hed the standards of beauty. However, the emergence of the thinner and fitter Gibson Girl in the 1890s redefined the standards of beauty and triggered the spiral of decreasing body size. The Gibson Girl's reign as the standard of beauty ended in during the Great Depression of the 1930s. Possibly, the harsh conditions of the environment demanded images of large and hardy women who were capable of dealing with life's difficulties. However, with the end of World War II, the standard of "thinness" returned. Beautiful and thin women like Audrey Hepburn with her tiny waist were erected as the epitome of beauty.
The changes in the images of beauty would have been harmless if they were dismissed as passing fads that came and went. However, they exerted a tremendous impact on the women's perceptions of their physical appearance. Not wanting to be considered fat, women plunged into corsets, girdles and waist cinches in order to look thinner. Diets also became a part of the women's picture (Zimmerman, 1997, p. 20).
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