Hollywood's Changing Face of Beauty
From Greta Garbo to Kate Hudson, How Beauty Has Changed in America
But pretty soon both of those women took a back seat to the blonde bombshell, Jean Harlow. Patricia King Hanson, the film historian at the American Film Institute, said Harlow's looks were "very, very big. People wanted to have that platinum hair and the very pale skin and narrow eyebrow."
At the same time, the boyish attractiveness of Katharine Hepburn also was in vogue. "It was a straight up and down slim look. She was that way and so was Ginger Rogers," Hanson said.
World War II prompted a fashion change -- shorter skirts came into style because there just wasn't a lot of fabric to go around. War-weary GI's clamored for pretty girls and the "pinup" look was born. The more popular actresses were curvaceous women with big hips and big busts, a la Lana Turner and Betty Grable.
"They were gorgeous women, but they also had a distinctly American look. They looked much more American than European," Hanson said. The iconic photograph of the time showed Grable with her hands on her hips in a bathing suit looking over her shoulder.
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