![]() These portraits would be reproduced in a "fine arts" book to be published in France, entitled the World's Book of Female Beauty. The final ten entrants would receive specially commissioned oil portraits of themselves. These photographs would be displayed in his museum and the public would vote for them. The prize - a dowry (if the winner was single) or a diamond tiara (if the winner was married) - was not enough to lure respectable girls and women of the Victorian era to publicly display themselves.īarnum developed a brilliant alternate plan for a beauty contest that would accept entries in the form of photographic likenesses. While 61,000 people swarmed to his baby show in 1855, a similar event the year before to select and exhibit "the handsomest ladies" in America proved a disappointment. Some of Barnum's most popular attractions were "national contests" where dogs, chickens, flowers, and even children were displayed and judged for paying audiences. In the 1850s, the ever-resourceful Barnum owned a "dime museum" in New York City that catered to the growing audience for commercial entertainment. The first truly modern beauty contest, involving the display of women's faces and figures before judges, can be traced to one of America's greatest showmen, Phineas T. General Lafayette's triumphant tour of the United States in 1826 also was greeted by similar delegations of young women. When George Washington rode from Mount Vernon to New York City in 1789 to assume the presidency, groups of young women dressed in white lined his route, placing palm branches before his carriage. In the United States, the May Day tradition of selecting women to serve as symbols of bounty and community ideals continued, as young beautiful women participated in public celebrations. For example, English May Day celebrations always involved the selection of queens. European festivals dating to the medieval era provide the most direct lineage for beauty pageants. A "contest of physique" called the euandria was held yearly at an Athenian festival - but the contest was for men. While ancient Greeks memorialized in myth the complicated relationship between beauty and competition, there is no historical evidence that they actually held contests for women. Who was the most beautiful: Hera (Juno), Aprhodite (Venus), or Athena (Minerva)? All three goddesses offered bribes: according to the writer Apollodorus, "Hera said that if she were preferred to all women, she would give him the kingdom over all men and Athena promised victory in war, and Aphrodite the hand of Helen." When Paris selected Aphrodite in exchange for getting Helen of Troy, the most beautiful mortal of the time, he inadvertently started the Trojan War. According to legend, a poor mortal goatherd, Alexandros (Paris), was called upon to settle a dispute among the goddesses. People & Events: Origins of the Beauty PageantĬontests to determine "who is the fairest of them all" have been around at least since ancient Greece and the Judgment of Paris.
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