Were the women just HOTTER in past decades?

[GSLevel9]

With the passing of Elizabeth Taylor I looked up a few old pics of her and said to myself. Damn she was hot. Hot as in REALLY hot. Look at the beauties from the 50's and 60's...

True classic beauty. Then look at Hollywood today. Cameron Diaz, Scarlet Johanson and Charlize Theron et al are all second rate.

Barbara Bouchet is probably the most beautiful woman ever to walk the planet... hell Lucille Ball was HOT in her 20's...

They were RED HOT, scorching HOT without looking like porn stars.

(all tongue in cheek but there's a shred of truth in there)

What's in the water nowadays?

Barbara Bouchet


Lauren Bacall


Brigitte Bardot

[Deep13]

1. Sadly, yes. ...

Except for Salma Hayek.

[krispos42]

10. Mmmmm.... Salma Hayek

Winner there. Looks, figure, brains, attitude, warmth, personality, and accent.

*sigh*


Probably the whole tall-and-athletic thing that's the current beauty standard. :shrug:

[jobycom]

2. Back then they understood that they were just meat. Now they seem to want to be people and stuff.

I hate when broads don't act like broads.

[Orsino]

62. +1 n/t

[Inchworm]

3. I think we are desensitized

Since girls nowadays can wear stuff when they are 13 that makes them look 25.

I remember being so furious after my MIL took my daughter for "glamor shots" when daughter was 8 or 9. I mean hec, I didn't think they'd do THAT to my li'l punkinhead. :D

:shrug:

[seabeyond]

4. men wanted the porn, that is what the girls are being fed, ergo what they create

and now the

whine

[hayu_lol]

6. LOL! Beauty and Hottness are...

a pure figment of one's imagination, no matter the time period.

Trite but true: "Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder."

Good looks and 'hotness' are supplanted easily by intelligence and good senses of humor. A further note: 50 years down the road, intelligence and senses of humor are still in place albeit tempered by life's experiences.

[nolabear]

5. I know I was...

[Kali]

59. !

:spray: :rofl:


oh I hear you! me too, me too

[Paradoxical]

7. There are definitely hot women today. Like Olivia Wilde.

Who is both beautiful and liberal

[GSLevel9]

9. oh she's VERY pretty. nt

[kentauros]

11. Nice face,

but I really don't see much of a figure, unlike here:

[Paradoxical]

20. There are plenty. Scarlett Johansson is one of them.

[kentauros]

26. I was only disputing the lack of a figure on the one you posted

;)

Still, plenty of them don't have discernible figures, as if being straight as a rail is desirable...

[Paradoxical]

29. As a "straight as a rail" male, I don't find skinny people undesirable.

As long as someone is healthy and enjoys their body, I don't care what you weigh.

[kentauros]

39. Weight is not the issue.

Curves are ;)

This woman is neither skinny nor fat (except by today's standards) but is she ever curvaceous! :D

[dawg]

58. Slender girls are *wicked* sexy!

Curvy ones are, too. But lately it's become PC to say things like, "I like a woman with more meat on her bones", etc., etc. Some women are just naturally slender and I think they look great!

[mvd]

61. That's how I think Olivia is - very attractive

IMO, plenty of celebs are just as beautiful as ones from Liz's era.

[kentauros]

64. As mentioned somewhere else,

it's all a matter of taste :)

Curves are what I prefer if choosing by body-type alone. "Slender" has no appeal to me and why I'm critical of the fashion industry's focus on that body-type and practically no promotion (to speak of) of the curvy woman.

A nice amount of curves is another reason I like watching belly dance. Those curves accentuate the movements that much more ;)

[NewJeffCT]

68. if you want curvy modern actresses

Sofia Vergara & Christina Hendricks...

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_6UaMTyxI03k/TIOtJiOBadI/AAAAAAAAANE/rYne8ebVG5g/s1600/Sofia+Vergara.jpg

[Joe Fields]

87. not even close. try again.

Hell, I dated women who were much hotter than her.

[Bucky]

8. No, you're engaging in selective recall even as pop media engages in selective publicity

For instance Lauren Bacall is hotter than Brigitte Bardot. This supports your thesis.

But Bjork is hotter than Sylvia Sidney. This contradicts your thesis.

