opinion. Nobody sat down when the world began and wrote a book on what defines beauty for the future. Beauty has just become something that we care about. We all think someone is more beautiful than us. But for every person you think is prettier than you, there is someone thinking the same thing about you. We all have different perceptions of people, just the same as the people who came before us.

This was the decade that women began riding bicycles, playing sports, and entering the workforce. http://blogs.baruch.cuny.edu/his1000summer2011/tag/womens-rights/. For the first time in the century, women rejected corsets, they cut their hair short, and began wearing trousers. Women of the 1920’s wanted to accentuate their curves and make themselves appear younger, so they made their dresses shorter. Women’s dresses got shorter and shorter and finally

Women typically wore comfortable pants and tops rather than fancy

Before the 1900s, the Rubensque women painted by Rafeal and Renoir dominated the ideal female body image. The Bathers, painted by Pierre Auguste Renoir in 1887 was also an example of what the ideal female body looked like. Women having extra weight reflected wealth and beauty then. In the early 1800s, women preferred having pale skin because it showed that they spent less time outdoors working, which reflected wealth. Also women at that time were expected to have small hands and feet as a sign of their feminism, otherwise they would be considered as masculine-looking.

Women were willing to sacrifice comfort and sometimes endure painful measures to achieve the ideal body. In every generation society sets certain standards for female beauty. During the nineteenth century, women would often wear corsets to have a tiny hourglass shape because that shape was idealized at the time. This corset was often uncomfortable and was difficult to move and breathe in it. In the beginning of the twentieth century, the standards changed to a more boyish-looking, angular, and thin woman.

The 1920’s was an amazing decade in american history. Life was great and the economy was booming. It didn’t seem that anything could ruin life at this point, but for men things were about to change and for most that was not good. Women were trying to change their role in society from just being in the house, taking care of children, and pleasing their husbands. They did this by cutting their hair short and wearing loose fitting dresses.

To get a more sophisticated look , women began to wear spaghetti straps and revealing more, for a more sexy look. Women dresses were created with no waist creating a more masculine look; therefore, this was an easy look for middle class woman to make at home. However, middle class women made their dresses at home to fit in with the higher

The fashion of the 1920 s is a reflection of peoples extravagant lifestyles and elevated thinking. It was an exciting time to be a woman because more freedoms and opportunities were available, not to mention woman gaining the right to vote . There were new patterns of clothing, bras,and smaller corsets not to mention that most of the clothing was made by the woman themselves. Through the years woman have stayed at home and not had much involvement in the society.

One of the categories in being the ideal woman is being conventionally beautiful because, according to the media, a significant portion of a woman’s self-worth rests in appearance. This can be seen through women’s magazines in particular, which promote altering one’s appearance leads to the significant improvement of one’s “love life and relationships, and ultimately, life in general” (Bazzini 199). Therefore, the media presents a direct relationship with beauty and success: the more attractive a woman is, the better her life will be. Thus, a woman must the take initiative to look beautiful in order to be successful. Through the repetitive exposure of the same type of image in the media, what society considers beautiful often resembles a definitive checklist.

According to Britton (2012), last 2008, YWCA USA developed a report Beauty at Any Cost wherein they discuss the consequences of beauty obsession of every woman in America. It shows that beauty obsession results from a decrease in the level of self-esteem. It also gives a problem to the Americans because it’s also putting a dent in their pockets. It states that because of those cosmetics many people have decreased the level of self-esteem because of those cosmetics.

Instead, they wore thinner dresses that uncovered part of their legs,”. Another social change that occurred was that many young women began to smoke cigarettes and drink alcohol in public with

Whether it’s magazine covers, instagram, twitter, on television or just on the world wide web in general, everywhere we look we see stunning models. Models that are incredibly thin and can look good in anything. Our society is obsessed with how perfect they look, yet at the end of the day women everywhere looks in the mirror and doesn’t see the body of the girl she sees on social media. Even though women come in all shapes and sizes in nature, the expectation to have a skinny, perfect body just seems to be the expectation for our society nowadays. Society puts too much pressure on females to have the perfect body.

The History of Beauty Umberto Eco raises the question in his work ‘why is the history of beauty documented solely through works of art?’ As Eco states, art is what we are left as examples. As a result, it gives us an insight into beauty standards throughout time and of different cultures around the world. Furthermore, artists ideally strive to create something that is appealing to the eye of the viewer, but also what the artist themselves envisions as beauty.

(Thomas, 2001-2014). The dress of this new age was a ‘shapeless shirt dress shorter than the average dress’ (Thomas, 2001-2014). With the hem of skirt