How The “Perfect” Female Body Has Changed In 100 Years
The “perfect” female body has a shelf life of about ten years. The 1910s wanted a corseted wasp waist, the ’20s threw that out entirely for a flat, boyish flapper frame, the ’90s went heroin-chic, and the 2010s swung hard the other way to the bootylicious era.
These graphics by Leo Delauncey track the whole century of whiplash, decade by decade. What jumps out is how arbitrary it all is — each decade’s ideal is mostly a reaction to whatever beauty standard, fashion trend, or pop culture moment came before it, and half of them flat-out contradict each other.
A hundred years of goalposts moving is its own argument that the goalposts were never real.
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2. Camille Clifford
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4. Alice Joyce
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6. Jean Harlow
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10. Elizabeth Taylor
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12. Twiggy
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14. Farrah Fawcett
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16. Elle MacPherson
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18. Kate Moss
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20. Christina Aguilera
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