There used to be only so much you could do. Beauty was a matter of the genetic gifts you were allotted, along with the grooming and decoration that made the most of what you had and allowed you to venture forth in public. Every era had its signature look, but from the vantage point of our own sci-fi age—in which beauty is increasingly pursued through high-tech chemicals, needles, lasers, and scalpels—even people of the very recent past might as well have been ancient Egyptians daubing themselves with kohl and clay.
Our current culture calls to mind something more like Brave New World, Aldous Huxley’s prescient 1932 novel, in which the appearance of youthful beauty is societally mandated and fetishized. You can’t help but wonder whether we have embarked on a modern adaptation, where every stray hair, gray hair, wrinkle, pimple, and pore—every last imperfection—is ruthlessly hunted down and eliminated. So how did we get from there to here?
Gucci's 2003 provocative G-spot ads caused quite a stir.
Forty years ago, as the seventies got into swing, women were reveling in their newfound freedom from the constraints—the girdles, conical bras, and salon-set helmet hair—of the Pan-Caked past. If makeup was worn at all, it was Cabaret eyelashes and blue or green shadow with disco-doll glitter and lollipop-sticky lip gloss. Hair was grown long, straight down to the waist, or up and out in a Toni home perm or in the aptly named “natural,” also known as the Afro. This was the do-it-yourself era of the Ivory girl, of washing your face with Noxzema or yogurt, of shaving your legs in the shower or swiping them with Nair—or, if you were hippie enough, just letting it all go. A splash of Jean Naté and you were done. Nobody seemed to be wearing a bra. Farrah Fawcett’s epochal 1976 red-bathing- suit poster was a California-esque celebration of feathered blonde hair, blindingly white teeth, a tawny Bain de Soleil tan, and, not least, nipples. Soon enough everyone looked as though they’d just stepped off the set of Charlie’s Angels or Soul Train.
Artifice came back with a vengeance in the eighties. In the iconic Francesco Scavullo photographs of the time, the models look like members of Mötley Crüe. War-paint makeup was worn with even fiercer hair towering above, in wings and layers and hair-metal mullets that were teased, streaked, and frosted into oblivion. (Sun-In was a kind of bleach-blonde training-wheels starter kit.) Mousse, gel, and spray kept the confections aloft. Brooke Shields’s thick brows defined the decade (did anyone ever pick up a pair of tweezers?). Eyeliner was black or blue and emphatically drawn around the entire eye—then, along the inner rim as well. And why stop there? You needed lip liner too. The best-selling book Color Me Beautiful told you what “season” you were so that you could determine your makeup and clothing palette with the help of color swatches. Nails were long and vampirically pointed, or shellacked in a French manicure. Scent was no subtler, with blasts of heavy-hitting perfumes like Giorgio Beverly Hills, Poison, and Obsession filling the air. And then the body came into focus. Teenagers, as well as aspiring actresses, got nose jobs. Shoulder pads created a Working Girl power silhouette. Jane Fonda launched a nation’s worth of leg warmers with her workout studio and VHS tapes, and everyone began to “feel the burn,” as Fonda exhorted them on toward aerobics, Jazzercise, and Nautilus machines.
