Top: LHJ 1902 cover.
BELOW. Ad for ready to wear in the magazine. This Monty Pythonesque image makes it clear that today's airbrushed and digitally slimmed down cover models and actresses are part of a long history of advertising images that distort women's natural shape. I mean, women weren't actually built like chickens back then, were they? Are feminine ideals always arbitrary and unattainable? Would women in 1900 have considered plastic surgery to look like the images above? By 1910 the silhouette had streamlined somewhat.