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While we like to think we are far more diverse in what we consider beautiful these days in 1888 a European beauty contest chose a creole woman as the most beautiful girl on the planet
Troy Lennon History Editor @troyantonius September 19, 2018 - 12:00AM The Daily Telegraph
The Concours de Beaute on September 19, 1888, one of the first public beauty contests held in Belgium. Public domain
The late 19th century had very different standards of female beauty to those of today. But while we like to think we celebrate all kinds of diversity in beauty, more than our Victorian-era forebears, there was one notable occasion, 130 years ago today, when judges at a beauty contest made an inclusive choice.
They voted an 18-year-old woman described as “Creole” as the “the most beautiful girl on the planet”.
The contest, the “Concours de Beaute”, was held in Spa in Belgium on September 19, 1888. It was the first real modern beauty contest with a panel of judges and prizemoney. The winner was Bertha Soucaret, from the French colony of Guadeloupe in the Antilles in the Caribbean. Soucaret was a strikingly beautiful woman with dark, curly hair suggesting her African ancestry.
Georgiana Seymour, Duchess of Somerset is crowned the Queen of Beauty at the Eglinton Tournament of 1839, the first known beauty pageant. Painted by James Henry Nixon in 1839.
However, not everyone agreed with the choice of winner, and although Soucaret won 5000 francs prizemoney and had her photo printed on the front page of the French periodical Le Journal Illustre, she went on to obscurity after her moment of glory.
Beauty contests of one kind or another go back centuries.
The ancient Greeks held competitions for both men and women based on parading contestants being judged on their beauty.
In the 8th and 9th centuries the son of the Byzantine emperor had his wife chosen through a sort of beauty contest. Representatives were sent to cities throughout the empire to select the most beautiful women, albeit from a fairly narrow group of daughters of nobles and wealthy citizens.
1888 Concours de Beaute winner Bertha Soucaret.
Women with straight noses were out and pointy ones were considered beautiful. They also preferred small breasts and small feet, although weight was not a consideration. The chosen women went to the capital Byzantium (Istanbul) to be put on show and to test for other attributes, like being well spoken.
The emperor’s advisers chose the woman who would marry the emperor’s son. Although, the future emperor Constantine was less than delighted with the choice made for him by his father’s adviser the eunuch Staurakios in 788. When Constantine became emperor in 790 Staurakios was flogged and exiled.
Throughout medieval Europe beautiful young girls would parade through their villages in the hope of being chosen as “queen” of various festivals throughout the year. In England one of the most important was the May queen on May Day. There was no prizemoney, but she had the honour of riding before the local procession wearing a white dress and a crown of flowers.
In 1839 when the Earl of Eglinton organised a re-enactment of a medieval tournament at his castle in Ayrshire, Scotland, one of the events on the day was the election of a “Queen of Beauty”. The woman chosen was Lady Seymour, the wife of politician Lord Seymour, who was said to be particularly beautiful.
By 1937, pageants were much more daring as illustrated by the final of the Bathing Beauties competition held in 1937 at Luna Park in Sydney. Picture: State Library of NSW
In the 1850s American showman Phineas T. Barnum tried to put on public displays of women parading to be chosen as the most beautiful. But protesters shut his competition down before it could hit the stage, people considered it an affront to decency to have women parading publicly for entertainment. Barnum was reduced to asking women to send photographs as entries and the winner’s image was displayed at his American Museum in New York.
Decades later, the 1888 Concours de Beaute was still modest by modern standards. Entrants submitted a photograph and a short written description. There were 350 applications from which a panel of mostly male judges chose 21 finalists. Entrants came from France, Belgium, Germany, Portugal, Sweden, Austria, Bohemia, Russia, Hungary, Italy, and the West Indies. Contestants paraded every night for two weeks in full evening wear, escorted by men in tuxedos. It took place behind closed doors in a wing of a casino with its own ballroom. Spectators paid money to come and watch the women parade.
Soucaret was announced as winner, with Belgian Angele Delrosa as runner up and Austrian Marie Stevens in third place, but the crowd was not pleased, especially the losing women.
When the winners were given their bouquets other contestants rushed at them to grab the flowers. Somebody spat on Soucaret’s dress and both Stevens and the winner were forced to flee the casino. The experiment was not repeated the next year at Spa.
Toward the end of the century beauty contests became more popular. Inhibitions continued to fall away in the 20th century as women also began to parade in swimwear.
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