Maybe you'll counter that Fred Astaire traded down, going from Ginger Rogers to Cyd Charisse. But that could be accounted for with statistical clustering. After all, who didn't Fred Astaire dance with? Inevitably there'd be ups and downs in the aggregate hotness of his match ups.

What's more, Barbara Stanwyck got hotter the closer she got to contemporary times. This utterly destroys your thesis.

[Joe Fields]

88. No it doesn't. You're all over the map.

All you have to do is simply compare the number of starlets in the 40's, 50's, 60's and 70's, to the starlets in the 80's, 90's and 2000's and see for yourself.

His is NOT a false premise.

[Iggo]

12. As The Second-To-Last Samurai said with his dying breath:

"They are all perfect..."

(Oh, yeah. SURE he was talking about cherry blossoms.)

[El Supremo]

13. Women today are just as hot, until they open their mouth to speak.

"Like sure!" With an inflection on the last syllables and a strange guttural sound.

[Joe Fields]

89. No. They are not.

Tell you what. You supply me with pics from real women stars (and I mean stars) from the past three decades, and I will supply you with pics from female stars of the 40's 50's and 60's.

[txwhitedove]

14. Well, I was certainly hotter in past decades......Huh?

Oh, you mean women in general. Good question.

[Curmudgeoness]

15. Dang, you beat me to that comment. Exactly the first thing I thought.

Oh well, I will just have to be quicker next time when I have something good to say!

[txwhitedove]

16. All that hotness is still here, hiding under the 'grandma-ness'.

[Curmudgeoness]

18. LOL, tell me about it. Actually, I am still really hot,

until I look in the mirror and wonder who the hell that is. Agh, my mother is in the mirror!!!

[Whisp]

123. double LOL!

who the HELL is THAT?

hahahahahaha.

back in the day I was hawt, I shoulda used it better tho. stupid.

[Moondog]

19. LOL. Great line. Bravo!

Benjamin Franklin, btw, agreed with you. (semi-obscure reference that I choose not to explain)

And, as a rule, I agree with Ben.

[siligut]

21. Women age from the neck up?

Is that the semi-obscure reference? I think he is right.

[Moondog]

22. Well, that was a small part of it.

I post the following with the greatest of reluctance ~~

The explanation is here - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advice_to_a_Friend_on_Choosing_a_Mistress

The text is here - http://grammar.about.com/od/classicessays/a/franklinmis.htm

[txwhitedove]

28. Hummph! Old Ben was witty, but he was NO Brad Pitt.

[Moondog]

49. Heh. He had to be. BECAUSE he was no Brad Pitt.

[Lyric]

17. Those women have striking facial features.

And little imperfections that serve to heighten how beautiful they really are. Today's beauty standards call for cookie-cutter perfection. Nobody wants a slightly-square jaw, or a slightly wide nose--and if they HAVE one, they'll have surgery to get rid of it because it's not "perfect". Symmetry is important for beauty, but too much symmetry is boring to the eye. Good symmetry with a unique imperfection here or there to emphasize the overall effect is aesthetically ideal. But nobody wants that anymore.

Let's put it this way: there's a REASON why ruins (like Tinturn Abbey) are so beautiful. There's a reason why a single jagged rock formation sticking up out of an otherwise-smooth ocean is so beautiful. There's a reason why mountaintop peaks that stick out at side angles and cast interesting shadows are so lovely. A perfectly conical mountain is "pretty", but it's not beautiful. Perfectly symmetrical architecture with no outstanding or broken features can be "pretty", but not beautiful. A smooth ocean with few breaking waves is very pretty, but it's not the kind of "waves breaking against the rocks" gorgeous that photographers love.

Beauty NEEDS imperfection. Imperfection frames it and emphasizes it. When everyone tries to look like one standard of "beauty", the end result is that we get less and less beautiful as the availability of new and interesting features gets narrower and narrower. Look at Jennifer Grey. If you see her in "Dirty Dancing", you might think, "Gee that's a beautiful girl! Her nose is a little off, but man...she's gorgeous." Well she got that nose "fixed"...and now? If not for "Dancing With the Stars", she'd never be recognized as a "star" again. She's "pretty" in an average sort of way, but nothing like she used to be. She ruined her looks and she KNOWS it, even though the surgery was technically a success. It gave her a "pretty" nose, and took away the beauty of her face.

