Beautiful in The Era Antiquity

For many in the 1990s, supermodel Cindy Crawford was the perfect American dream girl: slim, tanned and natural-looking, with long, shiny hair. People have described her as 'The Face of The Decade'.

But people have not always had the same ideas about beauty. Until the 1920s, suntans were for poor people, 'ladies' stayed out of the sun to keep their faces with lead to make them whiter - a very dangerous habit, since lead is poisonous!

And people in the eighteenth century would not have thought much of Cindy Crawford's hair! Ladies in those days never went out without their wigs, which were so enormous (and dirty) that it was quite common to find mice living in them. As for the 'perfect beauties' painted by Rubens in the seventeenth century, if they wanted to be supermodels today, they would need to spend months on a diet!

Ideas of beauty can be very different according to where you live in the world, too. For the Paduang tribe in South East Asia, traditionally, the most important sign of female beauty was a long neck. So at the age of five or six, girls received their first neck ring, and each year they added new rings. By the time they were old enough to marry, their necks were about twenty-five centimetres long!

And what about the ideal man? If you asked people today to name an attractive man, most of them would mention someone like James Bond, Harrison Ford, or Denzel Washington: someone tall and athletic, brave and 'manly'.

In the eighteenth century however, 'mainless' was very different from what it is today. As well as wearing wigs, perfume and lots of make-up, a true gentleman showed that he had feelings by crying frequently in public. According to one story, when the British Prime Minister. Lord Spencer Percival, came to give King George IV some bad news, both men sat down and cried!

And even now, James Bond might not find it to easy to attract women if he visited the Dinka tribe of Sudan. They have always believed in the saying that 'big is beautiful'. Traditionally, each year, men compete to win the title of 'the fattest man'. The winner is sure to find a wife quickly: for a Dinka woman, if a man is fat, it is also a sign that he is rich and powerful!