Have you ever felt the need to follow trends or change the way you look to meet beauty standards, or even just feel pretty for yourself? Well, what if those beauty standards required you to catch a deadly disease, or at least, imitate one?

In recent years, many areas of the modern world have shifted beauty standards from pale skin and a slight frame to healthier, stronger looks. However, this is only a recent movement from a traditional norm that had set the ideal look for centuries. Where does the ‘fair skin, large eyes, rosy cheeks, and thin figure’ originate from?

In the 18th and 19th centuries, tuberculosis was an especially deadly, contagious illness that did not discriminate based on social hierarchy.

Tuberculosis(TB) is an infectious disease caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis. This bacterium causes cellular rust, the decay and breakdown of cells. It mainly affects the lungs, causing difficulty breathing and coughing up blood.

This weakens the ill person and creates the consumptive look: a thin waist and frail frame from weight loss; sunken, rosy cheeks from fever; and overall pallor from exhaustion and malnutrition. The disease literally consumes the human body, which is why TB is often called consumption.

Consumptive chic developed once people realized that TB is not just a disease that affects the poor; it preys on rich people as well. Before its peak, wealthy people despised and cast out the impoverished who contracted it. However, when everyone started getting infected, they changed their tune.

Consumption was now beautiful and an ideal look for the upper class. People fanaticized that tanned, bolder looks were for those who worked in the fields all day, while the weak magic of consumption was exclusively for the rich, even though slaves and lower classes still caught it, too.

"I could not, without a shudder, see a woman eat... she-health is a thing I cannot endure. I should have liked a pale, thin woman who seemed to have only a few days to live," French writer Théophile Gautier once wrote in 1835.

“Decay and disease are often beautiful, like the pearly tear of the shellfish or the hectic glow of consumption.” stated Henry David Thoreau, an American author in the 1800s in a journal entry.

Evidently, many artists of the past romanticized dying women as some ethereal ghosts that are greater than humanity.

"The death... of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world,” said Edgar Allan Poe. He was surrounded by consumptives; his mother, foster mother, and wife all died of TB, influencing much of his works.

Doctors in this era were conflicted due to duty as a doctor but also seeing beauty in the eyes of rich men.

"A remarkable brightness of the eye, and a color on the cheek, far more beautiful than the bloom of health, distinguish the victims of this disease... The mind also, in many cases, seems to acquire a more than ordinary degree of brightness and vigor," wrote Dr. John Reid 1806, as his patient’s diagnostic.

Women who did not fall ill, imitated the feeble appearances with excessive corset use, arsenic powder for complexion, rouge for feverish cheeks and lips, and drops of the poisonous nightshade(belladonna) for the dilated pupils and faraway look.

These practices deteriorated the health of innocent young ladies. Women changed their look by using any means necessary. However, this is not a method of the past; as fashion trends repeat over the years, sickly looks are also promoted again.

Heroin Chic

Only 35 years ago, after the vibrant and bold rage of the 80’s, Heroin chic took over the 90’s as a moody counter. This craze consisted of sunken cheeks, bony figure, wiry hair, dark circles, and ghostly skin; all physical traits that come from Heroin addiction.

This trend erased the taboo of drugs and rather encouraged people to use them. Also motivating sleep deprivation for the exhaustion effect. Many people died from overdose, including the main orchestrator of the look; Davide Sorrenti, a famous photographer who died at 20 years old.

These deaths led to President Bill Clinton’s official denunciation of the look.

"The glorification of [addiction] is not creative, it’s destructive. It’s not beautiful, it’s ugly. And this is not about art, it’s about life and death. And glorifying death is not good for any society," stated President Clinton in his Speech to the U.S. Conference of Mayors, on May 21, 1997.

Kate Moss, though not a heroin user herself, was a major symbol of the aesthetic. She still did use cocaine during the time. Today, she is the icon of her own “mindful beauty” brand, Cosmoss.

Beauty Trends Today

Between 2015 and 2021, there was the Instagram Face with lip filler, filters, eyelid lifts for larger appearing eyes and the continuously sought out non-human look; influenced by the Kardashians and some makeup artists.

Now, the Ozempic Face that began in 2022 is at its peak.

The Ozempic Face has the most direct parallel to the consumptive look with gaunt, hollowed-out features. These factors are seen as mature and sophisticated rather than cute and chubby. This is achieved by taking rapid weight-loss medicine and plastic surgery.

The effects have been taken to the extreme, where there are now filler surgeries developed to counter the overly sunken cheeks.

Through this investigation, it is shown that the unhealthy, frail look has been favored for hundreds of years. And each time those trends are shot down, they inevitably come back in the cycle of fashion.

Just as historians say that humanity must learn from past mistakes to avoid repeating them, the fashion industry and its followers must also learn from their dark past.