Ideals of Woman's Beauty

The nature has awarded each of us with a natural charm that only needs to be seen. Each woman is individual, everyone is beautiful. We can carefully hide the beauty behind a make-up, a bad mood, and improper clothes. But the nature does not do errors, and it has awarded each of us with the originality. It is only necessary to have the wish to see it. The fashion can dictate everything, the true female beauty admires with its individuality.

The beauty ideal developed during many centuries. And each time it was absolutely different.

The prehistoric period. The first known images of the woman are a short trunk, the person without the outlines, the hypertrophied breasts, a stomach, hips, tiny hands and feet. All it defines a cult of fertility of the woman: the beauty and a survival are closely connected between themselves in representations about the first female ideal.

The Egyptian canons of beauty. At the time of the Egyptian civilization the image of the ideal woman was submitted to certain canons. Among women of that time the Egyptian tsarina of the beginning of the New kingdom of Jahmes-Nefertari, was known as the Beauty Ideal. She was the object of a cult of personality and a deity: statues represent her as a beautiful high harmonious African of an athletic constitution, with long feet, with round buttocks and a small breast.

The Greek beauty: almost man’s body. During the archaic period (VII-VI  centuries BC) Statues never represented real people, and embodied an ideal of beauty, virtue, valor or sacrifice. The similar ideal in a greater degree corresponded to the young man. Women were represented draped in dresses, allowing to see an outline of their mannish athletic body. The beauty was based on the harmony of a body, instead of on art taste.

The Middle Ages: the purity ideal. In the Middle Ages a make-up was forbidden by all-powerful Church as it deforms the divine creations. Maiden Maria was represented basically by a figure deprived of any feminity: the Roman statue represents it exclusively as support for baby Jesus on her hands. The whiteness of a skin symbolized cleanliness, purity, and also riches and idleness. All these were very much appreciated in girls of that epoch.

The medieval nymph often hidden under wide clothes, the body of the ideal woman should correspond to special canons. The woman should be broad-shouldered with a small elastic breast, a wasp waist, narrow hips and a round tummy. The youth and fair hair deserved special attention.

The Renaissance: returning of feminity. At the time during the governing of Katrina Medici blush was imported from the East to France.  Henceforth beauties of the French Court yard did the make up eyes, eyelashes, eyebrows, and lips, nails and cheeks in red. Courtesans from Venice, having a reputation for the most beautiful women, have brought into fashion a new ideal of beauty: the blonde with magnificent forms and a pale face (the well-known Venetian blonde).

The Renaissance: the terrestrial woman. In Renaissance a female body appears again in not religious art. It is again idealized. Many elements do not have anatomic proportions: too long neck, too sloping shoulders. But in Renaissance art there was also a realistic movement. Aristocrats and patrons of art, who admired with cold female beauty of works of Raphael, loved also round forms of women Titian and Rubens.

One of the chronic men of XVI century shows his original absolutely non-standard formula of female beauty, multiple to number three.

In his opinion, the beautiful woman should have:

Three white – a skin, a teeth, and hands.

Three black – eyes, eyebrows, eyelashes.

Three red – lips, cheeks, nails.

Three long – a body, hair and hands.

Three wide – a thorax, a forehead, distance between eyebrows.

Three narrow – a mouth, a shoulder, a foot.

Three thin – fingers, hair, lips.

Three roundish – hands, a torso, hips.

Three small – breasts, a nose and feet.

A XVII-th century: the cult of refinement. At the time of a classical epoch, beauty corresponds to accurate canons of a cult of refinement. Women should have a dairy complexion, a slender waist, an impressive breast, a bit chubby hands.

A XVIII-th century: Returning to natural beauty.

A XIX-th century. Between the chaste wife and the painful beauty.

La Castiglione, “the Queen of hearts of Empire”, is considered to be the most beautiful woman of that time, personifying beauty of a female smooth dairy body with magnificent forms and an impressive breast.

The Second model of creativity of a XIX-th century is painful feminity. It is a question as of sincere illnesses. This beauty has painful pallor, dark circles under eyes and hollow cheeks. Similar signs of a melancholy and despair correspond to an image of the woman who is mysterious, inaccessible, and fantastic.

The XX-th century: from the girl-guy to beauty Merilin.

The XX-th century: from the girl-guy to beauty Merilin. In 20th years the fashion of the girl-guy dominates: shortly short-haired hair, easy, in a short skirt. Hips and a stomach should be flat, a small breast, and dresses should show brawny enough hands and harmonious feet.

After the Second World War leanness is considered to be a sign of bad health. Hollywood, all-powerful factory of dreams, creates a new female ideal: the sexual blonde like Merlin Monroe. The well-known actress began the career, posing bared for calendars, became a beauty symbol. The platinum blonde is an embodiment of cleanliness and sexuality, passion and children’s naivety.

Gradually bourgeois ideal is superseded from consciousness. There comes time of refusal of the established model of beauty and clearing of the woman!

The fashion can dictate everything, the true female beauty admires with its individuality. In our time there are no certain canons on beauty. Blonde girls attract with their cleanliness, purity, naivety.

And brunettes attract with their mysteriousness, a fatal sight and sexuality.