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From Alice Joyce to Kim Kardashian: Feminine Beauty Ideals Throughout the Years

Sputnik

At the beginning of the twentieth century, the ideal of beauty was considered to be tall girls with large breasts and a wasp waist. The Gibson Girls turned out to be the personification of the feminine ideal of physical attractiveness. The main beauty trend of the 1930s was the eyebrows. More precisely, their absence, as the eyebrows kept getting thinner and thinner until they were basically just a single drawn-on line.

Clumsy teenage girls with long slender legs became the new beauty ideal in the 1960s. However, with the 1970s, the age of fitness and athletic women began, with a spike of bold, bright colours and heavy make-up. Nowadays, slim and fit girls of athletic build are considered fashionable and beautiful, with the main trends of olive skin, puffy lips, high cheekbones and fluffy eyelashes.

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"Gibson Girls" (engraving after original drawing, titled Picturesque America, Anywhere Along the Coast) in beach attire (cropped image), illustration by Charles Dana Gibson. The pen-and-ink illustrations of artist Charles Dana Gibson during a 20-year period spanned the late 19th and early 20th century in the United States and Canada. The artist saw his creation as representing the composite of "thousands of American girls".
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Alice Joyce, an American actress, who appeared in more than 200 silent films during the 1910s and 1920s.
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American film actress and sex symbol of the 1930s Jean Harlow, was one of the biggest movie stars in the world. Often called the "Blonde Bombshell" and the "Platinum Blonde", she was famous for her "Laughing Vamp" movie persona.
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US actress, Hollywood icon Katharine Hepburn, became one of the most acclaimed actresses of all time. She was outspoken and her longstanding affair with US actor Spencer Tracy brought drama and controversy to her life. But no woman has matched the four Academy Awards she won and the American Film Institute counted her among the greatest film icons, alongside Humphrey Bogart, Cary Grant, and Bette Davis.
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American actress, model, and singer Marilyn Monroe in the famous scene from the movie "The Seven-Year Itch". She became well-known for playing comic "blonde bombshell" characters and was one of the most popular sex symbols of the 1950s and early 1960s. She was emblematic of the era's changing attitudes towards sexuality.
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Belgian-born British actress Audrey Hepburn was known for her radiant beauty and style, and her ability to project an air of sophistication tempered by a charming innocence.
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Actress Farrah Fawcett waits between shots during the taping of the second "Celebrity Challenge of the Sexes", in Mission Viejo, California, 1977.
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Supermodel Elle MacPherson displays a see-through mesh top with a jean suit during the Todd Oldham Fall 1995 fashion show in New York.
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Model Kate Moss wears a flapped hat with a suede jacket, 07 April 1994, during the showing of the Fall 1994 Anne Klein collection.
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Christina Aguilera performs at the first annual Latin Grammy Awards in Los Angeles, 2000.
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Kim Kardashian West arrives at the US premiere of "The Promise" at the TCL Chinese Theatre on 12 April 2017, in Los Angeles.
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