Robert Whitfield MDAmerica's Breast Implant Illness Expert™

Body Image Evolution: From Flappers to Modern Beauty

29 Jun 2025 · 1 min

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Robert Whitfield MD (speaker, age 55 in this excerpt) provides a first-person, conversational overview of how Western female beauty standards changed from the 1920s through the 1950s. He contrasts the slim, straight silhouette of 1920s flappers with wartime and postwar shifts, noting that by the 1950s (citing 1953 as the start of Playboy) popular culture celebrated larger-busted celebrities (Sophia Loren, Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor) while lower-body proportions became comparatively smaller.

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1953

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Okay, can, like, men donate some of their love handles? You'd have to be an identical twin. That works if you're identical twins. But I was gonna say, like, you know, I've tried it in my. Because I'm 55 now, and just like, you're thinking, like, when did this all get to be a thing? When? So in the 20s, there's the flappers. You know, it's more of a slim fit dress, and we roll into the, you know, the forties. There's World War II. Post World War II, you're in the fifties now. 1953, Playboy magazine started. There's Sophia Loren, Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor. These are all bigger, busted women. But it gets progressively smaller in terms of the lower body in the frames. They're not as curvy, but the bust size doesn't change.