I, for one, am glad to be who I am--overly thick eyebrows, too-big nose and all. I'm more beautiful as I am than I'd ever be by surgically turning myself into some mass-produced doll.

[tigereye]

24. ding, ding, ding

just what I was thinking -great bones, great brains, unique facial features...

:thumbsup:

[MilesColtrane]

25. Lyric's thesis illustrated:

Ingrid Bergman



Megan Fox

[Lyric]

31. A better illustration:

Bette Davis, posing with a piece of foliage:



Pamela Anderson, posing with a piece of foliage:



Notice those gorgeous eyes on Bette. Now, look at Pam and what do you notice first? Yeah...me too. There's a reason why so many celebrity women are keen to show off their boobs; it's because without the boobs and some VERY well-paid makeup artists, people might actually realize that they AREN'T that beautiful. Or at least not anymore. Pretty, yes. But beautiful? Striking? Gorgeous? Not at all. They look like every other Heather Paris Britney Jessica Hilton Spears Anderson Locklear clone out there.

[CBGLuthier]

54. 4 pounds of fake breast do not a beauty make.

And whoever told women they should have fish lips should be slapped really, really hard.

[TheManInTheMac]

122. Actually, I find it sad what happened to Pamela.

When she first broke out in Playboy, she had natural beauty. Then the surgeons got a hold of her and turned her into a caricature.

If plastic surgery existed in Marilyn Monroe's day, I suspect the same thing would have happened.

[GSLevel9]

35. well said...

imagine if Lauren Bacall had that cute little nose buzzed.

[deutsey]

63. I agree

So much of what is upheld today as beautiful and desirable in terms of appearance (in men but especially women) is very bland in its artificial sameness, imo.

[dawg]

72. I like full eyebrows on a woman.

I don't like it when they pluck them all off and then draw them back on with a brown pencil.

I also thought Jennifer Grey was so much prettier before her surgery. Really, I think most people look better *before* plastic surgery. Look what they did to Kenny Rogers. :scared:

[Lyric]

82. Kenny Rogers looks like a wax model.

A *bad* wax model. Madame Tussauds would NEVER display a model that looked like that.

:scared:

[Demoiselle]

84. Well said, Lyric.

Somewhere I read that the great movie stars had just enough flaws to be believable...that the greatest "beauties" of the movie business in Hollywood's heyday (the '30's) didn't become the huge box office draws...It made me think of Barbara O'Neill, who played Scarlet O'Hara's mother in Gone With the Wind, and the evil wife of Charles Boyer in a wondrous Warner Brothers tearjerker melodrama called "All This and Heaven Too." She was virtually perfect...but completely cold and uninteresting.
Beauty does need imperfection...because it's so subjective.

[dimbear]

23. Three general rules:

1. The hottest women were the women you drooled over as a teenager.

2. The best cars were the cars you drooled over as a teenager.

3. The best music was the music you listened to as a teenager.

Makes no difference when that was.

[NewJeffCT]

53. excellent rules

I would tend to agree with them.

[fishwax]

66. ding ding!

[La Lioness Priyanka]

27. No. Scientifically speaking women are becoming more beautiful

there was a recent study released on this

[kentauros]

40. I don't remember anything on that.

I do remember a study last year about how the appeal of the hourglass figure to men is universal. That is, it crosses cultural boundaries, over the whole world :)

[La Lioness Priyanka]

41. here you go...

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/science/article6727710.ece

[kentauros]

44. Thanks

:)

It does make me wonder how much the hourglass figure factors into that observation. Since the article seemed to focus at least a third of its content on procreation, then the appeal of the her figure to the men is another big factor, i.e., "child-bearing hips" ;)

[NewJeffCT]

51. Interesting

I would tend to agree with the theory.

[Joe Fields]

90. prove it. I don't believe it. My eyes have not seen it.

And I don't miss much...

[La Lioness Priyanka]

93. Already posted the article that refers to it.

[NewJeffCT]

94. The article makes sense

from a scientific perspective.

[La Lioness Priyanka]

98. yes. it does.

[NewJeffCT]

99. and

you're proof that it's true. ;-)

But, the "beautiful" actresses from the Golden Age of Hollywood were all white. Modern actresses are still mostly white, but beautiful non-white actresses are not uncommon anymore.

