Since the start of the pandemic, my family have begun refusing to watch period TV with me. They say they are sick of my complaints about historical inaccuracies in set design and mannerisms, but mostly, my constant criticisms of women’s costumes. For several years now, fashion history has been something of a pet interest of mine, I don’t think I flatter myself too greatly when I say I know a fair bit about it by now. That said, sometimes I feel that all I’ve gained from hours and hours of independent research is an inability to enjoy anything historical without judging and, consequently, being put off by shoddy costumes. While the points I’m about to make could be dismissed as just a pedant trying to defend their pretentious pettiness, I will insist until the day that I die that historically inaccurate costumes on the silver screen both reinforce and actively contribute to the impossible body standards that modern women face.
I’m sick and tired of seeing historical accuracy in women’s costume sacrificed in favour of better adhering to modern beauty ideals. Nine times out of ten, women’s historical costumes are stripped of their believability and transformative skill just so that Keira Knightley can rock effectively the same look from the movie on the red carpet at the premier. I’m fed up with seeing women stuffed into stupidly tight dresses and smokey eyeshadow for absolutely no reason other than that it makes it easier for modern media to objectify them.
This issue is even more infuriating when it is obvious that painstaking attention to detail has been applied to other aspects of the production, revealing that it was not a lack of research or knowledge that led to poor costuming, but rather a deliberate disregard for it in an attempt to better cater for modern audiences’ perceived tastes. For example, in the series ‘Outlander’, producers obviously went to great effort to try and ensure that the majority of the Scottish clans involved in the plotline are historically legitimate and behave accordingly- sometimes right down to their names, and yet, they had no issue with letting the female protagonist wear a dress that would look more suited to the 1940s than the 1740s.
While trying to explain this concept to a friend recently, they responded with: ‘well what’s wrong with having pretty dresses and hair? It’s not like they’re hurting anyone, and most people can’t tell if they’re historically accurate or not anyway.’ I believe the issue runs far deeper than that. When you display women, who are revered as beautiful in their historical context who also adhere perfectly to 21st century beauty ideals, you perpetuate the completely false notion that society’s concept of ‘beauty’ is a constant and unchanging set of rules. Whereas, in reality, conventional beauty ideals are completely transient, fluid and ever-changing.
Let’s use Netflix’s ‘Bridgerton’ adaptation as an example. The series is supposedly set in 1813, and the costumes look like they were very nearly designed as wonderful regency costumes that not only aid in characterisation, but also notify the audience that we are, in fact, in Regency England. The costumes look like they were almost wonderful regency costumes, but then were completely mangled by some designer or director attempting to make the heroines look sufficiently conventionally attractive and appealing to modern audiences. The result is a train wreck chimera of skintight chiffon, half straightened hair and lip-liner. The main character of the series, Daphne Bridgerton, is introduced early on as the extremely pretty and desirable ‘diamond of the season’. To emulate this, she (of course) wears nothing but bedazzled satin paired with bizarre wispy bangs and supernaturally sleek curls of a child pageant star from the mid-2000s. And yes, she is beautiful. She’s conventionally stunning. However, and this is the key issue, she wouldn’t have been stunning to regency society. During the early 1800s, the ‘ideal female face’ (for lack of a better term) was rounded and rosy, with soft cheeks and a small mouth. Long, slightly droopy Grecian noses and round, protruding chins were also considered very fetching. The (admittedly lovely) sharp cheekbones and plumped lips of Phoebe Dynevor simply wouldn’t have been considered attractive in the way they are today. And while this misrepresentation of regency beauty standards may seem trivial and harmless, what happens when the only version of ‘beautiful’ displayed in the media today is the same regardless of era goes far deeper than first meets the eye.
For quite literally millions of people, interpretations of history on TV are the only accessible visual representations of other eras. What does it say to them when the only version of ‘beautiful’ they ever see looks like every modern supermodel and influencer- representation which ignores the fact that society’s concept of what even qualifies as attractive flips itself on its head every few decades? What does it say when the transient and ever-changing women’s beauty standards of today are immortalised in supposedly ‘accurate’ historical portrayals of female beauty?
We are letting the film industry tell people- tell women- that beautiful has sharp cheekbones and flawless skin and dark lashes and a flat stomach. We are letting the film industry perpetuate the lie that a conventionally attractive woman now, looks and acts the same as a conventionally attractive woman then.
I understand that as a society we already put too much value on beauty- especially in women, and that in an ideal world this article wouldn’t be necessary; but frankly, concepts this deeply ingrained into the foundations of our society take time to extract and erase, and, if we can at least soften the soul-destroying blow of being told that your beauty equates your worth, I think that’d be a step in the right direction.
If young girls saw other versions of ‘beautiful’- historically legitimate and just as valid versions of ‘beautiful’- heralded as such on their screens, can you even begin to imagine the effects that would have not only on them but on every ideal that society has brainwashed into them since before they could talk? If we started acknowledging that other versions of beauty in women exist and have existed and will exist, we could completely revolutionise our society’s entire concept of what and who ‘beauty’ actually is, as well as how it is defined.
