How the standards of female beauty in Russia changed: why did they blacken their teeth, whitened with lead and other fashion trends of the past

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

Despite the cult of individuality, individuality and dissimilarity, modern women strive to be "no worse than others." Beauty standards are adaptive preferences imposed from the outside, but the beautiful half of humanity invariably strives to adjust itself to them. This desire has been characteristic of women at all times, and not only now, when the canons of attractiveness are changing at the speed of light.

Mother - Cheese Earth

In the pre-Petrine era, puffy, healthy women with high breasts, wide pelvis, rounded hips and strong legs were considered beautiful in Russia. If statism and tall stature were added to these qualities, the girl was a real standard of beauty. It is desirable that she had a straight back without any signs of stoop and a majestic proud body, "like a pea." The plump and ruddy "Mother - Cheese Earth" personified well-being and health, and for men in Russia such a woman was ideal in all respects.

The main criteria for choosing a wife were stamina and physical ability for frequent childbirth. It was not enough to give birth, it was still necessary to feed and raise children, while doing housework at the same time. Skinny girls were not suitable for this, they were considered sick and even crippled. Such wives were not considered as future wives, they were bypassed, and even called witches behind their backs.

Another advantage of a beautiful bride in Russia is a long and thick braid, which symbolized femininity and maiden honor. Thick and healthy hair indicated the girl's good genetics and the possibility of giving birth to healthy offspring. The owners of light blond braids were considered the most attractive.

According to Russian fairy tales and epics, the beauties were white-skinned and ruddy, with thick black eyebrows. To give the face a "correct" shade, the young ladies dusted themselves with harmful white lead, and painted the blush with beetroot juice.

Why black teeth were in vogue

The merchant class had their own non-standard ideas about wealth. Black teeth covered with plaque and caries were considered one of the signs of beauty in Russia. They testified to the financial well-being of the family - the girl could afford to regularly eat sugar cakes, honey, molasses and other desserts, which is why her teeth turned black. To meet the standards, merchant wives and daughters diligently rubbed their teeth with charcoal in order to go out into the world to demonstrate the luxury of their diet. In addition, the black smile accentuated the snow-white complexion.

In some regions of Russia, this fashion persisted until the beginning of the 20th century. In his Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow, Radishchev describes to Praskovya Denisovna that she was "white and blush" with "teeth like coal." At the same time, the author is not at all shocked by this fact, but speaks about the beauty of a woman exclusively in a positive way.

Splendor and waist in a corset

Peter I fought against the "outdated" way of life, transformed and modernized the existing order, focusing on the West. New standards of female attractiveness were also formed under European influence, Peter "opened a window" just in the heyday of the Rococo era. So, among aristocrats and townspeople, a fashion appeared for a narrow waist tightly tightened in a corset, emphasized by a fluffy skirt of a dress.

Ladies painted themselves in the French manner, drew artificial moles for themselves, did complex hairstyles and plucked their eyebrows. At the same time, a prominent bust, rounded soft shoulders and full hips were still in trend.

In the first half of the 18th century, the fashion for a "burning" appearance - dark hair and dark eyes - was added to the rococo standards. A striking example of this is the last love of Peter I, Marina Cantemir, who embodied the Russian and European traditions of female attractiveness. The fateful actress Praskovya Zhemchugova and the favorite of Alexander I, Maria Naryshkina, had a similar type.

Refined and vulnerable Turgenev young ladies

In the 19th century, with the advent of the era of romanticism, dark-haired and black-eyed "pungency" loses its relevance, and healthy corpulence is out of fashion. Now the image of an anemic and asthenic girl with big sad eyes is becoming popular. The attribute of beauty, traditional for that time, is a morbid pallor, symbolizing the depth of heartfelt feelings. Men, who yesterday were carried away by stout ladies with a magnificent bust, now admire thin, almost emaciated girls with transparent skin and drooping shoulders. A fragile thin neck, dark circles under the eyes and sunken cheeks are the highest degree of attractiveness in the era of romanticism.