[Modern_Matthew]

30. I like women with flaws. I find "perfection" to be a turn off. nt

[Terry in Austin]

91. "There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion"

Frank Bacon said that.

"Too perfect. Meh."

I said that.

Emily Deschanel comes to mind. She's so incredibly drop-dead beautiful, your eyeballs just kind of slide right off -- nothing to hang onto. No change in temperature. YMMV, of course.

As for hot, that's harder to peg. Has a lot to do with attitude, I'd say. Deschanel's colleague on "Bones," Michaela Conlin (Angela), for instance. Now, she's got distinctively killer looks and the vibe to back it up. Definite ten-degree jump there. Celsius, even.

[Fleshdancer]

32. Really? I think there are a ton of beautiful actresses today:

[provis99]

110. damn! Mila Kunis is gorgeous.

Another one of those attractive, exotic Slavic women.

[Tuesday Afternoon]

33. I know I was...peaked at about age 35.

meh.

[La Lioness Priyanka]

42. lol. good one

[WildEyedLiberal]

34. Well, men were hotter in past decades, too

Cary Grant, Marlon Brando, Humphrey Bogart... you don't see classically strong rock-jawed men like that anymore. George Clooney is coming closer now that he's getting older, and there are certainly some good looking men in Hollywood, but... none of them have that masculine charm like the old stars.

I can't really add anything else to what Lyric said, because she really hit the nail on the head. (And I think it goes for both sexes.)

[GSLevel9]

37. agreed,

I just wrote a long response that got hosed.

Summary:

I read about a theory that stated that in the early 20th century people had a more SPECIFIC look reflecting their ethnic groups.

When you see groups of a closed ethnic group you tend to see more extreme features. These extreme features produce beauty. All the modern cross-breeding between ethnic groups is producing a softer, less angular and rounder set of features. And when I say cross-breeding I mean examples such as Northern Europeans diluting the features of Mediterraneans and vice versa, not talking about races in the modern sense.

Di Caprio, Pitt and the other hunks of H-Wood have those sharper features.

Example... I as watching Star Trek last night and saw the very first pilot before W Shatner came aboard. The first Captain was a man named Jeffrey Hunter. And let me say... if I WERE gay... I'd have a crush right now. Talk about a stunningly attractive man! Unfortunately Mr. Hunter passed away in 1969 from a stroke.

[Rowdyboy]

43. I'm sorry but I have to disagree with you on that....Certainly Cary Grant and Montgomery Clift

and James Dean were hot but today we have just as many (or more) gorgeous men. I watch a lot of old movies with an eye to the men and (at least in my humble opinion) young men (and actors) today are easily the equals of their peers in the past.



http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_KqebofQhfbk/TP_rc_ETebI/AAAAAAAAALw/slmdqHjxYy4/s1600/Wilmer+Valderrama.jpg

[WildEyedLiberal]

45. Well most of its a subjective taste thing

Those guys don't really do anything for me with the exception of Antonio Banderas. But there are certainly some fine looking men in movies these days, you are correct :) I think Hugh Jackman is my current favorite, hubba hubba!

[Rowdyboy]

47. And don't misunderstand....Montgomery Clift is probably the most gorgeous human male who ever lived

There were some incredibly hot men back in the day....I just think their grandsons today are just as hot (or maybe a little more!)

[CBGLuthier]

55. Between Modern Family last night and this thread

I have heard Monty Clift mentioned about 20 times. If I were sentimental and believed in an afterlife I would think he and Ms. Taylor would be glad to see each other again.

[WildEyedLiberal]

46. Whooops delete dupe post!

[CJCRANE]

77. It's not just their looks but their personalities were more unique somehow.

There were more extremes in those days...from the suave gentleman to the brooding colossus pitted against the enigmatic ice maiden, the defiant temptress or the mischievous minx (obviously it was a more patriarchal time when gender roles were more sharply defined).

[kimi]

36. "Hotness", as a term, confuses me

I like people, guys in particular. But the typical "hot" guy doesn't attract me. I guess I don't see looks as the be-all, end-all of attraction. It's definitely a component, but I also factor in personality, humor, intelligence, the ability to tell a good story - eh, that's just me, a woman. Guys may be looking for something different, and if my experiences lately are anything to go by - yep, that's about it. I've been severely disappointed lately in that department, but that's a whole other issue . . .

