Each country, each culture, each period has its own standards of beauty and those standards are constantly changing over time. There are standards to people today that may no longer be beautiful, but in the past, they could have been traits many people dreamed of possessing.
Recently, a photo of a person believed to be the Qajar princess was spread, attracting the curiosity of the online community. Whether viewed from afar or up close, one could only see a man in a long dress with a plump body and a black mustache and thick eyebrows.
Many people were even more shocked when it was announced that this princess had made 13 boys take their own lives because they were so miserable when she rejected her. The internet thinks this is probably just a joke or a product of photo editing software. However, this is purely a historical true story.
The girl in the photo is Princess Fatemeh Khanum “Esmat al-Dowleh” – the second daughter of Iranian King Naser Al-Din Shah, who has ruled Iran since 1785.
At that time, the concept of female beauty of King Naser Al-Din Shah was that women must have a plump and masculine body, not in the style of “the crane body”. For him, confidence, intelligence and independence are the charms of a woman.
In addition, the standard of beauty in Naser al-Din’s era were women with bushy eyebrows and sharp mustaches to symbolize comfort and affluence.
The girl in the photo is Princess Fatemeh Khanum “Esmat al-Dowleh” – the second daughter of Iranian King Naser Al-Din Shah, who has ruled Iran since 1785.
According to the concept of beauty at that time, women had to wear mustaches, even many people without mustaches drew more.
Therefore, the appearance of Princess Fatemeh Khanum “Esmat al-Doleh” at that time was one of the standard beauty that everyone pursued. This appearance of hers is inherited from the queen Anis l-Doleh. Even the 83 other wives of King Naser Al-Din Shah or his daughters have this unique beauty.
Queen Anis l-Doleh (right) is the woman most favored by King Naser Al-Din Shah.
The woman was considered one of the “beautiful beauties” of that time.
Not only Persia, in previous eras also had very different views on beauty than today.
Chinese used to love fat women
In the Tang Dynasty, women who were considered beautiful in the Tang Dynasty were round and plump. Looking back at the famous beauty figures of that time, such as Duong Quy Phi or Vo Tac Thien, you can see that they are described as people with round faces and white skin. There was even a document describing Vo Tac Thien that she had “a square face with a wide forehead, fat and voluptuous, long puffy eyes, and a kingly general.
The picture is an almost exact reconstruction of a “beautiful” woman according to the standards and aesthetic conceptions of the Tang Dynasty.
Europeans used to like faces without eyebrows
Renaissance women liked to shave their eyebrows clean, because the beauty standard of this period was a high forehead. This beauty trend still leaves its mark in many paintings by Renaissance artists, the most prominent of which is Leonardo da vinci’s Mona Lisa.
Japanese women love to dye their teeth black
In Japan at the end of the 19th century, almost everyone had black teeth and they were called Ohaguro. To get this special tooth, the ancient Japanese used a dye with ingredients including: iron, salted leaves, vinegar and a few other additives.
It is known that the method of dyeing teeth black is used by the Japanese for the purpose of beautifying and helping their teeth never to decay.
It can be seen that the concept of beauty will change over time, they are created by people and our society. Therefore, women should not be self-deprecating if they themselves have characteristics that do not match the current view of beauty. Always love yourself and do everything you like, just be beautiful in your own eyes to be beautiful in the eyes of others.
