‘Breaking the Bonds of Beauty’: The Dark Side of Beauty between the World Wars

During the interwar period, a plethora of aggressive and abject images encroached upon the seemingly idealistic world of beauty. From fashion illustrations featuring severed heads, to tortuous devices used to measure ‘ideal’ beauty (in reality subjecting the face to a metal contraption, proliferated with sharp pins), to skincare advertisements that shared more with gory medical procedures than beauty practices: a startlingly violent aesthetic manifested itself within an area that is usually perceived as escapist and pure.

Despite the surprising frequency of such occurrences within this relatively early timeframe, they have never before been highlighted or studied. Taking as its starting point the devastating aftermath of the First World War - with the new, mechanized forms of death it had entailed - this paper will examine the dark underbelly of beauty that subsequently emerged during the 1920s. It will chart changing attitudes towards beauty and women through an examination of advertising, and by untangling the nuanced links with its context. How did the quickening onset of post-war modernity, the birth of psychoanalysis as we know it, and the shifting political scene impact women’s place within society, and how was this expressed in relation to their appearance?