A good guy friend asked me recently if I would approach him in a bar or other setting, which was an awkward question, cause he's a definite friend, not a romantic interest at all. I had to say -- at my age, by my parameters, personality means so much more to me than looks. Looks are nice, but personality and humor and interests mean so much more, now.

I'd like to think that men think the same way. Now that I'm single, and hope to find a guy someday, I hope that's reciprocated. :shrug:

[Paradoxical]

48. Sexual identity is the product of centuries of misogynist bullshit.

Women have been relinquished to the role of walking sexual objects. It really is disturbing just how much women are objectified in modern society; let alone in history.

I will admit, even as a very liberal, feminist, bisexual man, I find myself undressing women with my eyes. It takes a conscious effort to fight back that reflex that has been so heavily ingrained into your subconscious by society.

[jobycom]

69. Some guys do, some guys don't.

I have a friend at work who, like me, is mid 40s and recently single. At my other job I've met a woman I'm interested in, and I was asking his advice, since he's been single longer, about how to approach her and whether signs she was giving me meant she was interested (I'm clueless--I was married most of my life, and never really had to learn the whole dating thing, so I'm always hearing from female friends that I missed an obvious pass or come-on or whatever).

Anyway, I knew within a couple moments that he wasn't helpful. His whole goal and agenda was how I could get her in bed, using trickery or whatever, and he even took the time to brag about ending his dry spell, and showing me a picture of his "trophy," complete with her small child whom he seemed to know nothing about. He couldn't even understand what I meant when I said I wasn't trying to get her in bed, i was trying to figure out if she liked me, if I could go out with her. "Yeah, to get her in bed," was his basic attitude. :(

Guys are all different. Women are all different, too. That's why I hate threads like this one and can't resist posting sarcastic snark in them. :)

[dawg]

70. You sound a lot like me.

Only I'm more clueless about how to do this than you are. Any tips on how to live the single life will be welcome here!

[seabeyond]

78. .

refreshing. i didnt know you were single. missed soemthing along the way. hope things work out well. it seems to me, being older, it would be so much easier. want coffee. dinner. a movie. since the goal is not a screw, lol, takes out a lot of the guessing and pressure.

[NewJeffCT]

71. I think there are plenty of guys like that

where personality in a woman is extremely important. I noticed over the years that while I sometimes would date a woman once or twice based on their physical appearance, for the women I dated more than that, it was always based on their personality - smart, outgoing, good sense of humor, not conservative politically. Of course, I lucked out in that my ex-wife was pretty hot, and my wife now is hot, too.

I will say that guys are more likely than women to give a "hot" dating partner the benefit of the doubt when it comes to personality & intelligence. There are plenty of exceptions, however.

[JonLP24]

38. I'd think

there are so many people out there that I'm sure you could find someone that compares. I think Eva Longoria could probably compete with any generation. If you don't think so, that is fine. People feel differently in who they find attractive. Besides, I try not to get into judging by looks because I'm probably 10th rate compared to Brad Pitt or other men out there.

[NewJeffCT]

50. I don't really think this is true

I see some of those old time movie stars and think "meh" a lot of the time. Granted, there were many old time actresses that were beautiful & sexy, but I think there are more now than there were back then. Plus, back in the "Golden Age" of Hollywood, there were only a handful of beautiful women that were promoted as stars by the major studios. Nowadays, there are tons of beautiful women, many of whom don't rely on the studios to promote them - they have their own publicists and agents, and this leads to no one woman being singled out as "the" star.

[Rambis]

52. Grace

[dawg]

56. The hottest women, to me, are the ones I see in real life.

I tend to think of celebrities of any era as being fake. Lots of the women I see just going through life are really pretty - and some of them are really pretty on the inside, too.

[guitar man]

57. I dunno

but it sure seems like it sometimes :)

[Yavin4]

60. Beauty Was A Lot More Natural In The Past

Leaf through old magazines from the 60s and 70s, and you will see that beauty was a lot more natural looking. Today, beauty is surgically, comestically, and physically enhanced, and it makes all women look sort of the same.

Ever since Pam Anderson, most Playboy centerfolds look like bad clones of her.

In essence, everyone is trying to achieve the exact same look instead of letting their natural beauty shine through.

