Category:
Beauty, Ugliness and Other Aesthetic Issues

Miss Color TV

Apparently the contest continued beyond 1956 (first and second images), because the advertisement that follows is from 1959.



Ann Daly (No. 25) screams as she is declared "Miss Color-TV" in beauty contest at Palisades Amusement Park, N.J.; other contestants stand alongside her.








Posted By: Paul - Wed Feb 08, 2023 - Comments (1)
Category: Awards, Prizes, Competitions and Contests, Beauty, Ugliness and Other Aesthetic Issues, Television, 1950s

Puppidog Water for the face

In her 1690 pamphlet Mundus Muliebris, Mary Evelyn included a recipe for a woman's facial lotion. She called it "Puppidog Water for the Face":

Take a Fat Pig, or a Fat Puppidog, of nine days old, and kill it, order it as to Roast; save the Blood, and fling away nothing but the Guts; then take the Blood, and Pig, or the Puppidog, and break the Legs and Head, with all the Liver and the rest of the Inwards . . . to that, take two Quarts of old Canary, a pound of unwash’d Butter not salted; a Quart of snails-Shells, and also two Lemmons . . . Still all these together in a Rose Water Still . . . Let it drop slowly into a Glass-Bottle, in which let there be a lump of Loaf-Sugar, and a little Leaf-Gold.

The recipe was intended to be satirical, but Fenja Gunn, in her 1973 book The Artificial Face: A History of Cosmetics, notes that it was satire rooted in contemporary realities — notably the persistent rumor that Elizabeth I's pomade was made from puppy dog fat, and the seventeenth-century belief that drinking puppy dog urine was good for the complexion.

Some more info about puppy dogs used as moisturizers can be found on the Early Modern Medicine blog:

The medicinal use of puppies, known for their moisturising quality, is detailed in French physician Ambroise Paré's The Method of Curing Wounds by Gun-Shot (1617), which included a recipe for a healing balm that requires boiling two young whelps. The same recipe can be found in Nicholas Culpeper's Pharmacopoeia Londinensis (1653). To make 'Oleum Catellorum or Oil of Whelps,

Takes Sallet Oil four pound, two Puppy-dogs newly whelped, Earthworms washed in white Wine one pound; boil the Whelps til they fall in pieces then put in the worms a while after strain it, then with three ounces of Cypress Turpentine, and one ounce of Spirits of Wine, perfect the Oil according to Art.

Posted By: Alex - Sun Feb 05, 2023 - Comments (2)
Category: Beauty, Ugliness and Other Aesthetic Issues, Dogs, Seventeenth Century

Youth-Molde

As opposed to moldy youth.

McCall's - July 1936

Posted By: Alex - Fri Feb 03, 2023 - Comments (1)
Category: Beauty, Ugliness and Other Aesthetic Issues, Advertising, 1930s

The Miss Ka Palapala Beauty Contest

Contestants divided into racial categories? Seemed like a good idea at the time. Until a cow almost won.

















Posted By: Paul - Wed Jan 18, 2023 - Comments (1)
Category: Beauty, Ugliness and Other Aesthetic Issues, Contests, Races and Other Competitions, South Pacific, Twentieth Century

Mississippi’s Queen of the Forest

I believe the title of this post alone would make the basis of an excellent fantasy franchise. Netflix, Apple+ or Amazon Prime--you know where to find me!









Senator John C. Stennis poses with Miss Katherine Alexander of Booneville, Mississippi and Governor of Miss. J. P. Coleman at the State Queen of the Forest Pageant in 1956. Left to Right: Senator Stennis, Miss Katherine Alexander, and Governor J. P. Coleman.




1959 Press Photo Dixie Shadburn, "Queen of the Forest" for Southeast Mississippi








Posted By: Paul - Sat Dec 31, 2022 - Comments (2)
Category: Agriculture, Awards, Prizes, Competitions and Contests, Beauty, Ugliness and Other Aesthetic Issues, Regionalism, 1950s, 1960s

The Beauty Queen of Neptune



Long Beach, California: 1936. The queen of the Neptunes Electrical Extravaganza which will be staged over the Olympic Rowing Course on May 6th in Long Beach.






Posted By: Paul - Sun Dec 11, 2022 - Comments (0)
Category: Awards, Prizes, Competitions and Contests, Beauty, Ugliness and Other Aesthetic Issues, Oceans and Maritime Pursuits, Parades and Festivals, 1930s

Miss Anthracite

No chance of this beauty queen title being reinstated in today's, ahem, "climate."

I find a reference to Miss Anthracite as early as 1928.




A few years later, there was a controversy.





She soldiered on through the 1940s.




The fifties saw no lack of interest in the contest.




The seventies certainly saw a stunning winner. But after that references peter out, as the romance of coal tapers off.



Posted By: Paul - Wed Nov 30, 2022 - Comments (5)
Category: Awards, Prizes, Competitions and Contests, Beauty, Ugliness and Other Aesthetic Issues, Twentieth Century, Mining

Miss Magnetic Fly Reel of 1959

Source: The Times Dispatch (Richmond, Virginia) 09 Nov 1958, Sun Page 49


Posted By: Paul - Sat Nov 12, 2022 - Comments (2)
Category: Awards, Prizes, Competitions and Contests, Beauty, Ugliness and Other Aesthetic Issues, Oceans and Maritime Pursuits, Sports, Fish, 1950s

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