How did people decide what was beautiful (male/female) in the past?

[LRDtheFeministDragon]

Just that, really. I know about medieval standards of beauty a bit, and I know they had a huge thing for blonde women, liked their men bearded, and so on. But I don't know much about the last 500 years or about whether it's different in different bits of Europe. Obviously I guess it must be once you get outside Europe!

But how did people judge what was attractive in a man or a woman?

I know that people must have varied as much as we do but there must also be things we'd think were completely odd to find sexy, but that were attractive back in the day. I know in about 1375 Chaucer has the Wife of Bath say she's attractive because she has a gap in her teeth.

I also wonder how much people genuinely looked very different in the past and now. Of course we are healthier on the whole and I understand we're a bit bigger than women used to be, but I wonder what else has changed.

Or Charles II of Spain.

I jest.

Different courts, different fashions. The Dutch were always pretty down to earth I gather. Not fond of massive periwigs and the kind of frothy nonsense you got at Versailles.

And the tiny waist thing??? Very anti women imo. Wasn't there a campaign for rational dress at some point? Do you remember that Caroline Ingalls was proud that Charles could span her waist with his hands when they were married?

'The Rise and Fall in Fashion of the Female Bust' - that would be such a brilliant title for a book. You need to write it!

I read about cosmetic surgery on the bust in medieval England. Bleugh.

angela - ah, thanks. This is the sort of thing I was hoping to find out.

humphrey - yeah ... I find that so hard to believe. Even if he had huge hands?

William I aged quite well too.

Good god, did they do SURGERY?

And Scarlett O'Hara at sixteen - her corsetted waist was seventeen inches, the smallest in three counties.

Because she was a real person, right?

Scarlett O'Hara and her tiny waist - 17 inches? And she had to eat a tray full of food before the party lest she betray an unbecoming hunger

Surely 17 inches must be fiction?

I can beat that! Clover, Katy's sister, was 16 inches.

I know think my thigh is bigger than that. Actually my bingo wing probably is.

I think so, humphrey. I will check. I know that people did rhinoplasties with bits of pig skin (which, obviously, didn't work!). But generally I think when someone was in a really bad way anyway. If someone had breast cancer, I can imagine you might do something pretty drastic.

I love the bit in Gone with the Wind where she 'up and faints' when Mammy pulls her waist in to something absurd like 20 inches - when she's had three babies! And she's shocked.

I used to be able to get mine down to 22, though, so I suppose if you were smaller all over you might. Laura and her sisters were all tiny, under 5 foot.

You do read interesting stuff LRD

Yeah, if only I could find it again!

Read the Faber Book of Reportage. There is an account in there of surgery (before anaesthesia) to remove a breast tumour that is not for the faint-hearted, but fascinating.

Pale skin was prized because it showed you were rich enough not to have to work out in the fields getting all swarthy I think.

Wish that was why I was pale!

Ouch. Yeah, I can imagine, angela.

I just read that the Anglo-Saxons figured out how to correct harelips, which I know is far from cosmetic, but the principle would presumably apply to other things - if you know how to cut skin and bind it together so it heals, and how to keep it from getting diseased while it does, you could do these things.

I'm always interested in how, through the ages, fashions begin (often for quite practical reasons) then steadily become more extreme as the rich go further and further to differentiate themselves, until it topples into absurdity and everyone stops following that fashion and begins another.

E.g. pointy shoes getting steadily more pointy and long until you can only go up and down stairs sideways and have to tie the shoe points to your knees to avoid tripping up, or wigs becoming huge and extravagantly powdered.

Ooh, yes, good point! Or ruffs becoming wider and wider, or crinoline skirts becoming so wide women had to go through doors sideways.

I'm reminded of Blackadder to Lord Percy:

"What are you wearing?"
"Ah. It's my new ruff! I think it makes me look rather sexy".
"You look like a bird who's swallowed a plate."

historicalideals.tumblr.com/

Fascinating tumblr!

I love Blackadder. I can just hear his intonations when I read that post.

bee - thank you! That is so brilliant.

Och, it's a bit short though - I thought it would go deliciously on and on, but there are only a few posts.