[NewJeffCT]

65. There are plenty of beautiful actresses these days

And, I didn't even include Natalie Portman, Mila Kunis, Amanda Seyfried, Zoe Saldana, Blake Lively, Scarlett Johanson, Kristen Bell, Eva Longoria, and others in here.

[noneisthenumber]

83. Who Is The Woman In the Last Photo Of Your Post?

:loveya:

[NewJeffCT]

92. Vanessa Hudgens

Most famous for Disney's "High School Musical" movies

[noneisthenumber]

96. oh, yeah

Currently in Sucker Punch. Thanks

[NewJeffCT]

97. welcome to DU, by the way

I was looking forward to Sucker Punch, but it's getting god-awful reviews.

[hifiguy]

101. I forgot about her.

Truly a spectacular looking young woman. A little quirky and individual, which is a GOOD thing.

[RedCloud]

67. Women are much hotter in the desert and near active volcanoes.

[CJCRANE]

73. When you think of classic movie stars like Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor...

you think of *PASSION*, fire in the belly, intensity of emotions...that adds to the "hotness" in some way.

[Bake]

74. Bouchet was smokin', not necessarily most beautiful ever, but still smokin!

Did she ever do an episode of Star Trek? I could swear I saw her on one (no doubt being chased by Kirk).

Bake

[NewJeffCT]

75. You have a good memory

she was in the Star Trek episode "By Any Other Name"

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0708422/

[Bake]

76. 50 or 100 years from now, Elizabeth Taylor will STILL be one of the standards for beauty

And no one will remember who Scarlett Johanssen, Blake Lively, et al., were.

Bake

[hifiguy]

79. Sophia Loren, too.

There was so much more variation in the bombshells of the past. Each of them had a distinctive look and style. I mean, could two women look more different than, say, Audrey Hepburn and Sophia? And Bardot looked nothing like either of them but they were all rightly considered to be drop-dead gorgeous back in the day, which was well before my day. Totally different body/face types - each one a strikingly individual beauty.

There's a cookie-cutter sameness to too many of the women considered beauty icons today, although I will readily concede that Halle Berry is about as gorgeous as it is possible to be. And whoever started that gawdawful "fishlips" trend should be flogged. Nothing is more off-putting to me than that look. :puke:

Age disclosure: Raquel Welch was the #1 bombshell when I was in my mid-teens - I admit that I had the "hair" poster on my wall when I was 16.:P Never had the Farrah poster though. I never quite understood why the Teeming Millions thought she was the cat's meow.

[Bake]

81. OH hells yeah!

The classics: Loren, Lollobrigidga, Bardot, Welch, and ET.

:hi:

Bake

[hifiguy]

104. One more for ya, Bake

How could I have forgotten Barbara Eden?

Senior moment, I guess. :)

[NewJeffCT]

100. all of the old bombshells were white

Nowadays, you have women of many different ethnic backgrounds that are considered beautiful - Halle Berry, Tyra Banks, Eva Longoria, Jessica Alba, Zoe Saldana, Rosario Dawson, Aishwarya Rai, Sofia Vergara, Vanessa Hudgens, Gong Li, Zhao Wei, Grace Park and more.

[hifiguy]

103. True, but that was all one saw,

and we (guys) didn't have a chance to look at all of the gorgeous non-white women that were out there. That was the media's fault, not ours. :P

Gotta agree completely about Halle, Eva, Aishwarya, and Vanessa. I'd add Lucy Liu and a phenomenal jazz pianist named Hiromi to that short list list and that doesn't even begin to scratch the surface. These days, I think that non-white (celebrity) women are generally much more attractive. The caucasian girls all seem to be going in the Pam Anderson/Megan 'Fishlips" Fox direction which is a total 'meh' in my opinion.

[NewJeffCT]

105. Among Chinese people

Lucy Liu is not considered very attractive because she is short (5'2"), has smallish eyes and her skin is of medium tone. In China, the actresses that are considered beautiful are usually tall (by Chinese standards), have big eyes and fair skin. Gong Li is 5'7", Zhao Wei is 5'6" and even Zhang Ziyi is 5'5"

[hifiguy]

106. Whoever she is, she's freaking stunning

but I still find Lucy to be smokin' hot.

[NewJeffCT]

107. That's Zhao Wei

She was in Shaolin Soccer, which was from the same person that did Kung Fu Hustle. I don't think she's been any western movies, though. She caused some controversy several years back in China when she wore a dress emblazoned with a Japanese flag at a fashion show... the reaction was almost as strong as if a model here wore a dress with a swastika on it.