This trend appeared thanks to the then very popular England - any fashion trends from there were accepted with enthusiasm by Russian ladies from the upper classes. They tormented themselves with diets in order to achieve the desired pallor, they continued to pull themselves in corsets and wore crinolines in order to emphasize the thinness and fragility of their figure. The most fashionable ladies tied bows around their necks and imitated Violetta Valerie from "Lady of the Camellias".

Curved lily stem

The period of the late 19th - early 20th centuries was dominated by the modern era, which breathed new life into women's fashion. The main aesthetic trend of that time was the absence of unnatural lines and angular shapes. S-shaped dresses with a puffy back came into vogue, which made the figure look like a curved lily stem.

Lingerie manufacturers offered ladies several options for corsets to form a graceful, thin waist, as required by the fashion. The corset itself of that period was very long and pulled the figure to an inhuman volume of 42-47 cm, which sometimes even led to death - the young lady simply suffocated in such vestments.

The beauties of the Art Nouveau era are sophisticated, pampered and idle ladies with languid eyes, pale skin and long wavy hair styled in a lush high hairstyle. To make the hair look more voluminous, horsehair rollers were used. Especially popular were brown-haired women with curls of reddish tide.

Aristocratic pallor and black eyes

At the beginning of the twentieth century, decadence prevails, which is characterized by depression, apathy and mystical eroticism. An active process of releasing the female body from the grip of the corset begins. A significant role in this was played by Isadora Duncan, who already in 1903 danced on stage in a transparent shirt of antique cut.

The era of decadence gave the world the image of a small, pale and nervous woman of free morals. The embodiment of this archetype is the star of the cinema Vera Kholodnaya.

To achieve dying pallor on the face, the beauties of the Silver Age rubbed their skin with lemon juice, applied several layers of powder and abundantly added vinegar to food. A real woman had to look tired and sickly from mental anguish and stormy nights. The picture was complemented by a bottomless dark gaze, like a witch's. To dilate the pupils, the girls instilled a belladonna solution into their eyes and fatly summed them up with black shadows. As for the figure, there were no hard standards. Various silhouettes were considered attractive: from "hourglass" to boyish androgynous figures.

What images were considered "ideal" over the past 100 years

In the 1920s and 1930s, foreigners rarely appeared in the USSR; cultural ties with the West were cut off. The effeminacy and aristocratic pallor that came from Europe at one time was gradually replaced by full-bodied beauty and a proletarian blush. The cult of a strong workers 'and peasants' body reigned in the USSR for many decades. A woman had to be blooming and moderately well-fed in order to work and give birth to healthy offspring.

In the 80s, they began to sell the Burda-Moden magazine and organized the first beauty contest in the Union. Since that time, Soviet women began to strive for harmony and sophistication. The standard of attractiveness has become a long-legged beauty with a graceful fit figure - the complete opposite of the image that was promoted by the Soviet government for many years. In the 80s, a massive hobby for aerobics began, there was a fashion for uneven cascading haircuts, perm and excessive bright makeup.

In the 90s, slender young ladies of model appearance with thick eyebrows, long hair and lush bangs, carefully styled with varnish, are especially popular. To achieve model standards, the girls exhausted themselves with diets, drank laxatives and special diet pills. The roundness of the forms did not play a special role, the most important thing is a thin waist, thin legs and narrow hips.

The first decade of the 21st century is characterized by a rapid change in attractiveness standards. Naturalness during this period was not in value, the girls extended their hair and nails, brought the skin to an unnatural shade in tanning salons, drew triangular eyebrows and experimented with hair color.

Today's standard of feminine appeal is the slender Instagram beauty with sensual lips, high cheekbones and outstanding athletic curves. But this "ideal" image may very soon be replaced by another.

And these models with non-standard appearance have conquered the world catwalks.