[BuelahWitch]

118. I guess you never heard of Anna May Wong

[bluesbassman]

80. Well, HVAC technology is much better today, so...

I suppose they were hotter back in the day. :)

[BuelahWitch]

120. But wait, there's more!

Lupe Velez



Delores Del Rio





And how could anyone forget Miss Dorothy Dandridge?

[wickerwoman]

85. This thread needs more Natalie Portman.

[RagAss]

86. Yes.......

[hifiguy]

95. Oooooh. Adrienne was always one of my favorites!

That's the poster that replaced Raquel Welch on my wall back in the day. :P

[cemaphonic]

121. She was still looking pretty great as of a few years ago when she was in Carnivale.

[Love Bug]

102. It may seem that way, but studio shots like those are always touched up

Nowadays, especially with the internet, most famous actresses can't go grocery shopping without a photo of them in their sweats ending up on some web page. Movie studios had more control over a star's image back in the day so that may account for our collective memory of a particular star's beauty. But now that 'touching up' happens in a doctor's office.

There are plenty of beautiful celebrities today but the ones that stand out from the pack of cookie-cutter skinny blonds seem to do so because of some unique feature. Hopefully as they age they will leave that uniqueness alone.

As far as classic beauty is concerned, it's hard to beat this:



3300 years old, but she had the full lips, large, wide-spaced eyes, prominent cheekbones, well-defined chin and not-too-big nose we have been conditioned to accept as "beautiful." Even if Nefertiti did not look like this, the Egyptians gave her this appearance to meet their own standards of beauty for deities. From the Professional Beauties of the Victorian age to our current group of attractive actors and models, we still tend to attribute, even unconsciously, qualities to the beautiful that they may or may not truly have, just based on their looks.

Like beauty, hotness is in the eye of the beholder, too. Were the stars of the past hotter than now? Depends on who you ask.

[xchrom]

108. Brigitte Bardot!

:loveya:

[madrchsod]

109. no....!

[DutchLiberal]

111. I disagree; I think these actresses of today are much hotter:

Penélope Cruz

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_5qEgcuxTMLg/TM0ZjR1LiwI/AAAAAAAAJlQ/kOhdKj3Kk58/s1600/penelope+cruz2.jpg


Scarlett Johansson




Dutch actress Maryam Hassouni




Kerry Washington





Jessica Alba

[laconicsax]

112. No.

Is it just me, or are Brigitte Bardot's eyes not pointing in the same direction?

[struggle4progress]

113. It's an illusion caused by global warming: as earth gets hotter, women seem less so in comparison

[ElboRuum]

114. No.

[baldguy]

115. 1) Relative "hotness" is just as much about attitude & presentation as it is about objective beauty.

and 2) Distilling the most beautiful, most talented & most professionally successful actresses over the last 80 yrs, then comparing them to the marginally cute but relatively talentless starlets of today is at best biased & unfair.

[Orrex]

116. The short answer is no

If you hand-pick half a dozen women from an arbitrary 40+ year period, of course you're going to come away with some supernatural beauties, but that's just a matter of selection bias. You could easily assemble an equivalent list today.

Nostalgic types will then evoke some nebulous attribute like "women of years past had more grace" or "glamour" or "style," but these are simply shorthand ways of saying "I've decided that women of that bygone era are hotter, so I'm going to dedicate some mysterious quality to them in order to prove my point."


All kinds of women were hot yesterday and they are hot today. If I had to guess, I'd say that they'll be hot tomorrow.

[NewJeffCT]

126. good points

I'm sure some people in the 60s said the same thing - actresses of today can't compare to the stars of the 30s and 40s. And, I'm sure 30 years from now, people will be saying that the actresses of 2040 can't compare to those from 30-40 years earlier.

[backwoodsbob]

117. nm

[Whisp]

119. Beautiful women are still around.

Charlize Theron, just one of millions.

[Taverner]

124. For me, no. In the 90's, women were the hottest they had ever been

It was the styles, the hiphugger jeans, the halter tops, etc

It was also the first time women and men started shaving their you-knows

[keroro gunsou]

125. no one beats....

audrey hepburn. therefore all other arguments are rendered invalid!